That whereby man differs from the animals is small. Superior men preserve it, while the mass of men cast it away.
There is a way to get the kingdom; get the people, and the kingdom is got. There is a way to get the people; get their hearts, and the people are got. The people turn to a benevolent rule as water flows downward.
Mencius said: ‘The richest fruit of benevolence is the service of one’s parents; of righteousness, the service of one’s elder brother; of wisdom, the knowing those two things and not departing from them.’”
Spirit of the Chinese Classics.—One prevailing spirit breathes through the nine classical books of the Chinese—a spirit of conservatism. Confucius nowhere encourages men to take independent flights into the realms of original thought. He ignores the future, and exalts the past. His motto was not Go up higher, but Walk in the trodden paths. He sought to reclaim from sin and folly, but only by winning to the purer practices of that venerable antiquity which he so blindly admired. Beyond the old landmarks, he cared not even to point the way. (See Gray’s “China,” p. 75.)
Worshipping the Ancestral Tablet (p.72).
It is hardly strange that under such leadership the nation became wedded to formalism, wrapped itself in a complacent aversion to novelty or progress, eschewed dealings with the outer world, and in a word came to an intellectual standstill for four and twenty centuries.
Other Works.—There are numerous commentaries on the old classics, some themselves quite ancient; but they are mere reproductions or servile imitations of the original texts.
Different, however, are the works of Lao-Tse, who was contemporary with Confucius, and whose writings are so mystical that the matter-of-fact Confucius declared himself unable to comprehend them. He made something which he calls Tao the mainspring of the universe, the source and ultimate destination of all things. Many of his followers, to whom he recommended self-denial and retirement, became recluses; their philosophy was perpetuated, and Taoism is still professed to some extent in China.
Having little imagination for works of fiction and no genius for the higher departments of poetry, the ancient Chinese produced nothing of special note—nothing, at least, that has come down to us—except what has been mentioned. We have indeed numerous chronicles of the various dynasties, industriously and no doubt accurately compiled; but they lack the graces of style, and possess little interest for the general European reader. The Bamboo Annals, found in a royal tomb 284 A.D., is the oldest of these chronicles that have thus far come to light.