The Chinese ideal of goodness and nobility allows no place among its virtues to the qualities of the warrior, which have in general been given such a prominent place in the moral ideals of almost all other peoples throughout all periods of history. Soldiers hold a very low place in the social scale; they are looked upon as a “pariah class,” and their life is regarded as degrading. The Emperor of China, “alone among the great secular rulers of the world, never wears a sword.”[161]
This spirit of opposition to militarism is embodied in the teachings of the great moralist Mencius. “The warlike Western world has scarcely known a more vigorous and sweeping protest against warfare and everything connected with it and every principle upon which it is based.”[162] To gain territory by the slaughter of men Mencius declared to be contrary to the principles of benevolence and righteousness.[163] He speaks as follows of the military profession: “There are men who say, I am skillful at marshaling troops. I am skillful in conducting a battle. They are great criminals.”[164] In Spring and Autumn, a chronicle of early Chinese history, he declares, “There are no righteous wars,” though he admits that one might be better than another.[165]
Confucius also, though he did not lay the stress upon the inherent wickedness of war that was placed upon it by Mencius, maintained that the same rules of morality apply in the relations of nations as in those of individuals, and taught that differences between nations should be settled by arbitration and by considerations of equity and justice, not by brute force.
Principles and inner disposition
It is often affirmed that the teachings of Chinese moralists are defective in that they consist in moral precepts rather than in moral principles, that they lay stress upon the observance of minute rules of conduct rather than upon the inner disposition. There is, however, in the body of ethical teachings of the sages no lack of insistence upon principles of conduct and upon states and dispositions of mind and heart. All must be right within the heart, says Confucius, for “what truly is within will be manifested without.”[166] “Let the prince be benevolent,” says Mencius, “and all his acts will be benevolent; let the prince be righteous and all his acts will be righteous.”[167] Have no depraved thoughts, sums up the contents of the three hundred pieces in the Book of Poetry. “In the ceremony of mourning,” says Confucius again, “it is better that there be deep sorrow than a minute attention to observances.”[168]
And it is the same teaching as to what constitutes true morality which we find in such sayings as these: “The doctrine of our Master is to be true to the principles of our nature.”[169] “Man is born for uprightness,”[170] and he should love virtue as he loves beauty,[171] for its own sake.
In reciprocity Confucius found that same comprehensive rule of conduct which is rightly regarded as one of the noblest principles of Christian morality. Being asked if there was one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one’s life, the Master said: “Is not reciprocity such a word? What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.”[172]
And surely nothing could be farther from mere preceptorial teaching than these words of Mencius: “Let a man not do what his own sense of righteousness tells him not to do;... To act thus is all he has to do.”[173] And in the following utterances the sages of China speak with an accent strangely like that of the Great Prophet of Israel: “The great man is he who does not lose his child heart.”[174] Again, “I like life; I also like righteousness. If I cannot keep the two together, I will let life go and choose righteousness.”[175] Still again: “With coarse rice to eat, with water to drink, and my bended arm for a pillow—I have still joy in the midst of these things.”[176]
In the following Mencius shows that he understood the moral use of dark things: “When Heaven is about to confer a great office on any man, it first exercises his mind with suffering and his sinews and bones with toil. It exposes his body to hunger and subjects him to extreme poverty. It confounds his undertakings. By all these methods it stimulates his mind, hardens his nature, and supplies his incompetencies.”[177] And again: “Life springs from sorrow and calamity, and death from ease and pleasure.”[178] “Men who are possessed of intelligent virtue and prudence in affairs will generally be found to have been in sickness and trouble.”[179]
Defects of the ideal: no duties to God, and the duties of parents to children not emphasized