The wise man withers like a plant!
He died soon after, B.C. 478, aged seventy-three, leaving a single descendant, his grandson Tsz’-sz, through whom the succession has been transmitted to the present day. During his life the return of the Jews from Babylon, the invasion of Greece by Xerxes, and conquest of Egypt by the Persians took place. Posthumous honors in great variety, amounting to idolatrous worship, have been conferred upon him. His title is the ‘Most Holy Ancient Teacher’ Kung tsz’, and the ‘Holy Duke.’ In the reign of Kanghí, two thousand one hundred and fifty years after his death, there were eleven thousand males alive bearing his name, and most of them of the seventy-fourth generation, being undoubtedly one of the oldest families in the world. In the Sacrificial Ritual a short account of his life is given, which closes with the following pæan:
Confucius! Confucius! How great is Confucius!
Before Confucius there never was a Confucius!
Since Confucius there never has been a Confucius!
Confucius! Confucius! How great is Confucius!
CHARACTER OF THE CONFUCIAN SYSTEM.
The leading features of the philosophy of Confucius are subordination to superiors and kind, upright dealing with our fellow-men; destitute of all reference to an unseen Power to whom all men are accountable, they look only to this world for their sanctions, and make the monarch himself only partially amenable to a higher tribunal. It would indeed be hard to over-estimate the influence of Confucius in his ideal princely scholar, and the power for good over his race this conception ever since has exerted. It might be compared to the glorious work of the sculptor on the Acropolis of Athens—that matchless statue more than seventy feet in height, whose casque and spear of burnished brass glittered above all the temples and high places of the city, and engaged the constant gaze of the mariner on the near Ægean; guiding his onward course, it was still ever beyond his reach. Like the Athena Promachos to the ancient Attic voyager, so stands the kiun-tsz’ of Confucius among the ideal men of pagan moralists. The immeasurable influence in after-ages of the character thus portrayed proves how lofty was his own standard, and the national conscience has ever since assented to the justice of the portrait.
From the duty, honor, and obedience owed by a child to his parents, he proceeds to inculcate the obligations of wives to their husbands, subjects to their prince, and ministers to their king, together with all the obligations arising from the various social relations. Political morality must be founded on private rectitude, and the beginning of all real advance was, in his opinion, comprised in nosce teipsum. It cannot be denied that among much that is commendable there are a few exceptionable dogmas among his tenets, and Dr. Legge, as has already been seen, reflects severely on his disregard of truth in the Chun Tsiu and in his lifetime. Yet compared with the precepts of Grecian and Roman sages, the general tendency of his writings is good, while in adaptation to the society in which he lived, and their eminently practical character, they exceed those of western philosophers. He did not deal much in sublime and unattainable descriptions of virtue, but rather taught how the common intercourse of life was to be maintained—how children should conduct themselves toward their parents, when a man should enter on office, when to marry, etc., etc., which, although they may seem somewhat trifling to us, were probably well calculated for the times and people among whom he lived.[325]