Yet it must not be supposed that there is no such thing as Confucianism in China outside the ranks of the official classes. Confucian ideals of life and conduct, Confucian doctrines of the relations between rulers and ruled, Confucian views of the reciprocal rights and duties of parents and children, friends, neighbours, strangers, the Confucian sanction of the cult of Ancestors, these are all strong living forces in the China of to-day. "Wherever Chinamen go," says Dr. H. A. Giles, "they carry with them in their hearts the two leading features of Confucianism, the patriarchal system and ancestral worship."[252] The influx of new light from the West is doubtless bringing about a change in the traditional attitude of the Chinese towards the person of the teacher whom their forefathers have revered for more than two thousand years; but though the Confucian cult conceivably at some future time may be formally disestablished and the Confucian temples turned into technical colleges, it is to be hoped for the sake of China that many centuries will elapse before Confucianism as a moral force, as a guide of life, fades away from the hearts and minds of the people. Confucianism is not a mere code of rules that can be established or abrogated as the fancy takes any prominent statesman who happens to have the ear of the throne; it has intertwined itself with the very roots of the tree of Chinese life, and if that venerable tree, in spite of a mutilated branch or two, is still very far from hopeless decay it is to Confucianism that much of its strength and vigour is due.[253]
Perhaps no teacher of antiquity has suffered more disastrously at the hands of most of his interpreters and translators than has Confucius. Even his Chinese commentators have not always been successful; it is then little to be wondered at that European students, often lacking both a complete equipment of Chinese scholarship and a power of sympathetic insight into alien modes of thought, and above all possessed by an intensely strong bias against "heathendom" and "heathen" thinkers, have failed again and again to give their fellow-countrymen an adequate account either of the Confucian system as a whole or of the personal character of the Master himself.
Confucius, as one of his most recent English translators reminds us, was one of the most open-minded of men, and approached no subject with "foregone conclusions"; but the whole attitude of the Englishman who is still regarded as the great expounder of Confucianism to the English-speaking world (Dr. Legge) "bespoke one comprehensive and fatal foregone conclusion—the conviction that it must at every point prove inferior to Christianity."[254]
Now what is the impression that Confucianism gives to a European student who is not only a good Chinese scholar and therefore able to dispense with translations, but is also entirely free from religious prejudice?
"The moral teaching of Confucius," says the writer just quoted, "is absolutely the purest and least open to the charge of selfishness of any in the world.... 'Virtue for virtue's sake' is the maxim which, if not enunciated by him in so many words, was evidently the corner-stone of his ethics and the mainspring of his own career.... Virtue resting on anything but its own basis would not have seemed to him virtue in the true sense at all, but simply another name for prudence, foresight, or cunning."[255]
I have italicised certain words in this quotation for a reason which will soon be apparent. As is well known, Confucianism and ancestor-worship, as well as Buddhism and Taoism, all established themselves in Japan. Confucianism is said to have entered Japan in the sixth century of our era, though it remained in a stationary position, somewhat inferior in influence to Buddhism, for about a thousand years. But during the last three hundred years at least, "the developed Confucian philosophy," says an authority on Japanese religion,[256]" has been the creed of a majority of the educated men of Japan." Later on he refers to "the prevalence of the Confucian ethics and their universal acceptance by the people of Japan."[257] Of course the Confucian system underwent certain changes in its new island home, as Dr. Griffis is careful to point out,—especially in the direction of emphasising loyalty to sovereign and overlord: but it still remained recognisable Confucianism. Mr. P. Vivian, in a highly interesting volume,[258] mentions the fact that "Confucianism is an agnostic ethical system which the educated classes of Japan have adopted for centuries, and its splendid results are just now much in evidence." Later on he quotes an exceedingly significant and important statement made by the Rev. Henry Scott Jeffreys, a missionary in Japan. "After seven years' residence among this people I wish to place on record my humble testimony to their native virtues.... They love virtue for its own sake, and not from fear of punishment or hope of reward." Could higher praise than this be given to any people on earth? He goes on, "The conversion of this people to the Christian faith is a most complex and perplexing problem, not because they are so bad but because they are so good."[259]
I have italicised the words that are of special interest when considered in connection with the statement already quoted from Mr. Lionel Giles. It is true that the praise given to the Japanese is a great deal too high: there is no nation, whether Christian or non-Christian, that deserves such praise. At the same time most Europeans might find it no easy task to prove to the satisfaction of an intelligent visitor from another planet that the Christian nations are, on the whole, more virtuous than the people of Japan. The European advocate would, of course, lay stress on the alleged weakness of Japanese commercial morality, and perhaps with very good cause. But there is no valid reason for supposing that the Japanese, without Christianity, cannot and will not amend their ways in this respect, and in any case commercial immorality receives no more justification from Confucian than it does from Christian ethics.[260]