Lion and Dragon in Northern China

by Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston

But Japan is not China: and if Confucianism be such a good thing, exclaims the wondering European, how is it that China is in a state of decay, that Chinese officials are corrupt, that the population is sodden with opium, that the country is only now, after centuries of sloth and stagnation, beginning to show an interest in Western civilisation and modern science? The real condition of China, or at least of the Chinese people, is perhaps not so rotten as it is sometimes believed to be, in spite of the grave political and social dangers that at present lie ahead. But waiving this point and admitting that reforms are coming not a day too soon, let us consider one or two of the most obvious causes to which the present state of China may be attributed. China was for many centuries so easily supreme in her own quarter of the globe that a strenuous life became for her unnecessary. Conflict is a law of nature, but owing to peculiar circumstances China as a nation became to a great extent temporarily exempt from that law.[261] She sank into inactivity because it was not necessary for her, as it was and is for the great nations of Europe, to be continually sharpening her wits against those of her neighbours, or to be for ever engaged in the Sisyphean task of redressing "the balance of power." Do the nations of modern Europe sufficiently realise to what extent they owe their progress and civilisation and even their mechanical inventions to the fact that they have all been pitted against each other in a more or less equal struggle for existence in which none has ever succeeded in establishing a supremacy over all the rest? Had powerful and united non-Chinese kingdoms established themselves in the Indo-Chinese peninsula, in India itself, in the plains and mountains of Tibet and Mongolia, in Korea and in mediæval Japan,—kingdoms capable of contending with China on fairly level terms, competent to defend themselves against her attacks yet not strong enough to overcome her,—can it seriously be supposed that China would have been politically corrupt, unwarlike and unprogressive to-day?

That unhappy bird the great auk ceased to make use of its wings—perhaps owing to a fatal love for fish—and thereby incurred the punishment that inexorable Nature provides for those who neglect to exercise the faculties she provides them with. Somewhat in the same way China, fatally set at liberty from the invigorating impetus of competition, seems to have lost the use of those powers and qualities which ages ago carried her to the apex of the Asiatic world. Unlike the great auk, however, China has not yet become extinct, nor indeed is extinction likely to be her fate. To take an illustration of a very different kind, is it not the case that many a successful and energetic man of business is only saved from yielding to the insidious habit of taking afternoon naps by the incessant ringing of his telephone-bell? For ages China could count on undisturbed slumber whenever she required it—and it must be admitted that she seemed to require it long and often. The telephone-bell has now been ringing her up continuously for some little time; she ignored it at first, or perhaps it only gave a new colour to her dreams, or occasionally turned them into nightmares; but now she has risen, slowly and unwillingly it may be, and has put the receiver to her ear. She has taken down the messages sent her, and she is beginning to understand them; and among other things she is realising that afternoon slumbers for her are joys of the past.

If China thinks, or Europe persuades her into the belief, that her backward position among the great Powers of the world is due to Confucianism, she will be doing a great wrong to the memory of one of her greatest sons and a greater wrong to herself.[262] It would be just as reasonable to make the Founder of Christianity, one of the most gracious and most pitiful of men, responsible for the injustice and cruelty of the Crusades or for the frightful atrocities practised in Europe on the bodies of heretics, or for such priestly and monkish abuses as the sale of "pardons" and the traffic in saintly relics and fragments of the "True Cross"; indeed it would perhaps be rather more reasonable, for the mediæval popes and monks at least professed to act in the name of their Lord, whereas it is not in the name of Confucius that offices in China are bought and sold or that Chinese magistrates take bribes and "squeezes," or that the naval and military defences of the country have been allowed to fall into decay. Does any one in Europe now suppose that if Christ had returned to earth in the Middle Ages He would have accepted a seat beside the Grand Inquisitors and joined them in sentencing innocent men and women "to the thumbscrew and the stake, for the glory of the Lord"? Or that if He had appeared in England in 1646 He would have supported the Act which made it a capital offence to deny the truth of any of the dogmas that the English Church of that period chose to consider essential?

This is how a papal legate in 1209 wrote to Innocent III. after a victorious crusade against the Albigenses: "Our troops, sparing neither sex nor age, put to the sword nearly twenty thousand; splendid deeds were accomplished in the overthrow of the enemy, the whole city was sacked and burned by a divine revenge marvellous fierce." A pope may have taken this doughty champion of the Church to his bosom, but is it conceivable that the Carpenter of Nazareth would have greeted this monster, whose sword was reeking with human blood, with the welcoming words, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant"? If we refuse, as we well may, to lay on Jesus the least tittle of responsibility for the terrible crimes perpetrated in Europe for many consecutive centuries in the name of the Christian religion, would it not be becoming on our part to hesitate before we ascribe the faults and disasters of the Chinese people and their Government wholly or even partially to their faith in the teachings of Confucius?

I once heard a kind-hearted Englishman say that he could forgive China all her faults except the torturing of prisoners in the law-courts and in the gaols. Torture in China—which is very slowly becoming obsolete—has very naturally made Europeans shudder with horror: but where does Confucius give countenance to torture? And after all, the extent of China's crime is only this, that she has not abolished the practice of torture quite so early as the nations of Western Europe and America. Perhaps the missionaries and others who have pointed out to the Chinese the enormity of their crime in permitting torture have sometimes omitted to state that only in comparatively recent times have we ourselves become so merciful as to forbid the practice. Without dwelling on the abominable punishments devised for heretical offenders in every country in Europe, it is as well to remember that torture was continually inflicted in England during the Tudor reigns,[263] and also under the Stuarts. In Scotland it was long a recognised part of criminal procedure, and was not finally abolished in that country till the eighteenth century.[264] The Most High and Mighty Prince whose name adorns the front page of our English Bibles, in one memorable case directed the application, if necessary, of "the most severe" tortures, and expressed the devout wish that the Almighty would "speed the good work."

When confronted with so lofty an ethical system as that taught by Confucius, European writers who wish to prove the justice of their contention that "it must at every point prove inferior to Christianity" are naturally driven to make the utmost of any passage in the Chinese classics that appears to reveal something of the Chinese sage's moral imperfections. Just as an anti-foreign Chinese commentator on the Christian religion might utilise certain texts in the Old Testament to show that the Christian God was neither just nor merciful, and certain texts in the New Testament to show that Jesus of Nazareth shared the superstitions of his age and was sometimes lacking in self-control, so European expounders of Confucianism have seized upon a few passages in the Confucian canon to prove to their own satisfaction that the great Sage of China did not always speak the truth. The passages are three in number. In one we are told that a certain brave man was commended by the Master for his absence of boastfulness, because though he nobly brought up the rear during a retreat, he said, "It is not courage that makes me last, it is my horse that won't gallop fast enough."[265] As courage really was the cause of his conduct, Prof. Legge and those who think with him take the view that the man's own explanation of what he had done was untruthful and that Confucius by awarding him praise condoned a lie. Considering that Confucius's only remark on the subject was that the man was no braggart, probably few of us except sanctimonious pedants would say that either the sage or his hero was guilty of an act or a word that was in any way discreditable.

In another famous passage it is narrated that "A man who wanted to see Confucius called on him. Confucius, not wishing to see him, sent to say he was sick. When the servant with the message went to the door, Confucius took up his musical instrument and sang aloud purposely to let the visitor hear it and know that he was not really sick."[266] It is interesting to note that in citing this little story as evidence of Confucius's lack of veracity, Prof. Legge omits to quote the second part of the passage,[267] though it ought to be obvious to the most casual reader that it was only for the sake of the remark about the music that the story was preserved in the Confucian canon at all. So far from proving that Confucius could tell a lie, it goes to show that even in small matters of everyday social intercourse Confucius's nature was superior to all the little "white lies" and deceptions that are and no doubt always have been continually practised in "Society." Probably in his day, as in our own, it was considered more polite to an unwelcome visitor to plead indisposition or absence from home as an excuse for not admitting him than to send him the blunt message, "You are not wanted: go away!" Confucius, however, wishing to make it quite clear to his visitor that the plea of sickness was merely a social subterfuge and was not intended to deceive (as a lie must surely be), took up his musical instrument and played it in his visitor's hearing.