SHEN-TZŬ (MULE-LITTER) FORDING A STREAM (see p. [17]).
I cannot hope that these remarks will re-establish Confucius's reputation as a lover of truth in the minds of those who wish for proselytising purposes to convince the Chinese that their sage was a grievous sinner. Such persons will doubtless in any case continue to hold that the Chinese as a people are untruthful, and that whether or not the untruthfulness is a legacy left them by Confucius it is a vice which only Christianity can extirpate. This question of Chinese untruthfulness we have already considered,[273] and a few words are all that is necessary here.
Persons who believe that the untruthfulness of the Chinese (presuming that it exists) is due to their "heathenism" and that truth is a typically or exclusively Christian virtue may have some difficulty in proving the justice of their view. "We have proof in the Bible," as Herbert Spencer remarks, "that apart from the lying which constituted false witness, and was to the injury of a neighbour, there was among the Hebrews but little reprobation of lying."[274] He goes on to admit, very properly, that in the writings of the Hebrew prophets and in parts of the New Testament lying is strongly condemned. Missionaries often say that the Chinese will never become a truthful people until they become a Christian people. If truthfulness had been an unknown virtue until Christianity appeared, one might perhaps be unable to question the accuracy of this statement. But what does Herodotus, writing in the fourth century B.C., tell us about the Persians of his day? "They educate their children, beginning at five years old and going on till twenty, in three things only, in riding, in shooting, and in speaking the truth ... and the most disgraceful thing in their estimation is to tell a lie."[275]
And would not most of us trust the word of Socrates, if we had the chance, as fully as we would trust the word of an archbishop? If truthfulness is a characteristically Christian virtue, how was it that in the Merovingian period "oaths taken by rulers, even with their hands on the altar, were forthwith broken"?[276] And what are we to say of the alleged Jesuitical doctrine that the end justifies the means, or about that immoral dogma of the Decretals (surely just as bad as Confucius's supposed doctrine regarding forced oaths): Juramentum contra utilitatem ecclesiasticam praestitum non tenet?
There are non-Christian peoples in southern India to-day of whom it has been said that they are characterised by "complete truthfulness. They do not know how to tell a lie"; in central India certain aborigines are described as "the most truthful of beings."[277] But the list might be indefinitely extended. There are numerous races in the world among whom truth is held in the highest honour, and as many others who appear to regard a skilful liar as a specially clever fellow. There is certainly very little reason to believe that truth is a monopoly of the Christian or that the "heathen" is necessarily a liar.[278]
The average Englishman or American does not always find that his pious acquaintances are the most truthful:[279] indeed in many cases he will prefer to trust the word of a man who from the Church's point of view is a notorious sinner but who happens at the same time to be a gentleman. It is of course easy to declare that a Christian who tells a lie cannot be a true Christian. It is equally easy and equally just to assert that the native of China who tells a lie cannot be a true Confucian.
If in Weihaiwei as elsewhere in rural China the influence of Confucius is to be traced not in temples and religious or commemorative ceremonial but in the customs, manners and character of the people, it is clear that a description of the Confucianism of this corner of the Empire would involve a repetition of much that has been already set forth at length in the course of the foregoing pages. But there is a feature of Confucianism that so far has been treated less thoroughly than it deserves, although it constitutes by far the most important element in the religious life of the people. This is the cult of Ancestors.