"Thou didst think of my great grandfather,
[Seeing him, as it were] ascending and descending in the court.
I, the little child,[44]
Day and night will be so reverent.
"Oh ye great kings,
As your successor, I will strive not to forget you."[45]
Subdivision 7.—The Ch'un Ts'ëw.
According to Chinese tradition, the Ch'un Ts'ëw, or Spring and Autumn, was the production of Confucius himself; not indeed his original composition, but a compilation made by him from preëxisting sources. The title of Ch'un Ts'ëw was not of his own making. It was the name already in use for the annals of the several States. The annals were arranged under the four seasons of each year, and then two of the seasons—Spring and Autumn—were used as an abbreviated term for all the four. And so strictly is this principle of parceling out the annals of each year under the several seasons adhered to in the work, that even when there is no event to be recorded we have such entries as these: "It was summer, the fourth month." "It was winter, the tenth month."
The classical Ch'un Ts'ëw was compiled from the Ch'un Ts'ëw of the State of Loo. It is even doubtful whether Confucius did anything more than copy what he found in the annals of that country. Dr. Legge evidently inclines to the belief that he altered nothing. At any rate, the work can only be regarded as very particularly his own. More than this, it is questionable whether the text we have at present is that of the original Ch'un Ts'ëw at all. This classic is indeed said to have been recovered in the Han dynasty after the destruction of the book. But there are circumstances which may well make us hesitate before we accept the Chinese account of this recovery as a fact. Mang, who had the best opportunities of knowing what his master was believed to have written, if not what he actually had written, speaks of the Ch'un Ts'ëw in terms wholly inapplicable to the work before us. He asserts expressly that it was composed by him because right principles had dwindled away, because unseemly language and unrighteous deeds were common, and he attributes to its completion the result that "rebellious ministers and villainous sons were struck with terror." Now we may allow what limits we please for the exaggeration natural to a disciple when speaking of the labors of a revered master. But can we believe that Mang, a man whose own teaching proves him to have been a moderate and sensible thinker, would have spoken thus of a compilation which from beginning to end contains absolutely no moral principles whatever? Yet such is the case with the "Spring and Autumn" as we possess it. There is not in it the faintest glimmer of an ethical judgment on the historical events which it records. A birth, an eclipse, a fall of snow, a plague of insects, a murder, a battle, the death of a ruler, are all chronicled in the same dry, lifeless, unvarying style. Nowhere would it be possible for an unprejudiced critic to detect the opinions of the compiler, or to gather from his words that he viewed a virtuous action with more favor than an abominable crime. Such being the case, I hesitate, notwithstanding the high authority of Dr. Legge, to accept the genuineness of this work as beyond cavil.
It has in fact been questioned in China, not indeed on very valid grounds, by a scholar whose letter he has translated in his Prolegomena, and he himself candidly acknowledges the extreme difficulty of reconciling the character of our present text with the statement of Mang. But he considers the external testimony to the recovery of the book sufficiently weighty to dispose of this and other difficulties. Yet, without disputing the strength of the grounds on which this conclusion rests, we may still permit ourselves to entertain a modest doubt whether this compilation was really the handiwork of such a man as we know Confucius to have been, and that doubt will be strengthened when we recall the common tendency of the popular mind to connect the authorship of standard works with names of high repute. And the bare existence of such a doubt will compel us to suspend our judgment on the very serious charges of misrepresentation and falsehood which Dr. Legge has brought against Confucius in his capacity of historian. If the actual Ch'un Ts'ëw be shown to be identical with that edited by Confucius, and if he simply adopted, without alteration, or with very trivial alteration, the labors of his predecessors, the gravity of these charges will be very considerably diminished. For we know not but what some feeling of respect for that which he found already recorded may have stayed his hand from revision and improvement.