"There were four things," his disciples tell us, "from which the Master was entirely free. He had no foregone conclusions, no arbitrary predeterminations, no obstinacy, and no egoism" (Lun Yu, ix. 4). And his conduct is entirely in harmony with this statement. It is as a learner, rather than a teacher, that he regards himself. "The Master said, 'When I walk along with two others, they may serve me as my teachers. I will select their good qualities, and follow them; their bad qualities, and avoid them'" (Ibid., vii. 21). Or again: "The sage and the man of perfect virtue, how dare I rank myself with them? It may simply be said of me, that I strive to become such without satiety, and teach others without weariness" (Ibid., vii. 33). "In letters I am perhaps equal to other men, but the character of the superior man, carrying out in his conduct what he professes, is what I have not yet attained to" (Ibid., vii. 32).
Notwithstanding this modesty, there are traces—few indeed, but not obscure—of that conviction of a peculiar mission which all great prophets have entertained, and without which even Confucius would scarcely have been ranked among them. The most distinct of these is the following passage:—"The Master was put in fear in K'wang. He said, 'After the death of king Wan, was not the cause of truth lodged here in me? If Heaven had wished to let this cause of truth perish, then I, a future mortal, should not have got such a relation to that cause. While Heaven does not let the cause of truth perish, what can the people of K'wang do to me?'" (Lun Yu, ix. 5). These remarkable words would be conclusive, if they stood alone. But they do not stand alone. In another place we find him thus lamenting the pain of being generally misunderstood, which is apt to be so keenly felt by exalted and sensitive natures. "The Master said, 'Alas! there is no one that knows me.' Tse-kung said, 'What do you mean by thus saying—that no one knows you?' The Master replied, 'I do not murmur against Heaven. I do not grumble against men. My studies lie low, and my penetration rises high. But there is Heaven;—that knows me!'" (Ibid., xiv. 37). Men might reject his labors and despise his teaching, but he would complain neither against Heaven nor against them. If he was not known by men, he was known by Heaven, and that was enough. On another occasion, "the Master said, 'Heaven produced the virtue that is in me, Hwan T'uy—what can he do to me?'"[12]
These passages are the more remarkable, because Confucius was not in the ordinary sense a believer in God. That is, he never, throughout his instructions, says a single word implying acknowledgment of a personal Deity; a Creator of the world; a Being whom we are bound to worship as the author of our lives and the ruler of our destinies. He has even been suspected of omitting from his edition of the Shoo-king and the She-king everything that could support the comparatively theistic doctrine of his contemporary, Laò-tsé (By V. von Strauss, T. T. K., p. xxxviii). That his high respect for antiquity would have permitted such a procedure is, to say the least, very improbable; and Dr. Legge is no doubt right in acquitting him of any willful suppression of, or addition to, the ancient articles of Chinese faith (C. C., vol. i. Prolegomena, p. 99). For our present purpose it is enough to note that he avoided all discussion on the higher problems of religion; and contented himself with speaking, and that but rarely, of a vague, and hardly personal Being which he called Heaven. Thus, in a book attributed (perhaps erroneously) to his grandson, he is reported as saying, "Sincerity is the very way of Heaven" (Chung Yung, xx. 18). Of king Woo and the duke of Chow, two ancient worthies, he says: "By the ceremonies of the sacrifices to Heaven and Earth they served God" (where he seems to distinguish between Heaven and God, whom I believe he never mentions but here); "and by the ceremonies of the ancestral temple they sacrificed to their ancestors. He who understands the ceremonies of the sacrifices to Heaven and Earth, and the meaning of the several sacrifices to ancestors, would find the government of a kingdom as easy as to look into his palm" (Ibid., xix. 6). Elsewhere, he remarks that "he who is greatly virtuous will be sure to receive the appointment of heaven" (Ibid., xvii. 5). Again: "Heaven, in the production of things, is surely bountiful to them, according to their qualities" (Ibid., xvii. 3). Nothing very definite can be gathered from these passages, as to his opinions concerning the nature of the power of which he spoke thus obscurely. Yet it would be rash to find fault with him on that account. His language may have been, and in all probability was, the correct expression of his feelings. His mind was not of the dogmatic type; and if he does not teach his disciples any very intelligible principles concerning spiritual matters, it is simply because he is honestly conscious of having none to teach.
There are, indeed, indications which might be taken to imply the existence of an esoteric doctrine. "To those," he says, "whose talents are above mediocrity, the highest subjects may be announced. To those who are below mediocrity, the highest subjects may not be announced" (Lun Yu, vi. 19). We are further told that Tsze-kung said, "the Master's personal displays of his principles, and ordinary descriptions of them may be heard. His discourses about man's nature, and the way of Heaven, cannot be heard" (Ibid., v. 12). This last passage appears to mean that they were not open to the indiscriminate multitude, nor perhaps to all of the disciples. But we may reasonably suppose that the intimate friends who recorded his sayings were considered by him to be above mediocrity, and were the depositaries of all he had to tell them on religious matters.
Yet this, little as it was, may not always have been rightly understood. Once, for example, he says to a disciple, "Sin, my doctrine is that of an all-pervading unity." This is interpreted by the disciple (in the Master's absence) to mean only that his doctrine is "to be true to the principles of our nature, and the benevolent exercise of them to others" (Ibid., iv. 15). I can hardly believe that Confucius would have taught so simple a lesson under so obscure a figure; and it is possible that the reserve that he habitually practiced with regard to his religious faith may have prevented a fuller explanation. "The subjects on which the Master did not talk were—extraordinary things, feats of strength, disorder, and spiritual beings" (Lun Yu, vii. 20). And although, in the Doctrine of the Mean (a work which is perhaps less authentic than the Analects) we find him discoursing freely on spiritual beings, which, he says, "abundantly display the powers that belong to them" (Chung Yung, 16), there are portions of the Analects which confirm the impression that he did not readily venture into these extra-mundane regions. Heaven itself, he once pointed out to an over-curious disciple, preserves an unbroken silence (Lun Yu, xvii. 19). Interrogated "about serving the spirits of the dead," he gave this striking answer: "While you are not able to serve men, how can you serve their spirits?" And when "Ke Loo added, 'I venture to ask about death?' he was answered, 'While you do not know life, how can you know about death?'" (Ibid., xi. 11). Another instance of a similar reticence is presented by his conduct during an illness. "The Master being very sick, Tsze-Loo asked leave to pray for him. He said, 'May such a thing be done?' Tsze-Loo replied, 'It may. In the prayers it is said, Prayer has been made to the spirits of the upper and lower worlds.' The Master said, 'My praying has been for a long time'" (Ibid., vii. 34). I am unable to see "the satisfaction of Confucius with himself," which Dr. Legge discovers in this reply. To me it appears simply to indicate the devout attitude of his mind, which is evinced by many other passages in his conversation. In short, though we may complain of the indefinite character of the faith he taught, and wish that he had expressed himself more fully, there can scarcely be a doubt that Confucius had a deeply religious mind; and that he looked with awe and reverence upon that power which he called by the name of "Heaven," which controlled the progress of events, and would not suffer the cause of truth to perish altogether.
It is true, however, that he confined himself chiefly, and indeed almost entirely, to moral teaching. His main object undoubtedly was to inculcate upon his friends, and if possible to introduce among the people at large, those great principles of ethics which he thought would restore the virtue and well-being of ancient times. Those principles are aptly summarized in the following verse: "The duties of universal obligation are five, and the virtues wherewith they are practiced are three. The duties are those between sovereign and minister, between father and son, between husband and wife, between elder brother and younger, and those belonging to the intercourse of friends. Those five are the duties of universal obligation. Knowledge, magnanimity, and energy, these three are the virtues universally binding; and the means by which they carry the duties into practice is singleness" (Chung Yung, xx. 7). In the Analects, "Gravity, generosity of soul, sincerity, earnestness, and kindness," are said to constitute perfect virtue (Lun Yu, xvii. 6).
It is as an earnest and devoted teacher, both by example and by precept, of these and other virtues, that Confucius must be judged. And in order to assist the formation of such a judgment, let us take his doctrine of Reciprocity, to which I shall return in another place. "Tsze-kung asked, saying, 'Is there one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one's life?' The Master said, 'Is not Reciprocity such a word? What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others'" (Lun Yu, xv. 23). On a kindred topic he thus delivered his opinion: "Some one said, 'What do you say concerning the principle that injury should be recompensed with kindness?' The Master said, 'With what, then, will you recompense kindness? Recompense injury with justice, and recompense kindness with kindness'" (Ibid., xiv. 26).
If in the above sentence he may be thought to fall short of the highest elevation, there are some among his apothegms, the point and excellence of which have, perhaps, never been surpassed. Take for instance these:—"The superior man is catholic and no partizan. The mean man is a partizan and not catholic." "Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous" (Ibid., ii. 14, 15). Or these:—"I will not be afflicted at men's not knowing me; I will be afflicted that I do not know men" (Ibid., i. 16). "A scholar, whose mind is set on truth, and who is ashamed of bad clothes and bad food, is not fit to be discoursed with" (Ibid., iv. 9). "The superior man is affable, but not adulatory; the mean is adulatory, but not affable" (Ibid., xiii. 23). "Where the solid qualities are in excess of accomplishments, we have rusticity; where the accomplishments are in excess of the solid qualities, we have the manners of a clerk. When the accomplishments and solid qualities are equally blended, we then have the man of complete virtue" (Lun Yu, vi. 16). Lastly, I will quote one which, with a slight change of terms, might have emanated from the pen of Thomas Carlyle: "There are three things of which the superior man stands in awe:—He stands in awe of the ordinances of heaven; he stands in awe of great men; he stands in awe of the words of sages. The mean man does not know the ordinances of heaven, and consequently does not stand in awe of them. He is disrespectful to great men. He makes sport of the words of sages" (Ibid., xvi. 8).
These, and various other recorded sayings, go far to explain, if not to justify, the unbounded admiration of his faithful follower, Tsze-kung: "Our Master cannot be attained to, just in the same way as the heavens cannot be gone up to by the steps of a stair. Were our Master in the position of the prince of a State, or the chief of a family, we should find verified the description which has been given of a sage's rule:—he would plant the people, and forthwith they would be established; he would lead them on, and forthwith they would follow him; he would make them happy, and forthwith multitudes would resort to his dominions; he would stimulate them, and forthwith they would be harmonious. While he lived, he would be glorious. When he died, he would be bitterly lamented. How is it possible for him to be attained to?" (Ibid., xix. 25.)