[In the following essay, Hosie offers a biographical sketch of Confucius.]

In the year 551 b.c. Confucius was born in the city of Ch‘ü Fu, which lies in the hilly part of that province of north-east China which we know to-day as Shantung. The Empire was divided into many warring States, some little more than a township with its suburbs: tradition has it that these ‘states’ numbered 124 shortly before the Sage's birth and a nominal 72 during his life. The ‘states’ clustered about the basin of the Yellow River and were the birthplace of Chinese culture and political identity: while the Yangtse, the greatest river of the China we visualize to-day, was little known. The population probably did not exceed 13 millions, against the 400 millions of to-day. The language, though intrinsically the same, was much stronger in final gutturals, labials, and dentals, and would not now be understood. These earlier Chinese, however, were already long acquainted with the arts of civilization and were thus sharply differentiated from the tribes of the northwest—by their bronzes, pottery, cultivated clothing such as furs, linen, silks, and possibly woollen or felt materials, their houses being of brick or rammed clay; and tiled roofs were in existence. Chairs had not been invented; so we read that the Master, Confucius, would not sit on his ‘mat’ unless it were straight. Books were cumbrous, being made from separate slips of bamboo; and we read that he thrice wore out the leathern thongs which bound together his copy of the I Ching or Book of Changes, a curious and difficult collection of astrological and semi-transcendental maxims, which still attracts and puzzles the students of Chinese literature.

The most ancient life of Confucius is the dubious ‘Family Sayings’. One of his ancestors was a man of learning whose son, an officer of talent and honour, was murdered by a powerful minister who carried off his beautiful wife. She strangled herself, and he only obtained her corpse. The family were living in the State of Sung; but, owing to the undying enmity caused by the outrage, three generations later the K‘ung family moved to the State of Lu, one of them becoming governor of the town where Confucius's grandfather was born. Confucius's father was noted for his physical strength and courage. In an attack on a city, the enemy enticed his men within the open gateway and were lowering the portcullis to entrap them, when he, by a stupendous effort, caught hold of it and supported it till the last of his men had escaped. At seventy, after nine daughters had been born to him by his first wife, and a crippled son by a concubine, this hardy old man took unto himself yet another, a young maiden, as wife. She bore him this most famous son, calling him ‘Ch‘iu’ because of the noble proportions of his forehead. In The Analects, he refers to himself several times as ‘Ch‘iu’; and again as Chung Ni, his other cognomen. But he is mostly spoken of by his family surname of K‘ung, which has been latinized for us in K‘ung-fu-tzŭ, or Confucius, meaning K‘ung the Philosopher.

It is the character and sayings of the child of this marriage in that age of confusion and turmoil and in the limited China of nearly 2,500 years ago which during the centuries have been the guiding star of Chinese character. Nor would any to-day be so bold as to claim that he has surpassed him, either in life or ideal: for Confucius set before himself, with admirable singleness of purpose, to live as befits the Man of Virtue; and right nobly he carried it out, and suffered, too, in particular for his ideals of government of the people. Great words were ever upon his lips: sincerity, modesty, magnanimity, conscientiousness, courage, courtesy, respect for others. Wisdom such as this, even though chanted by rote as at last came to happen, given into the ears of succeeding generations of China's young men, could not fail to leave its mark, and is a tremendous inheritance. Chinese people exhibit, even to our uninstructed and critical Western eyes, a ripeness and education of manners perceptibly not of recent growth.

Once when Fan Ch‘ih, a disciple, asked about Virtue, the Master said: ‘In private life be courteous, in handling public business be serious, with all men be sincere. Even though you go among barbarians, you may not relinquish these virtues!’

Legends concerning the birth of Confucius have grown, the chief being that a spirit appeared to his mother which said, ‘You shall bear a son, a sage and you, must bring him forth in a hollow mulberry tree’. While she was carrying him, five old men, the spirits of the ‘Five Planets’, led before her an animal, shaped like a cow, covered with dragon's scales and with one horn like the unicorn: the sacred lin, which only appears at the advent of a sage. A similar beast, with a broken leg, was caught a couple of years before the Sage's death. Confucius went to see it and burst into tears, realizing that it predicted his own death. The piece of ribbon his mother had attached at his birth to its horn was still there, it is said.

When she told her husband about the prediction of the hollow mulberry tree, he informed her that a cave of that name existed not far away: and there she gave birth to her son, a spring bubbling up forthwith for his first bath and then dying away. ‘The child’, so run the Chinese stories, ‘was of an extraordinary appearance, with a mouth like the sea, ox lips, a dragon's back’, and the top of his head prominent. This sounds neither handsome nor attractive to us; but in point of fact, though pictures of Confucius are rare and cannot be considered genuine, the oldest show us a man with the broad strong equable face of the countryman of North China to-day. He wears a handsome high cap with an ornament in it and fringe; his tunic is folded with care, for he liked to be handsome in his dress. Under the fringe his large dark lustrous eyes are humorous, kind and thoughtful, and he wears a pleasing half-smile. His ears are always shown as very large, for large ears are to the Chinese a sign of sagacity. He has the thin elegant beard of the Chinese gentleman. He was taller than the average and must have had a good physique, for he walked, drove, and rode long leagues when travelling from state to state with his disciples, suffering hunger better than they did. On one occasion their food failed and the disciples were so ill they could not stand. Even Tzŭ Lu, the Bold, the former soldier, grumbled, and asked:

‘Does a man of the higher order also have to suffer want?’

‘The superior man bears want unshaken,’ replied the Master, ‘the inferior man in want becomes demoralized.’

Confucius also was a sportsman; he liked archery and he fished, but ‘never with a net; and when shooting he did not aim at a resting bird’. At 19 he was married, in Chinese fashion, to a lady from the State of Sung. Their son, K‘ung Li, was born the following year 531 b.c., but he is known by his other name, Po Yü, in The Analects, meaning The Carp, because the Duke of Lu, under whom Confucius was then serving, sent a present of a carp at the birth. It must be admitted that Confucius showed no sort of favouritism or perceptible affection towards his son who became a disciple too, beyond advising him to study the Odes and the Rules of Ceremony when once they met in a hall, as another disciple, Ch‘ên K‘ang, elicited by questioning Po Yü. There is a tradition that, some twenty years later, Confucius had to divorce his wife, after he had begun his exile: but in the Li Chi or Record of Rites, the account of the manner in which Po Yü, the son, bewailed his mother's death in 485 b.c., makes this tradition seem doubtful. Nevertheless, it is apparent, even in The Analects, that the son of his spirit, whom he calls by his surname Hui and whom we know as Yen Hui, was dearer to him than any son of his body. Yen Hui's virtue lay in putting into practice Confucius's teaching. This evidence of human affection in Confucius's character, however, attracts us, as does his constant sympathy with mourners. He once even ordered Tzŭ Kung to unyoke one of the horses from the carriage and present it to the family of a former host as a contribution towards the funeral expenses. Tzŭ Kung objected; but the Master replied, ‘I dislike the thought of my tears not being followed by practical sympathy.’ In his old age, a pestilence fell upon his village, and he ‘put on his Court robes and stood on the eastern steps’, sharing the sacrificial procession and the anxieties of his fellows.

Already at the age of 22, his fame as a student had attracted to his side a number of followers, and he entered upon his career as founder and teacher of a school. It is a remarkable coincidence that in this same era Socrates was drawing pupils to himself in Greece, and that just as his gracious-spirited disciple Plato followed, so Confucius's brilliant disciple, Mencius, later expanded the Master's teachings with great illumination. One might also compare the position of Confucius in Chinese culture with that of Moses in Jewish eyes; as one who gave the laws of Right Living. Confucius himself, with deep humility, refused to be considered an original thinker. He called himself a ‘transmitter’, declaring that his philosophy was based on the wisdom of the ancients, whom, as in The Analects, he constantly quotes. For him Right Living meant essentially the harmonizing by the Man of Virtue of his own personality into the social order, and work for its progress and his own. His method is to look constantly and modestly at the good example of parents and elders, then at the ancient wisdom of the past, and then to respect the ministers of state and the prince. His theory was that if a prince set his ministers a good example, they would do the same by the people, and all the land would follow virtue and peace. In short, he believed in the infectious power of good: but with him it started at the top of the social tree, and not with the fishermen and carpenters. When the minister Chi K‘ang Tzŭ asked his opinion on good government, the Master responded:

‘If your aspirations are for good, Sir, the people will be good. The moral character of those in high position is the breeze, the character of those below is the grass. When the grass has the breeze upon it, it assuredly bends.’

The West has so long accepted the rather cynical dictum that a nation receives the government it deserves, that this entirely opposite view of the school of Confucius may well receive thought.

In 529 b.c. his mother died, and Confucius removed his father's body from its temporary interment to bury it with his mother's. The mound being four feet high over the tomb, he left the final details to his disciples and set off homewards. A violent storm came which partly broke down the mound, and his disciples arrived home late and had to explain the reason. He burst into tears, crying that they did not build such poor mounds ‘in olden times’. He had built this high mound, he explained, because he was ‘a man of the north, south, east, and west’, meaning that destiny might cause him to travel far in any direction from the resting-place of his parents. He kept the full three years mourning. One of the disciples, the cynic and sceptic Tsai Wo, who did not always please him, once asked whether one year's mourning for parents was not enough.

‘Would you feel at ease, then, in eating good rice and wearing fine clothes?’ asked the Master.

‘I should,’ was the reply.

‘If you would feel at ease, then do so,’ rejoined Confucius.

After Tsai Wo had gone, he exclaimed at his lack of feeling, asserting that ‘only when a child is three years old does it leave its parents’ arms’, and the period of mourning should be three years also. Confucius, however, could realize the duties of parents to children. When he became Chief Justice in Lu, he formed a habit of consulting those present at a case as to their opinion of it, and deciding according to the best opinion offered—a species of early consultation of a jury. On one occasion a father brought his refractory son for a punishment involving the death penalty. Confucius put both in prison and subsequently released both. On being remonstrated with by his prince, he replied:

‘When superiors fail in their duty, and yet propose to have their inferiors put to death, this is not right. This father has not taught his son to be filial.’

In the year 523 b.c. music began to play a large part in the cultivation of his spirit, though the instruments of his day would seem crude indeed to us. Both poetry and song were included; specially the composition of pieces for state occasions. The noted musician Hsiang came to Lu and taught Confucius. There are references in The Analects to his courteously helping the ‘bandmaster’ to his seat, rather against the disciples' pride. But the bandmasters, like the musicians of to-day in China, were usually blind. Music represented to his mind an effort of the spirit to interpret the harmony of the universe, which, according to his idea, could particularly be exemplified in the harmonious government of a state. He fulminated against the ‘modern’ light emotional music, and, like Plato, preferred the austere Doric strain of the ancients. When once asked about the administration of a state, he warned his interlocutor to ‘avoid specious men, and the songs of Chêng’, the modern music.

‘I hate the way in which purple robs red of its lustre: I hate the way the airs of Chêng pervert correct music: and I hate the way in which sharp tongues overthrow both states and families!’

A few paragraphs in The Analects are not very intelligible to the Western reader, yet the events to which they refer are known to any scholar in China. One such praises a bandmaster Chih who migrated to Ch‘i, while others of the Emperor's musicians who performed at each offering of his daily meals—the drummer and the player on the ‘stone chimes’—migrated as far as an island in the sea. The Chinese reader realizes they are being praised because they left a licentious Court rather than debase their sacrificial art. Music affected Confucius profoundly. He heard the Shao music, with its appropriate stately posturings and dances, which interpreted The Accession to the Throne; and for three months afterwards, he says in The Analects, he was unconscious of the taste of meat. ‘I did not imagine that Music had reached such perfection!’

In 518 b.c. a powerful minister of Lu, Mêng I by name, gave orders on his death-bed that his son should be sent to study under Confucius. The advent of this young noble, with a relative, also a cadet of high birth, gave immediate prestige to the school of Confucius, and his fame grew. He was now 33. In The Analects he gives, towards the end of his life, a short account of his mental and spiritual progression.

The Master said: 1. ‘At fifteen I set my mind upon wisdom. 2. At thirty I stood firm. 3. At forty I was free from doubts. 4. At fifty I understood the laws of Heaven. 5. At sixty my ear was still docile. 6. At seventy I could follow the desires of my heart without transgressing the right.’

It was about 518 b.c. also that Confucius received the great pleasure through these new disciples of a visit to the capital, which was then at Loyang, in the present province of Honan. Deeply interested in the imperial and temple rites, the ancient music and ritual, he met those who could inform him thereon. He visited the grounds of the temples to Heaven and to Earth, and was greatly pleased with ‘a metal statue of a man with three clasps on his mouth, and his back covered with an enjoyable homily on the duty of keeping a watch upon his lips’, says Professor Legge! His chief wish was to meet Laotzŭ, the mystic philosopher, a very old man, his post being Keeper of the Imperial Archives. It is not quite certain, but probable, that the two met, and they seem to have talked freely. It is Ssŭ-ma Ch‘ien, the great historian, who, in a famous passage, gives the account. As he avowedly preferred Laotzŭ to Confucius, he may be somewhat prejudiced. Confucius seems to have praised the past sages in his usual way.

‘Those whom you talk about are dead,’ said Laotzŭ, ‘and their bones are mouldered to dust; only their words remain. … Put away your proud air and many desires, your insinuating habit and wild will. These are of no advantage to you. This is all I have to tell you.’

Confucius is made to say concerning Laotzŭ:

‘I know how birds can fly, how fishes swim, and how animals can be snared. But the runner may be snared, the swimmer may be hooked, and the flyer shot by the arrow. But there is the dragon! I cannot tell how he mounts on the wind through the clouds, and rises to heaven. To-day I have seen Laotzŭ, and can only compare him to the dragon!’

These two schools of thought have continued to sway Chinese minds ever since; and indeed Western thinkers face the same problem. Laotzŭ's school, versed in the induction of trance and the escape of the spirit from fleshly bonds through breathing, something after the manner of Yoga in India, is the antithesis of the Confucianist who feel deeply the call to serve in this present life. Through all his subsequent wanderings, Confucius and his disciples were criticized by men who, following the way of Laotzŭ, turned hermit, and concerned themselves only to till a plot of land for bare sustenance. They accused him of talking to please people, of ‘perching here and perching there’, when driven to exile. One of them tried to seduce Tzŭ Lu, suggesting that it was useless attempting to stem the swelling torrents of destruction into which the world was rushing.

‘As for you, instead of following a leader who flees from one to another, had you not better follow those who flee the world entirely?’

And he fell to raking in his seed without more ado. When Tzŭ Lu reported it, the Master replied:

‘I cannot herd with birds and beasts, and if I may not associate with mankind, with whom am I to associate? Did right rule prevail in the world, I should not be taking part in reforming it.’

He was wont to say that his knowledge was not intuitive but resulted from hard work and mental application. The coming of Buddhism to China five hundred years later reinforced the ascetics and mystics: after which for centuries the Confucian and the Buddhist philosophies often clashed, but sometimes intermingled. There have been famous Confucianists who were also Buddhist, and others who attacked Buddhism with wit and scepticism. Confucius himself evidently tried the esoteric way, but his practical spirit made nothing of it.

‘I have spent the whole day without food and the whole night without sleep in order to meditate. It was of no use. It is better to learn!’

Confucius had no need to adopt the methods of others: indeed his own political and philosophical teaching drew large numbers of listeners and followers. One tradition has it that three thousand came during the years of his success to inquire of him. But in 517 b.c. his Duke, Chao of Lu, asserted himself against the three powerful chieftains who had kept him in tutelage, taxed his revenues, and used him as figurehead. Unfortunately his revolt failed, and he had to flee, and seven years later died in exile. Confucius also left Lu for a neighbouring State whose duke would have offered him control of a district but was dissuaded by a jealous minister who considered Confucius a visionary. Eight years later Confucius returned to Lu where another representative of the ducal house, Ting, had been made chief of the state by the chieftains, although they themselves were now exploited by turbulent underlings. These chieftains are mentioned at times in The Analects, e.g. as assuming sacrificial and ducal rites to which they had no claim. In 501 b.c. Duke Ting appointed Confucius governor of Chung Tu district, and in a year, history says, he had produced a marvellous change for good. ‘A thing dropped in the streets was not picked up.’ Confucius became Chief of the Office of Works, then Chief Justice; he dismantled rebel strongholds, and took away power from the feudal lords, and exalted the sovereign. ‘A transforming government went abroad. Dishonesty and dissoluteness hid their heads. Loyalty and good faith became the characteristics of the men, and chastity and docility that of the women. Confucius became the idol of the people, and flew in songs through their mouths.’¹ At 56 he was Prime Minister. His wonderful achievements roused the fear and envy of a neighbour, the Prince of Ch‘i, whose minister had already tried to abduct Duke Ting and would have done, but for the alertness of Confucius. The prince now tried other tactics. Under pretext of an alliance, he sent Duke Ting a present of eighty picked singing-girls, or courtesans, and a hundred and twenty thoroughbred horses, to tempt him from attention to state. At first these were lodged outside the city, Confucius strenuously opposing their acceptance. The minister Chi, however, went and looked upon them, and painted their attractions so enticingly that the Duke succumbed and took the women into his harem. For three days no state business was held, the great sacrifice soon afterwards was curtailed, and the Duke failed to send the sacrificial flesh to his ministers. Confucius was vanquished. He went out, with many a backward look, deep grief, and ‘resisting footsteps’ as his disciple Mencius puts it, to an exile which lasted thirteen years. His disciple, Tzŭ Lu, led him first to the capital of the State of Wei, where his brother-in-law was host. Duke Ling there assigned him an annual income of sixty thousand measures of grain; but he was more dissipated than Duke Ting, and after ten months Confucius left for the State of Ch‘ên. There were dangers on the road and they were attacked, and finally he returned to Wei, where, however, his chief obstruction was Nan-Tzŭ, the beautiful but wanton wife of the Duke, behind whom he had to drive out in the carriage. ‘Lust in front, virtue behind’, the people commented. He left for Sung State, passing through Ts‘ao where Huan T‘ui, the brother of one of his disciples, tried to kill him by having a tree pulled down on him and his disciples. The band of exiles hardly escaped, and fled in different directions. Tzŭ Kung, a devoted disciple, amused his Master later by repeating the description given by a peasant when they were inquiring his whereabouts, who ended that Confucius had looked as ‘disconsolate as the dog of a broken-down family!’ ‘How like! How like!’ said Confucius with laughter; for he certainly did not lack a sense of humour. Indeed, on reading The Analects, one is struck by Confucius's good cheer. Chinese scholars for many centuries have considered him too sacrosanct to be amusing; but it is to be hoped that the present generation may now be allowed to savour the salt of his wit. He talked very freely with this faithful band of followers and spared his tongue not at all in his desire to disciple them to perfection. He pokes fun at the rashness of Tzŭ Lu, the former soldier, whose surname was Yu. Once, in jest, he said, ‘My doctrines make no progress. I will get me upon a raft and float away upon the sea, and take Yu as companion’. Tzŭ Lu was preening himself upon this when Confucius added, ‘Yu is fonder of daring than I; he also exercises no discretion!’ ‘It is only the very wisest and the very stupidest who never change’, he said on another occasion. Tsai Wo, the sceptic, put this problem: if someone said, ‘there is a man in the well, the altruist, he supposed, would go after him’. Confucius outdid him in realism, and demurred that even an altruist would ‘first make certain there really was a man down the well!’ Tzŭ Kung once said piously, ‘What I do not wish others to do to me, that also I wish not to do to them.’ ‘Tz‘ŭ!’ said the Master, ‘that is a point to which you have not attained!’ A certain man was recommended to him as ‘thinking thrice before he took any action’. Confucius tersely replied, ‘Twice is sufficient!’ ‘Of all people,’ he says at one point, ‘maids and servants are hardest to keep in your house. If you are friendly with them, they lose their deference; if you are reserved with them, they resent it.’ He hated the greedy: ‘how hard is the case of the man who stuffs himself with food the livelong day’, and suggested he would be better occupied playing checkers! One lazy disciple shocked him by sleeping all day. Another thought education was not an essential to a ruler, and Confucius sharply reduced his reasoning to an absurdity, ending, ‘I hate glib people’. His disciple, Jan Ch‘iu, by whose aid he was recalled eventually from exile, showed himself later as rapacious and militant, and Confucius old as he was then, lion-like lifted his head and said, ‘You may beat the drums and attack him. He is no disciple of mine!’ One of the most famous stories concerning Confucius is how, on the lonely side of Mt. T‘ai, he heard the mourning wail of a woman. He sent Tzŭ Lu to ask why she sat there. ‘My husband's father was killed here by a tiger, my husband also, and now my son has met the same fate.’ ‘Then why,’ Confucius asked, ‘do you dwell in so dreadful a place?’

‘Because here,’ she answered, ‘there is no oppressive ruler.’

‘Scholars,’ he said to his disciples; ‘remember this: oppressive rule is more cruel than a tiger.’

His ideas of good government were deeply absorbed by his best disciples. Duke Ai once said to Yu Jo, known later as the philosopher Yu Tzŭ and who was so like Confucius that it was proposed he be put in his place after his death: ‘It is a year of dearth, and we have not revenue enough for our needs.’ Yu Jo suggested that the taxes be diminished to one-tenth instead of the customary two-tenths. ‘Why, with two-tenths I have still not enough, how could I manage with one-tenth?’ ‘If the people enjoy plenty,’ was the rejoinder, ‘with whom will the Prince share want? But if the people are in want, with whom will the Prince share plenty?’ The Prince, it seems, must share his people's want as well as plenty.

Rarely have we record of an action that would not perhaps receive our approbation. From Sung Confucius went to Chên, staying there three years with the Warden of the Wall, till the State of Wu began to make war on Chên and Confucius had to leave for Wei. At the frontier he was seized at P‘u by an officer in rebellion against the Duke of Wei, who only liberated Confucius on his taking a solemn oath not to proceed to Wei. Regaining his freedom, however, the Master continued to Wei, and being asked by his disciples whether it was right to break such an oath, replied: ‘It was a forced oath. The spirits do not hear such.’ On another occasion, he acted with deliberate insincerity. Ju Pei, an old scholar who had misbehaved, wished to see the Master. Confucius excused himself from receiving him ‘on the ground of sickness; but when his messenger had gone out of the door, he took up his harpsichord and began to sing, so that Ju Pei might hear!’

The long thirteen years of exile found him journeying from state to state but always firm in spirit. Duke Ling of Wei, to whose service Confucius returned now and again for default of any other, would receive him well enough but did not use his services. Confucius remarked to Jan Ch‘iu on the growth of the population. ‘What next should be done for them,’ asked Jan Ch‘iu. ‘Enrich them,’ was the reply. ‘And what next?’ continued Jan Ch‘iu. ‘Educate them,’ was the Master's famous reply. He once sighed, ‘Were a prince to employ me, in a twelvemonth something could be done, but in three years the work could be completed!’ An official from the State of Chên invited him to office there, and Confucius was tempted; but the official was in rebellion against his chief, and honest Tzŭ Lu protested successfully against his Master's acceptance. The peasants for whose benefit in truth he was undergoing this exile, were not grateful; and they criticized him in their rough way as the ‘man who knows he cannot succeed and keeps on trying’. The recluses and hermits, sneering, told him it was all useless; while state after state put aside his counsels of peace and care for the people. Only this faithful band, lovers of wisdom, walked with him. Once we have a picture of them together in The Analects, when his heart swelled with gratification and happiness as he looked upon them; at Min Tzŭ standing by his side, looking so calm in reserved strength, Tzŭ Lu so full of energy, and Jan Ch‘iu and Tzŭ Kung so frank and fearless. He foretold that Tzŭ Lu would not die in his bed: neither did he, for he chose death rather than forsake in peril his feudal Chief.

In 492 b.c. the way seemed open for his return to his native state. The dancing-girls and the horses had brought Duke Ting to the untimely end desired by their donor, and he had been dead three years: the minister Chi Huan, who had tempted the duke, had also died, but in remorse, and had charged his successor to recall Confucius. This official, Chi K‘ang Tzŭ, however, sent instead for the disciple Jan Ch‘iu, not too satisfactory a pupil. Yet he did so well that the minister inquired who had taught him the ways of government. Confucius, meanwhile, longing to return, left Duke Ling of Wei who was only inquiring of him how to make war, moved on to Ch‘en and then to Ts‘ai, to-day the provinces of Hupeh and Hunan. There he nearly starved through the machinations of officials. Yet he kept ever cheerful, playing on his lute and singing. For eight more years he thus wandered, sometimes welcomed but never given the chance to serve: even back to Wei where Duke Ling had died and his wife had been murdered by her stepson and all was rebellion.

At last, when Confucius was 68, he was recalled home, b.c. 484. To the end, as Chu Hsi, or Chu Tzŭ, the first great commentator on The Analects puts it, ‘Lu failed to make use of him, nor did he any longer seek to enter office’. Chi K‘ang Tzŭ, the minister, who had recalled him, frequently consulted him concerning the art of government in general, but not to much effect. The next few years Confucius devoted to editing and writing an Introduction to the Book of History; to arranging the Book of Rites and Ceremonies; to classifying the Odes; and to setting in order the music, both of the temple and the court, for ceremonial purposes. Probably at this time, too, he supplied his disciple Tzêng Tzŭ with the material for his Classic of Filial Piety: and he studied for his own interest the I Ching or Book of Changes. Soon after his return, his son Po Yü died, leaving a grandson Chi (or Tzŭ Ssŭ), who became a pupil of the philosopher and disciple Tsêng Tzŭ, and it was from this school Mêng Tzŭ, known to us as Mencius, the greatest follower, obtained his inspiration. Three of these are responsible for the canon of the Four Books which have been the basis of Chinese education till the present era and the formative power of the Chinese character: Tsêng Tzŭ for the Great Learning, Tzŭ Ssŭ for the Doctrine of the Mean (or Way of Balanced Living), and Mencius for the Classic bearing his name, while The Analects are the fourth. The beloved disciple, Yen Yüan (or Hui, as the Master usually calls him, his personal name) died the year after Confucius's son, and his exceeding grief caused his other disciples to remonstrate. Confucius had hoped his mantle would fall upon Yen Hui. Once he remarked, as if for his own warning: ‘Hui was not one who gave me any assistance. He was invariably satisfied with whatever I said!’ Two years later, the impetuous Tzŭ Lu died also in battle.

In the fifth year after his return from his long exile Confucius, aged 73, rose early one morning, with his hands clasped as customarily behind his back, and dragging his staff, and moving out of the door of the house, he crooned from one of the Odes which he had so much loved during life:

‘The great mountain must crumble;
The strong beam must break;
And the wise man wither away like a plant.’

Tzŭ Kung heard and sadly asked: ‘If the great mountain shall crumble, to whom shall I look up?’ Next Confucius spoke to him concerning the position of his own corpse after death. It was to be placed between the two house pillars, as if the dead were both host and guest; and he ordained the last sacrifices and rites. He then said, thinking as ever about his lifework for the state:

          ‘No intelligent monarch arises; there is
not one in the empire that will make me his
master. My time has come to die.’

He returned to his couch and a week later he died on the fourth day of the eleventh month, 479 b.c.

When Tzŭ Lu once asked about man's duty to the spirits of the departed, Confucius replied: ‘While still unable to do your duty to the living, how can you do your duty to the dead?’ When Tzŭ Lu ventured to ask about death, the Master replied, ‘Not understanding life, how can you understand death?’ The Master years before had once been seriously ill, and Tzŭ Lu asked leave to have prayers offered. ‘Is there authority for such a step?’ Confucius asked. ‘There is,’ Tzŭ Lu replied; ‘In the litanies for the dead it is said, “We pray to you, spirits celestial and terrestrial”.’ The Master answered, ‘My praying has been for long.’ He meant that his life of service and faith in the right was a prayer Heaven hears. On another occasion, when speaking of his unpopularity, he says: ‘But does not Heaven know me?’ And again, ‘He who sins against Heaven has no where left for prayer.’

After his death began his glorification, which at first was offered his disciples; but they refused to take his place. Said Tzŭ Kung of the Master:

‘He is the sun, the moon, which there is no way of climbing over, and though a man desire to cut himself off from them, what harm does he do to the sun or moon? … The impossibility of equalling our Master is like the impossibility of scaling a ladder and ascending to the skies.’

Confucius died in the family home in Ch‘ü Fu, Shantung province, and his descendants were later raised to be dukes, so that there is a Duke Kung to-day. People still make pilgrimages to the sacred grove. There is no shrine: but there is still his well: and there is a stele, or stone, raised up, to which emperors have made obeisance, on which is written, ‘Confucius, The Primal Sage’. A large figure of the Sage is seated in the beautiful old temple: and his disciples are ranged on either side. In 195 b.c. the founder of the Han dynasty offered an ox at his tomb and since then, till the emergence of the Chinese republic in 1911, annual sacrifices were made to Confucius. Each school-child raised his clasped hands in the morning on arrival to the little tablet with Confucius's name on a shelf in a corner of the room. Since 1911 his following has waned and waxed, and waned again. Some years ago the Four Books were relegated to university study and are no longer the main preoccupation of Chinese schools. But times change. There is now a return of interest to the great heritage of China's past treasury of wisdom. We of the West may well ponder also, on the deep steadiness and cheerfulness of his spirit, on his faith in the Power that makes for Righteousness—even to the point of accepting bitter and long exile for its sake.

THE ANALECTS

The Analects, or Conversations of Confucius, were probably compiled after his death by followers of his two disciples Tsêng and Yu, referred to as ‘philosophers’ in the opening paragraphs. They are, in the main, his discourses with his disciples and inquirers, though some are sayings also of the disciples. The Emperor Ch‘in Shih Huang, founding a new dynasty 213 b.c., ordered that all books should be burnt and all scholars buried alive, so that History might begin with himself. But his reign was short: and a few precious relics escaped. An ancient copy of The Analects was discovered about 150 b.c. in a cranny of a wall of the house which had been occupied by Confucius himself, and another copy was found in a neighbouring state. Meanwhile the form of Chinese handwriting had altered from the antique ‘tadpole’ style of Confucian days to the present square characters, and the ancient books were indecipherable save to a few scholars. One such was the head of Confucius's own clan, and the king of the day ordered him to decipher his great ancestor's work: which he did. There are a few discrepancies between the two versions, but these are unimportant except to the scholar, and the Chinese text used for the present book is the one generally accepted.

There have been many schools of thought and commentators on The Analects: the best-known being Chu Hsi, or Chu Tzŭ, whose voluminous writings in the twelfth century a.d. were the crown of Chinese scholarship. The Analects were first translated into Latin for the benefit of non-Chinese readers in 1687, by a Roman Catholic missionary: and later re-translated by Italian and French Fathers. In 1861 Dr. Legge, a Protestant missionary to China, later the first to hold the Chair of Chinese Language and Literature at Oxford University, published his magnificent translation of the whole of the Chinese Classics, including The Analects. In 1910 Professor Soothill, feeling that a more modern interpretation was desirable, published his translation of The Analects, together with the Chinese text, and full notes, comparing all the translations. He also was a Protestant missionary for many years in China and later succeeded to Dr. Legge's Chair at Oxford. It is his, this last translation, without the Chinese texts and with very abridged Notes, which the reader has before him in the present volume.

Professor Soothill died in 1935. It has been a great joy for me, his daughter, to have had the opportunity these last few months, while working on this book, to be again in the company of my father's mind in this interpretation of Confucius. At the same time, no one who walks also in spirit with his mighty protagonist can fail to be deeply impressed by the grandeur of such a Master. It has been a searching privilege to follow him with Tzŭ Kung and Yen Hui and Tsêng Tzŭ into exile, for the sake of good government: to hear him poke a little fun at Tzŭ Lu's over-boldness: ‘to ramble under the trees by the Rain Altar’, with him as an unseen, very humble, ‘outside pupil’, in the Chinese term; and to listen to this great scholar and gentleman discourse on life and social responsibilities, on Sincerity and Virtue.

Note

1. Legge's Introduction.