SOURCE: Creel, H. G. “Confucianism and Western Democracy.” In Confucius: The Man and the Myth, pp. 254-78. New York: The John Day Company, 1949.

[In the following essay, Creel traces Thomas Jefferson's ideas and the ideals of the French Revolution to the writings of Confucius.]

In the Western world democratic institutions made their most rapid and dramatic gains in connection with the American and French Revolutions. It is no doubt true that these revolutions were not “caused” by the philosophic movement known as the Enlightenment; but it is true that this new pattern of thought determined, in very considerable measure, the direction in which men moved once the revolutions had given them freedom of action.

The philosophy of the Enlightenment has some very remarkable similarities to Confucianism. Since it developed during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and this was precisely the period at which Confucianism came to be effectively known in Europe, it has inevitably been asked whether Chinese philosophy did not suggest some of these European ideas. To give a judicious answer is not easy. If one is especially interested in China, he tends to note all influences from that source and pay less attention to any others. In an impressively documented volume on The Influence of Chinese Thought on European Culture published in 1940, a Chinese scholar went so far as to declare that “Chinese philosophy was without doubt the basic cause of the French Revolution.” Others, contemptuous of both China and the revolution, have sought to discredit the latter by associating it with the former. Less than forty years after the revolution Macaulay, belaboring the “French academicians” of the eighteenth century, asserted that in their circle stories about China “which ought not to have imposed on an old nurse, were gravely laid down as foundations of political theories by eminent philosophers.” Another enemy of the revolution, the brilliant French critic and social philosopher Ferdinand Brunetière (1849-1906), blamed much that he did not like in French democracy on the Chinese. Of the French system of education, Brunetière wrote: “There is nothing more Chinese! The Revolution organized the system, but its principles were laid down by ‘philosophy,’ and by those philosophers who admired and panegyrized China. Everything to competitive examinations and nothing to favor, but above all nothing to heredity! their envious spirit has been seduced by that conception of the mandarinate.”

On the other hand, some students of the French Revolution seem almost completely to ignore the fact that Chinese ideas played any role at all in its background. Georges Lefebvre, who has been called “the most distinguished living authority on the period of the Revolution,” found it possible to publish, in 1939, an entire volume on the background of the revolution which made no mention of China whatever. Quite naturally, he paid primary attention to social, economic, and political conditions within France itself. At the same time, however, he warned against “forgetting that there is no true revolutionary spirit without the idealism which alone inspires sacrifice,” and attributed to the philosophy of the eighteenth century a large share in the forging of that idealism. He wrote:

From the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries philosophers proposed that man … throw off the fetters that held down his rise on earth; they urged him to become the master of nature and make his kind the true ruler of creation. Different though such doctrine seemed from that of the Church, the two were at one in recognizing the eminent dignity of the human person and commanding respect for it, in attributing to man certain natural and imprescriptible rights and in assigning to the authority of the state no other purpose than to protect these rights and to help the individual make himself worthy of them.

However correct this may be, it is also true (1) that in certain very important respects the thinking of the Enlightenment moved to positions much more similar to those of Confucianism than to those of the contemporary Church, and (2) that this fact was recognized and widely proclaimed by leading figures of the Enlightenment.

At the time this was not only well known but even notorious. When Christian Wolff, in an oration, said of the Chinese that “in the Art of Governing, this Nation has ever surpassed all others without exception,” he is reported to have been ordered to leave the University of Halle within twenty-four hours “under pain of immediate death.” The result was to cause his speech to be read with enthusiasm as far away as England. Much the same thing had been said before and would be said again by many. Leibniz wrote of the Chinese: “Even if we are equal to them in the productive arts, and if we surpass them in the theoretical sciences, it is certainly true (I am almost ashamed to admit) that they surpass us in practical philosophy, by which I mean the rules of ethics and politics which have been devised for the conduct and benefit of human life.” Voltaire asserted that “the constitution of their empire is in truth the best that there is in the world … the only one in which a governor of a province is punished if, when he quits his post, he is not acclaimed by the people … four thousand years ago, when we did not know how to read, they knew everything essentially useful of which we boast today.” In England Eustace Budgell wrote in 1731 that

the great point in which all Authors, who have wrote of the Chinese, do generally agree that they excel all other People in, is the Art of Government. Even the French … are obliged to own ingenuously that the Chinese do excel all other nations in the Art of Government, and can never sufficiently admire those political maxims collected, methodized and commented upon by the great Confucius.

When François Quesnay first set forth the political principles of his very influential Physiocratic doctrine, he did so in an exposition of the government of China, as he understood it. In the introduction to his final section, concerned with “the natural principles in accord with which prosperous governments are constituted,” he stated that it was merely “a systematic account of the Chinese doctrine, which deserves to be taken as a model for all states.”

If these things are sometimes forgotten, a part of the reason lies in the peculiar circumstances which surrounded the introduction of Confucianism to Europe, and its rise to and fall from popularity. Although travelers had told tales about China for centuries, most of them had learned very little about Chinese culture, and therefore could report little. It was different, however, with the Jesuit missionaries who, after the greatest difficulties and with superb ingenuity, gained access to China just before 1600 a.d. A learned order, the Jesuits used their learning to gain and hold a position in Chinese intellectual circles, and even in the imperial court itself. They served the emperors as astronomers (one of their number held the important office of vice-president of the Board of Astronomy), physicians, diplomats, and even casters of cannon. A few of them came to be intimate friends of emperors. They not only spoke Chinese but read and wrote it, and they came to have an intimate knowledge of China that many later scholars have cause to envy. They kept up a voluminous correspondence with members of their own order and with some of the most famous men of the day in Europe. Some of these letters were published as books and others became the basis on which books were written.

These letters, and the new information about China, became a sensation in Europe. Virgile Pinot has concluded, after a careful study, that in eighteenth-century France China “seems to have been more in favor than England itself,” despite the fact that this was also the century in France of “Anglomania.” By 1769 it could be written that “China is better known than some provinces of Europe itself”; indeed, it seems probable that literate Occidentals knew more about China in the eighteenth century than they do in the twentieth. Yet since most of this information came through the Jesuits it naturally bore the stamp of their interests, and many have insisted, from that day to this, that they deliberately falsified their accounts from ulterior motives. These accusations grew, to a large extent, out of the celebrated Rites Controversy. The Jesuits held that the ceremonies performed by Chinese in honor of their ancestors and Confucius were not worship, and might be tolerated; other Catholic orders opposed this stand. Ultimately the Jesuits found themselves in disfavor both with the Pope on the one hand and with the Chinese Emperor on the other.

Certainly it is true that the Jesuits sent glowing pictures of China to Europe. Even Voltaire, who defended the Jesuits on this score, admitted that they painted a too flattering picture of the Chinese emperors. It was also charged that, in describing Chinese philosophy and specifically Confucianism, the Jesuits did not give a true picture of these things as they were generally understood in China at that time.

It is perfectly true that the Confucianism which the Jesuits reported with such enthusiasm in their letters to Europe was not the Confucian orthodoxy that was commonly current in China in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. That orthodoxy, commonly called Neo-Confucianism, was a complex doctrine. It embodied many of the ideas of Confucius, but these were woven into an elaborate system of metaphysical philosophy that derived many of its elements from Buddhism. Confucius would not have understood it, and it would not have been received sympathetically in Europe by men like, for instance, Voltaire. Nor did it appeal to the Jesuit missionaries, who were men of keen and critical minds. Furthermore, they had their own system of metaphysics, and felt no need of another.

The more they studied the Confucian texts, however, the more they became convinced that this contemporary philosophy was not the same thing as the original Confucianism at all. Matteo Ricci, the great pioneer of the mission, made the observation that its metaphysics “seems to me to have been borrowed from the sect of idols [Buddhism] five hundred years ago.” As he delved further into the early texts, he said of this Neo-Confucianism, “This is not Confucius!”

His view sprang from sincere intellectual conviction. It also coincided with the need of the missionaries for a means of winning over Chinese intellectuals to Christianity. As they frequently did in other countries, the Jesuits in China exerted their best efforts toward converting members of the ruling group. These men were predominantly Confucian. Thus, a present-day Jesuit affirms, “It was necessary that they begin by breaking the intimate bond … which united Chu-hsiism [Neo-Confucianism] with the moral philosophy of Confucius.” They set about this task with great vigor and achieved considerable success; Hu Shih attests that they “won over a number of the most brilliant and serious-minded scholars of the age.” One of these converts, taxed with having deserted Confucianism, declared that he had not done so at all, but had rather found in Catholicism a doctrine much closer to the teachings of Confucius than the “distortions” of “later Confucians.” Father Intorcetta went so far as to affirm that if Confucius had lived in the seventeenth century “he would have been the first to become a Christian.”

The Jesuit attacks on Neo-Confucianism probably bore fruit in China beyond what was contemplated. It has been said that Ricci was the first to deny that Neo-Confucianism represented the genuine thought of the ancients. At any rate, it would seem that when he and other Jesuits began to propagate this opinion, it was not held widely (if at all) among Chinese scholars. The Jesuit contention became generally known, and was widely debated in Chinese intellectual circles. Subsequently, the proposition that Neo-Confucianism was not original Confucianism, but a distortion deriving much of its content from Buddhism, became a basic tenet of the important “school of Han learning”;¹ this school arose within a few decades after the death of Ricci. It also appears that it was considerably though indirectly indebted to the Jesuits for scientific method, both in general and in such specific fields as astronomy and linguistics. This “Han learning,” as Hu Shih has pointed out, “produced the age of scientific research in the humanistic and historical studies during the last three hundred years.” It was also an important factor in the intellectual background of Sun Yat-sen and other leaders of the Chinese Revolution. Thus, although the Jesuit missionaries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries did not succeed in converting all of China to Christianity, as they had hoped, they exerted an influence upon her culture that is altogether remarkable in view of their small numbers and the difficulties under which they worked.

In Europe, the effects of their activities as intermediaries between civilizations were likewise noteworthy. The Jesuits sent back detailed and often enthusiastic accounts of China, of Chinese thought, and especially of Confucius. They have often been accused of deliberately painting a picture that was too glowing. Perhaps some of them did. But it seems far more probable that this impression is derived from the fact that they talked most about what interested them most. They did, statements to the contrary notwithstanding, report the religious and magical practices of the day, sometimes at length.² That being done, they went on to speak of those things that aroused their enthusiasm, and especially of early Confucianism as it appeared in such works as the Analects and Mencius. Of the Classics Ricci wrote, “When we have carefully examined all these books, we have found very little which is contrary to the light of reason, and much that is in conformity with it; these books are not inferior to those of any of our philosophers.”

Some of the statements which the Jesuits intended to be derogatory did not appear so when they were received in European intellectual circles. When Ricci deplored the fact that the philosophy of Confucius lacked the supernatural element, it was not his intention that this should kindle greater interest in the sage, but that was the effect of such observations in Europe.

Thus it was their conception of an earlier and “purer” Confucianism which, for the most part, the Jesuits reported to Europe. We are not to suppose, of course, that they succeeded wholly in reconstructing the philosophy of Confucius; without a great deal of critical scholarship that was to come later, that would have been impossible. And certainly, many absurdities about Confucius became current in eighteenth-century Europe. Nevertheless, in the circumstances the Jesuits did remarkably well.

This is why Adolf Reichwein wrote, “The Enlightenment knew only the China of Confucius.” Striving to break the bonds of a metaphysical ethics and a feudal society, the philosophers of the Enlightenment “discovered, to their astonishment, that more than two thousand years ago in China … Confucius had thought the same thoughts in the same manner, and fought the same battles. They read in his book the words: ‘If a man make himself understood by his words, the end is attained.’ He, too, then had advocated clearness in verbal expression and, therefore, also clearness of logical thought generally. Thus Confucius became the patron saint of eighteenth-century Enlightenment.” To see how true this is we need only to turn to Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary where, in a eulogy of Confucius, the French philosopher wrote, “I have read his books with attention; I have made extracts from them; I have never found in them anything but the purest morality, without the slightest tinge of charlatanism.” Elsewhere Voltaire wrote: “The happiest period, and the one most worthy of respect which there has ever been on this earth, was the one which followed his [Confucius'] laws.”

The position of saint is a most difficult one, however, to maintain. And undoubtedly some of the Jesuits and other enthusiasts overdid things by exaggerating the degree to which the contemporary Chinese and the Chinese government were guided by “pure” Confucianism. For a variety of reasons there was scepticism in Europe from the beginning, and when Chinese culture was used to attack traditional European institutions, counterattack was inevitable. When Leibniz suggested that Chinese missionaries should be sent to Europe to teach “natural theology,” and Voltaire declared that in morality Europeans “ought to become the disciples” of the Chinese, it was natural that others should inquire whether the Chinese were in fact so moral after all.

They had little trouble finding testimony that they were not. Enemies of the Jesuits, and traders and other travelers less fortunate in their experiences with the Chinese, bore willing witness against them. On the basis of such testimony Fénelon, writing around 1700, called the Chinese “the most vain, superstitious, selfish, and lying people in the world.” And Montesquieu, in his Spirit of Laws which appeared in 1748, asserted that “our merchants are far from giving us any such accounts of the virtue [of the Chinese] so much talked of by the missionaries.”

If the missionaries were not reliable about the Chinese, why should one believe them about Confucius? As more and more information was received in Europe about the belief in divination and magic on the part of the masses and even of some scholars in China, it began to be suspected that the lofty philosophy of Confucius had been nothing more than an invention of the “wily Jesuits.” At best, all the accretions and corruptions of later Confucianism were now attributed to Confucius himself. Thus Diderot, in the article on Chinese philosophy which he wrote for the great Encyclopedia, sets forth a confusing array of these things and then, toward the end, gives a summary of material in the Analects; from the latter, he says, “one may see that the ethics of Confucius is much superior to his metaphysics and his physics.” The truth is, of course, that the bits from the Analects are the only part of his article that has any real connection with Confucius; the “metaphysics and physics” are the work of later times. But only the Jesuits knew enough to draw this distinction; and Diderot made it plain at the beginning of his article that he was no longer willing to trust them.

However, Voltaire was still writing and China was still in vogue. The crushing blow to its prestige came from the discrediting of its governmental system. Here its partisans had undoubtedly gone too far in their praise. The Jesuits naturally had an optimistic view of a government which had signally favored them; and indeed as compared with the governments of Europe at the time there was no doubt some justification for their description of its organization as “perfect and exact.” But the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were not the best in which to observe its virtues. They began with the corrupt and oppressive rule of late Ming times, continued with the Manchu conquest, and saw the Manchus establish their reign with peculiarly harsh repression. The Ch'ien Lung emperor, during whose reign Voltaire lauded the Chinese as an example of tolerance, was one of the greatest destroyers of literature (in the name of the suppression of “dangerous thought”) in all history.

Gradually these facts became known. In vain did Voltaire protest, against the assertions of critics like Montesquieu, that China was in fact not a “despotism” but only appeared to be so.³ Other champions of that country boldly declared that it was a despotism, but the most benevolent and constitutional of despotisms and therefore the best of governments. Leibniz, much earlier, had been attracted by his conception of the Chinese emperor as an enlightened despot. When Quesnay published his treatise on the political principles of Physiocracy he called it Despotism in China. It will be recalled that Quesnay was the physician of Mme. de Pompadour and later of Louis XV, which doubtless caused him to feel tolerant toward “benevolent despotism.” But others were not so, and as revolutionary sentiment grew China fell rapidly from general favor.

Let us recapitulate. Chinese philosophy was introduced to Europe by the Jesuits. They reported chiefly on what they considered best, the ideas of Confucius personally and the earliest Confucianism. Being rationalist in temper and tending in a democratic direction, this philosophy was hailed as a revolutionary gospel from another world. A little later, however, Europeans learned more about the later forms of Confucianism, which as we saw earlier were in part a perversion of that philosophy designed to make it serve the purposes of monarchic authority. Simultaneously it was emphasized that in fact the government of China, which had been so highly praised, had at least many of the characteristics of a despotism; indeed, some of its very champions hailed it as such. It was concluded that the virtues of Confucius and of Chinese government had alike been inventions of the Jesuits, perpetrated for purposes of propaganda. At this same time the Jesuit order became so thoroughly discredited that in 1773, after it had been expelled from one country after another, it was dissolved by the Pope. Disillusionment became complete; the “Chinese dream” was over. Never again in the West, since the end of the eighteenth century, has interest in China and esteem for that country risen so high.

This curious chain of events has caused many of those who trace the background of the French and American Revolutions completely to disregard the fact that Chinese ideas contributed to the growth of democratic philosophy. Alan F. Hattersley, in his Short History of Democracy, does recognize that new ideas derived from “Asiatic states of ancient civilization” played a role in the development of the ideals of “equality, charity and fraternity.” In general, however, even those who are well aware that China influenced the West during the eighteenth century do not emphasize this point. Since China is identified as a despotism, and Confucius with China, it is often supposed that his ideas could hardly have contributed to the growth of democracy.

Gustave Lanson, who has been called “the creator in France of the science of literary history,” made an elaborate analysis of the intellectual background of the French Revolution. While not denying that outside influences had made some contribution, he concluded that the revolutionary philosophy had been basically an indigenous development, the result of thought processes long under way in France, stimulated by current conditions in that country. Lanson named three French books, published around 1700, with which he said “there began the movement from which would proceed the political philosophy of the eighteenth century and the doctrines of the revolutionaries.” One of these was Fénelon's Télémaque.

This inclusion of Fénelon among the precursors of the revolution is very convenient for our investigation. For it happens that in his Dialogues of the Dead (which Lanson also cited as representing similar views) Fénelon vigorously attacked the philosophy of Confucius. From this work we may learn, then, what a hostilely inclined French intellectual believed the philosophy of Confucius to be, at the beginning of the eighteenth century. We can also compare the opinions of Fénelon with those of Confucius as Fénelon understood them, and see which appears to be closer to the philosophy of the revolution. Among the dialogues in this volume, which was published in 1700,⁴ Fénelon included an imaginary debate between Socrates and Confucius. Fénelon leaves the reader in no doubt as to his sympathies. He damns the Chinese roundly; clearly, Fénelon is talking through Socrates.

Socrates begins by denying the resemblance that is commonly alleged between himself and Confucius. “I have never,” Socrates declares, “thought of making the people into philosophers … I have abandoned the vulgar and corrupt to their errors, limiting myself to the instruction of a small number of disciples of cultivated spirit.”

Confucius replies courteously and says, “As for me, I have avoided subtlety in reasoning, limiting myself to sensible maxims for the practice of virtue among men.” “I have believed,” Socrates answers, “that one cannot establish true maxims without going back to first principles from which they can be proved …”

“But have you,” asks Confucius, “been able by means of those first principles to prevent divisions and disputes among your disciples?” No, Socrates tells him, and that fact has caused him to lose his hopes for the human race. For the most part nothing can be done with them. “Example and argument, instilled with the greatest art, have some effect only on a very small number of men who are better born than others. A general reform of a state thus appears to me to be impossible; that is the extent to which I am disillusioned with the human race.”

“For myself,” Confucius replies, “I have written and I have sent out my disciples, in the attempt to cause moral principles to prevail in every province of our empire.” To this Socrates answers Confucius that, being “of a royal house and having great authority in your nation, you were able to do many things not permitted to me, the son of an artisan.” In a long speech Socrates then develops his point that in general peoples who have accomplished much have owed this to good leadership. “But to be philosophical, to follow the beautiful and the good from persuasion alone, and from the true and free love of the beautiful and the good—this is what can never be diffused among a whole people; it is reserved to certain chosen souls whom heaven has seen fit to separate from the rest. The people in general are capable only of exercising certain virtues, in matters of custom and opinion, on the authority of those who have gained their confidence.” In the remainder of the dialogue Socrates argues, in great detail, that the Chinese are by no means so ancient or admirable a people as they have been represented.

If, as Lanson held, Fénelon (i.e., “Socrates”) was a precursor of the revolution, it is clear that he was still a long distance from “liberty, equality, fraternity.” Just as clearly, he believed that the philosophy of Confucius was much closer to these sentiments—in fact, altogether too close for his taste.

Lanson developed his thesis, that the philosophy of eighteenth-century France and the political principles underlying the revolution were basically indigenous developments, in two essays. In the first, while acknowledging that external influences (including those from China) played some part, he argued that “the movement which resulted in French rationalism in the eighteenth century … was the result of an inner travail which, beginning with the Renaissance, had been transforming the spirit of French society, and which suddenly became more noticeable and more rapid in the closing years of the seventeenth century.”

Thus, he says, a transformation came about in the years from 1680 to 1715 which had as its salient points these ideas: (1) The demand for clear and coherent thinking, together with attention to facts and experience, with no concession either to prejudice or to authority; one must seek the truth for one's self. (2) The sovereignty of conscience, independent of dogma; thus good men everywhere, regardless of race or religion, have essentially the same moral principles, and the individual may judge what is good or bad for himself; in general the good is “the golden mean.” (3) The good and the pleasant became identified; one should not seek to eliminate but merely to guide one's desires. The emphasis was on enjoying this world; other-worldly sanctions disappeared. (4) The good was found not, as later by Rousseau, in primitivity but only as a product of culture and civilization. (5) The philosophy of pleasure was enlarged to one of reciprocity, whereby one felt the need to make others happy in order to be happy himself. (6) The virtue of “charity” was replaced by that of “humanity.”

Lanson acknowledges that the new knowledge of China played some part in the development of the second of these ideas. For all of them, however, he seeks to find indigenous and logical explanations. In some cases these are not wholly convincing. The transition from egoism to altruism, for instance, does not in fact seem to be anything like so simple and almost inevitable a thing as it is here pictured.

Two facts are distinctly worthy of remark. In the first place, as the reader will have noted, in every one of these six respects French thought of the eighteenth century came to positions extraordinarily similar to those of Confucius in the Analects and of very early Confucianism. In the second place, the period of 1680 to 1715, in which Lanson dates this transformation, is precisely that in which this early Confucianism was effectively introduced to the French public. The first translation of any of the early Confucian works seems to have been published in 1662, and others followed in the succeeding decades.⁵ In 1685 a special party of learned French Jesuits bearing letters from Louis XIV was sent to China, from whence they and others who followed them kept up a voluminous correspondence with a number of the most eminent men in Europe; these letters formed the basis of a number of books published in the succeeding decades that made China, and Confucius, known as never before.

In his second essay Lanson stated that “between the dates of 1692 and 1723 there awoke, in the upper class of French society, a social conscience and a spirit of reform. There had been nothing of the sort before.” And he sought to show, without “pretending to underestimate foreign [i.e., British and American] influences,” that these things were to a large extent caused by current conditions in France. Though there is merit in his argument, the causes that he cites are sometimes inadequate to account for the effects. No doubt it is true that the spread of “a spirit of reform, of active zeal for the public welfare” was stimulated by the oppressive nature of the late years of the reign of Louis XIV. But that is somewhat beside the point. Our question is, why this particular sort of spirit at this particular time? Obviously it is not always called forth by the simple fact of oppression, in France or anywhere else.

Still less does it seem possible to agree with this statement: “The principle of equality was evolved, but from where? From the consideration of the unequal and oppressive assessment of poll-taxes.” Undoubtedly this was a factor. But the very fact that there was protest against unequal treatment implies that men felt themselves entitled to equal treatment, that is, felt themselves to be in some sense equal. It seems probable that the reasons for which they did so were far more complex than Lanson suggests. Among the forces tending in this direction were influences from the Reformation, from England, and from China. It was the idea of basic human equality which Occidentals had been most startled to find prevalent, as they believed, in China. They had been reporting this amazing fact to Europe for a century prior to 1692, the date which Lanson sets for the beginning of the awakening of a social conscience in France.

It is beyond the scope of this book to list the great number of scholars, philosophers, and statesmen in Germany, England, and France who were influenced by Chinese ideas during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This has been done by others.⁶ Nor can we consider in detail each of the resemblances which exist between cardinal principles of eighteenth-century philosophy and the philosophy of the French Revolution, on the one hand, and early Confucianism on the other. Such comparisons might easily fill a volume. The concept of natural law, so important in Europe, is very like the Confucian conception of the Way, as both Leibniz and Wolff recognized; it has been suggested that it was on this basis that Turgot, who was a minister of Louis XVI and whom we know to have been deeply interested in China, suggested to his royal master certain modifications in the operation of the French monarchy. Also common to eighteenth-century France and to China were the ideas that the proper end of government is the happiness of the people,⁷ and that government should be a cooperative rather than a competitive enterprise; even Montesquieu praised the government of China on this latter score, commenting, “This empire is formed on the plan of a government of a family.”

Since it is impossible even to summarize the evidence on all these points, let us consider only two principles that were fundamental to the French Revolution: first, the right of revolution itself; second, human equality.

The revolutionary National Convention declared, “When government violates the rights of the people, insurrection is for the people, and for every portion of the people, the most sacred of rights and the most indispensable of duties.” Although this was completely at variance with the political theory of medieval Europe it was not, of course, by any means the first European challenge to the older conceptions. This challenge must have been significantly reinforced by the discovery of Chinese political theory. For in China, which was widely proclaimed to be the best governed and most orderly of nations, the principle that in the face of oppression revolution is precisely “the most sacred of rights and the most indispensable of duties” had long been accepted as an axiom. It is implicit in the Analects and explicit in the Mencius.⁸ The fact that in China the danger of revolution was an everpresent deterrent to tyranny was early reported by the missionaries and was mentioned long before the revolution by a number of writers, as various as Quesnay at the court of Louis XV and Oliver Goldsmith in England. Montesquieu wrote that “the emperor of China … knows that if his empire be not just, he will be stript both of empire and life.”

The case of the principle of equality is also of interest. In 1789 the Assembly adopted a Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen; Article I states: “Men are born, and always continue, free and equal in respect of their rights. Civil distinctions, therefore, can be founded only in public utility.” The resemblance of these words to the preamble of the American Declaration of Independence has often been remarked. It is also worthy of note that a similar statement had been published in Paris at the early date of 1696, by the Jesuit Le Comte. He wrote that in China “nobility is never hereditary, neither is there any distinction between the qualities of people; saving what the offices which they execute makes.”

Harold J. Laski has written that “the French Revolution may be said to have contributed to democratic theory the insistence that the career must be opened to the talents, which was, whatever its limitations, a denial that birth or race or creed can bar the road to equality.” There is some doubt, however, about the originality of this contribution, since long before the revolution wide publicity had been given to the idea that in China offices were filled strictly on the basis of worth. Virgile Pinot has pointed out that “the admirers of China believed that they found there, and there only, a country where merit permitted one to attain to the highest dignities of the state, a country where each person was classed in the social hierarchy according to his merit, while neither the favor of the prince nor the advantages of birth could permit him to insinuate himself fraudulently into a place to which he was called neither by his virtues nor by his learning. The thing must have been rare or even non-existent in Europe, for all the missionaries, of whatever nationality they might be, celebrated in dithyrambic terms this marvelous Chinese hierarchy which was founded on nothing but merit.”

Such reports by the missionaries were made as early as 1602 and continued in unbroken sequence. In a widely read work published in 1735 Du Halde asserted that in China “a student, though the son of a peasant, has as much hope of arriving at the dignity of Viceroy, and even of Minister of State, as the children of the greatest persons of quality.”

These observations stirred wide interest. They were discussed in many books, including Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, published in 1621. Another Englishman, Eustace Budgell (who had been a contributor to the Tatler and the Spectator), proposed in 1731 that the Chinese practice be adopted in Britain. He wrote that he considered it a maxim “That every Post of Honour or Profit in the Commonwealth, ought to be made the reward of real Merit. If any Modern Politician should take it into his Head that this Maxim, however Excellent in it self, cannot possibly be observed in so large and populous a Kingdom as Great Britain; I beg leave to inform such a Politician, that at this very Time, this glorious Maxim is most strictly follow'd and observ'd in the Largest, the most Populous, and the best Govern'd Empire in all the World: I mean in China. … No man in China can be made a Mandarine, that is, a Gentleman, or is capable of any Post in the Government, who is not really a man of Parts and Learning.” In 1762 Oliver Goldsmith used this same argument as the basis of a bitter attack upon the hereditary aristocracy of Great Britain.

In France it was remarked by a number of writers, including Voltaire, Etienne de Silhouette who became Controller-General of France in 1759, Turgot who held the same position from 1774 to 1776, the royal ambassador Pierre Poivre, and Quesnay who founded the Physiocratic doctrines. In short, at the time when the French Revolution “contributed to democratic theory” the principle that men should be chosen for office purely on the basis of their individual character and attainments, it had been common knowledge for a very long time that this was the theory, at least, of government in China.

Are we to conclude, then, that the new knowledge of China was “the cause” of the French Revolution? Certainly not. The revolution was brought on by many factors, political, economic, social, and intellectual, an exhaustive inquiry into which would be out of place here. Our concern is not so much with the revolution as such, as with the spiritual revolution that gradually re-oriented the thinking of the entire Western world, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in the direction of democracy. It goes without saying that the new knowledge of Confucianism was only one of many factors which lay back of this spiritual revolution.

It was a factor, however, of which the importance has not been adequately recognized, nor sufficiently investigated. In Europe, and in France in particular, the whole pattern of thought became transformed during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and after the transformation it was in many respects similar to the thinking of Confucius. Neither the transformation nor the resemblances were superficial. It is perfectly clear that in part these resemblances are due to sheer coincidence, but it seems improbable that they are wholly so. To determine to what degree they are the result of influence by one culture upon the other will require careful research, of a sort which has not yet been carried out upon a sufficient scale. When it is, a new and significant chapter may be added to the biography of democracy.

Some indication of the kind of results which may come from such research is provided by an exceedingly interesting essay published in 1948 by Arthur O. Lovejoy, entitled “The Chinese Origin of a Romanticism.” It is a meticulously documented study of Chinese influence during the eighteenth century in a single field, aesthetics, in a single Western country, England. Lovejoy concludes that “a new canon of aesthetic excellence” was introduced from China, and says: “A turning-point in the history of modern taste was reached when the ideals of regularity, simplicity, uniformity, and easy logical intelligibility, were first openly impugned, when the assumption that true beauty is ‘geometrical’ ceased to be one to which ‘all consented, as to a Law of Nature.’ And in England, at all events, the rejection of this assumption seems, throughout most of the eighteenth century, to have been commonly recognized as initially due to the influence and the example of Chinese art.”

This function of Chinese ideas, the presenting of an alternative to the entrenched axioms of European thought, to which it had previously been alleged that all civilized men assented, had repercussions in other fields than art. It had a bearing on such basic questions as that of the value of human happiness. Gilbert Chinard has pointed out that “the whole Christian civilization had been built on the idea that happiness is neither desirable nor obtainable in this vale of tears and affliction.” Those who had protested against this were many, but in general they were lone voices, or small groups.

Then the discovery of the East opened to European eyes, as Voltaire graphically put it, “a new moral and physical universe.” In China they found a nation which claimed to be the most ancient in the world, and which indisputably possessed that least questionable of all credentials, prosperity,⁹ which in calm self-sufficiency regulated itself by principles which were in many respects the very opposite of those prevailing in Europe. Here happiness was not frowned upon, but was rather considered the highest end, not only of the individual but even of the state. Human equality was not denied; rather, those who reported on China asserted, it was the very basis of social and political theory.

Inevitably this “new universe” was appealed to by European nonconformists in support of heterodox notions. No longer could it be said that any practice which conflicted with European tradition “would not work” or “was not done.” Voltaire asserted with glee that “the same men who maintain, against the position of Bayle,¹⁰ that a society of atheists is impossible, assert at the same time that the oldest government in the world [the Chinese] is a society of atheists.” When defenders of the status quo declared that it would be subversive of good government and order to give political power, on the basis of merit alone, to men of no hereditary status, Budgell could now reply that “this glorious Maxim is most strictly follow'd and observ'd in the Largest, the most Populous, and the best Govern'd Empire in all the World: I mean in China.”

If European standards were not to be subverted this threat had to be met by the defenders of tradition. They did meet it, as we have seen, and they succeeded in thoroughly undermining the reputation of Chinese and Confucian thought in Europe. The result has been that from the time of the French Revolution on it has been all but forgotten that China made a contribution, of some significance, to the development of democratic ideas in the West.

At the very beginning of the European interest in China Leibniz expressed the hope that there might be an “interchange of civilizations between China and Europe.” That was, of course, impossible. Yet perhaps there has occurred, to a greater degree than we realize, a partial yet by no means insignificant transfusion of values.

If Europeans are unaware of the degree to which China influenced their democratic heritage, it is probable that most Americans are only a little more aware of the influence of the philosophy of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, and especially of French philosophy, upon the development of democratic ideas and institutions in the United States. It is the easier to forget this because of the fact that the American Revolution preceded the one in France and helped to bring it about.

Nevertheless, the ideas of the French Enlightenment played a definite role in the preparation for the American Revolution, and perhaps a still larger one in the development of democratic ideas in America after the revolution. Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, has been called the “symbol of the Enlightenment in America.” Such influence as the philosophy of Confucius may have had upon the development of democratic thought in America came chiefly and perhaps exclusively through this French influence. Americans who were prominent in their own revolution seem to have shown very little interest in China; this may be explained partly by the fact that, by the period of closest American intellectual contacts with France, China had been largely discredited in Europe.

At least one clear line of connection, however, runs through the Physiocratic doctrines of Quesnay. It has sometimes been questioned that this body of theory, which importantly influenced both Adam Smith and Karl Marx, was in fact derived in significant measure from China. The fact that Quesnay said he got it from China is not of course conclusive, but no one at all familiar with the Chinese literature on political and economic theory can read Quesnay without being struck by the high degree of correlation. Furthermore, a great deal of what Quesnay has to say is quite evidently derived from statements on China by such writers as the Jesuits and Voltaire.¹¹ Lewis A. Maverick states that the first seven chapters of Quesnay's Despotism in China, which first set forth the political aspects of Physiocracy, “were lifted bodily” from a work descriptive of China written by Jacques Philibert Rousselot de Surgy.

Physiocracy emphasized especially the importance of agriculture, and urged that the state should promote it. At the same time the Physiocrats considered trade and industry unproductive. They advocated free trade, with taxes only on agriculture. Quesnay believed that the government should be headed by a monarch of “despotic” power; but his rule should not be “arbitrary and tyrannical,” but like that of the emperor of China.

Thus far there is little in Quesnay's theory which could not find a basis somewhere in Chinese literature. There is no doubt, however, that Quesnay and the other members of his school adapted the idea of the despotic power of the Chinese emperor (which as we have seen was a perversion of the ideas of Confucius) to their European theory of “enlightened despotism.” Furthermore they emphasized the importance of private property and the role of “rich proprietors … established by providence for the purpose of exercising the most honorable public offices,” in a manner absent from or even at variance with Confucian theory.

Benjamin Franklin arrived in France in 1767, the year of the publication of Quesnay's Despotism in China. In fact, he subscribed for and contributed to the magazine in which it was first published. In Quesnay's home “Franklin found what interested him most: a gay, intimate, erudite and philosophical society.” He also became a friend of the two most influential of the Physiocrats, the Marquis of Mirabeau and Turgot; thus, says Bernard Faÿ, Franklin “turned the enormous influence of this famous school in favor of America, which was a big step toward the control of [French] public opinion.”

Franklin also borrowed, from the Physiocrats, some of their ideas. “He reduced them,” Faÿ writes, “to their simplest elements, saw how they could be utilized in the Anglo-American discussion, and to what point they supported the claims of the American farmers against the English merchants … This was a real revolution in his mind. The old English Whig system of Thomas Gordon, and the mercantile theories of William Petty, by which he had been guided since 1720, suddenly seemed old-fashioned. The constitutional discussion between England and America had already tired him, and he thought it was missing the main issue … the Physiocrats furnished him with a doctrine, which he made use of in his writings in these stormy years.”

Jefferson too was greatly interested in the ideas of the Physiocrats, and seems to have been considerably influenced by them, although he could not accept the idea of a benevolent despotism. One of Jefferson's letters appears to imply that he was aware of the connection between Physiocracy and China, but neither he nor Franklin ever seems to have been moved to make any considerable investigation of Chinese philosophy itself.

Although there can be little question of any influence, in any but a very indirect sense, it is interesting to compare the thought of Thomas Jefferson with that of Confucius. They were alike in their impatience with metaphysics, in their concern for the poor as against the rich, in their insistence on basic human equality, in their belief in the essential decency of all men (including savages), and in their appeal not to authority but to “the head and heart of every honest man.”¹² Jefferson's statement that “the whole art of government consists in the art of being honest” is amazingly similar to Analects 12.17, and other such examples could be cited.

Although they were vigorous champions of the cause of the common man, neither Confucius nor Jefferson minimized (as some advocates of democracy appear to do) the fact that men are by no means equal in their capacities. In 1813 Jefferson wrote to John Adams: “I agree with you that there is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents. … There is also an artificial aristocracy, founded on wealth and birth … The natural aristocracy I consider as the most precious gift of nature, for the instruction, the trusts, and government of society. … May we not even say, that that form of government is the best, which provides most effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government?”

It would be difficult to epitomize the theory of the Chinese examination system more neatly. Jefferson believed it to be so urgent that the talented youth of the nation be selected and educated for the tasks of government, that in 1779 he introduced into the Virginia House of Representatives a measure designed to accomplish this purpose, entitled A Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge. This bill declared general education to be the best safeguard of democracy. It also asserted that the government should be administered by the “wise and honest,” and that “those persons, whom nature hath endowed with genius and virtue, should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens, and that they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth or other accidental condition or circumstance.” Since, however, the poor could not afford to educate their children, the talented among them “should be sought for and educated at the common expence of all,” for the public good.

Jefferson's bill sought to establish a system of education having three levels. In the local schools, all children were to be taught gratis for three years. Periodically “the boy of best genius in the school, of those whose parents are too poor to give them further education” was to be selected “after the most diligent and impartial examination and inquiry,” and sent forward to one of twenty grammar schools, to be educated “at the public expence.” There the students would be subjected to frequent examination, and only the best retained. Finally, a small number of these were “to be sent and continued three years in the study of such sciences as they shall chuse, at William and Mary College.” Jefferson explained that “By that part of our plan which prescribes the selection of youths of genius from among the classes of the poor, we hope to avail the state of those talents which nature has sown as liberally among the poor as the rich, but which perish without use, if not sought for and cultivated.”¹³

Jefferson's plan had three principles in common with the Chinese examination system: (1) Education was to be considered a principal concern of the state. (2) Students of outstanding ability were to be selected, by means of competitive examinations, at three levels; students at the lowest level were to be selected from small districts, and at the highest from the whole state (corresponding to the Chinese district, provincial, and national examinations). (3) A major purpose was to “avail the state” of the services, as officials, of the most talented of its citizens, whether they might be rich or poor and regardless of pedigree. It differed from the Chinese system in that it provided some free education for all, it called for the education of the talented wholly at public expense, and Jefferson would have required that his “natural aristocrats” must not only pass examinations but also be elected to office, not appointed as in China.

These similarities do not, of course, prove that Jefferson's ideas were influenced by the Chinese examination system. There is, however, a distinct possibility of such influence. It seems certain that Jefferson knew of the existence of the Chinese system before he introduced his bill of 1779. It has been demonstrated that not later than 1776 he had read, and made extensive notes on, a work in which Voltaire declared that “the mind of man could not imagine a better government” than that of China at the beginning of the seventeenth century, where virtually all power lay in the hands of a bureaucracy “whose members were admitted only after several severe examinations.”¹⁴ The Chinese examination system was described in detail in numerous early European books,¹⁵ of which at least one is known to have been in Jefferson's library.¹⁶

Jefferson considered his educational program to be of fundamental importance. Only in some such manner, he was convinced, could democracy fortify itself against being slowly perverted into tyranny. His bill of 1779 was so amended as to defeat its purpose. In 1806, as President, he proposed to the Congress that the Constitution be amended to permit the setting up of “a national establishment for education.” In 1813 he wrote John Adams that he still hoped that the principle of his original bill might be made “the keystone of the arch of our government.” In 1817 he wrote that he was “now entirely absorbed” in the promotion of a plan for education which embodied it. He continued to work and write on its behalf until his latest years.

Although no such educational program as Jefferson advocated was adopted, the principle that men should be selected for office on the basis of their capacity, rather than their popularity, has received recognition in Western democracies in the institution of a civil service recruited through competitive examinations. As to the origin of this system in the British Empire, we need no longer speculate. In 1943 Têng Ssŭ-yü published a carefully documented study showing that the British system was inspired by that of China. Among other evidence, he showed that such examinations were first held by the East India Company, at its Indian establishments which were in touch with China, and that when the adoption of the system was being debated in Parliament its supporters and opponents alike made reference to the Chinese system.

In the United States of America, the institution of civil service examinations was adopted subsequently, chiefly under British influence. It is worthy of remark, however, that while the measure was pending before Congress, Ralph Waldo Emerson observed that in the matter of “requiring that candidates for public office shall first pass examinations” to show themselves qualified, “China has preceded us, as well as England and France, in this essential correction of a reckless usage.”

Notes

1. So called because, instead of accepting the commentaries of the Sung scholars as its standard, it went back to those of the Han dynasty.

2. For such reports by Jesuit writers of this period see, for instance, Trigault 136-175, and Du Halde III.14-63. See also Dunne 89-91. Burton reported in his Anatomy of Melancholy that “Matthew Riccius the Jesuit informeth us” that “of all Nations they [the Chinese] are the most superstitious” (Burton 310).

3. See Voltaire XVI.330-333 and Montesquieu I.142-144. E. Carcassone made an excellent analysis of Montesquieu's treatment of China, showing that he was largely concerned with maintaining certain preconceived principles to which China did not conform, and discussing the whole problem of the doubt of the Jesuits' reports; see Carcassone.

4. Under another title; see Bibliography under Fénelon.

5. See Lach 4-5, 140, Reichwein 20, and the bibliographies in Pinot 458-466.

6. See especially Chu, Reichwein, Pinot, Maverick, Hudson, Lovejoy, and Rowbotham(2).

7. Compare An. 13.16; Le Comte 125; and Diderot in Encyclopédie IX.357.

8. See Shih(2) 255; Shu 454-458, 495-502; An. 13.13, 14.20, 17.5; Mencius 1(2)8.

9. See for instance the astonishment with which the prosperity of the region of Canton was noted by Poivre (138-140). Such observations were common.

10. Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) was an extremely important figure among the thinkers who paved the way for the French Revolution, who greatly influenced both Voltaire and the editor of the great Encyclopédie, Diderot. He was educated in a Jesuit college. His important Dictionnaire Historique et Critique includes a number of references to China. Lanson wrote, “If Bayle was able to hold, not without scandal but without absurdity, that a society of atheists could maintain itself, and be as well regulated as any Christian society, it was because this paradox was authorized by one fact: the missionaries had observed or believed they had observed, in China, a society, the best governed and the most virtuous of all, where the governing group, the literati, were atheists” (Lanson 18).

11. See, for instance, Le Comte 241-311; Du Halde II.115-123; and Voltaire XVI.330-333, XXI.211-214. See also Reichwein 102-103.

12. For convenience of comparison these points will be numbered. For the views of Confucius see the following passages in the Analects: (1) 7.20, (2) 11.16, (3) 6.1.1, 7.7, (4) 6.17, 9.13, 13.19, (5) 17.21. For those of Jefferson see Koch, as follows: (1) 114, (2) 174, (3) 133, (4) 116-119, (5) 145.

13. This summary has been made in part from the original bill, and in part from a description of it contained in Jefferson's Notes on Virginia; see Jefferson II.220-229 and III.251-255.

14. Voltaire XXI.212. Voltaire adds that these officials were “elected by suffrage,” which of course is erroneous but might have heightened Jefferson's interest. For the date at which Jefferson read and made notes on this work (Essai sur les Moeurs) see Jefferson(2) 14.

15. Têng Ssŭ-yü includes eleven works in English and three in French, published prior to 1775, in his “Bibliography of Western Books or Articles Describing the Chinese Examination System”; see Têng 308-312. This list did not pretend to be exhaustive.

16. After the old Library of Congress was burned, Jefferson sold his personal library to Congress in 1815. It is catalogued in Catalogue of the Library of the United States, printed by Jonathan Eliot (Washington, 1815). This list includes two works (but without specifying editions, ibid. 10, 120) that give fairly full accounts of the examination system; these are Du Halde (III.1-14), and Le Comte (280-283). Jefferson had the French edition of the latter work. Of the former, only the first volume was in his library when it was sold, so that it is uncertain whether he had once had the third volume.

Works Cited

The works listed here are those cited in the notes and references. They are arranged alphabetically under their bibliographical abbreviations.

An.: The Lun Yü commonly called the Analects of Confucius. The sections are numbered as in the translations by Legge, Waley, and others.

Brunetière: Ferdinand Brunetière, Études Critiques sur l'Histoire de la Litterature Française, 8^e série (Paris, 1907).

Budgell: Eustace Budgell, A Letter to Cleomenes King of Sparta (London, no date but Library of Congress catalogue gives 1731).

Burton: Robert Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621; reprinted New York, 1938).

Carcassone: E. Carcassone, “La Chine dans l'Esprit des Lois,” in Revue d'Histoire Littéraire de la France, 31^e Année (Paris, 1924), 193-205.

Chu: Chu Ch'ien-chih, Chung Kuo Ssŭ Hsiang Tui Yü Ou Chou Wên Hua chih Ying Hsiang (Changsha, 1940).

Du Halde: J. B. Du Halde, S.J., The General History of China, tr. by R. Brookes, Vol. I (London, 1736), Vols. II-IV, 3rd ed. rev. (London, 1741).

Dunne: George H. Dunne, S.J., The Jesuits in China in the Last Days of the Ming Dynasty (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1944).

Encyclopédie: Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts et des Métiers, ed. by Denis Diderot and J. L. d'Alembert, Vols. III and IX (Paris, 1753 and Neufchastel, 1765).

Faÿ: Bernard Faÿ, Franklin, the Apostle of Modern Times (Boston, 1929).

Fénelon: François de Salignac de La Mothe Fénelon, Dialogues des Morts, first published at Cologne.

Goldsmith: Oliver Goldsmith, The Citizen of the World, 2 vols. (1762; reprinted London, 1790).

Hattersley: Alan F. Hattersley, A Short History of Democracy (Cambridge, 1930).

Hudson: G. F. Hudson, Europe and China (London, 1931).

Jefferson: The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. by Paul Leicester Ford, 10 vols. (New York and London, 1892-1899).

Jefferson(2): The Commonplace Book of Thomas Jefferson, ed. by Gilbert Chinard (Baltimore and Paris, 1926).

Koch: Adrienne Koch, The Philosophy of Thomas Jefferson (New York, 1943).

Lach: Donald F. Lach, Contributions of China to German Civilization, 1648-1740 (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1941).

Lanson: Gustave Lanson, “Le Rôle de l'Experience dans la Formation de la Philosophie du XVIII^e Siècle en France,” in La Revue du Mois IX (Paris, 1910): I. “La Transformation des Idées Morales et la Naissance des Morales Rationelles de 1680 à 1715,” 5-28; II. “L'Éveil de la Conscience Sociale et les Premières Idées de Réformes Politiques,” 409-429.

Laski: Harold J. Laski, “Democracy,” in ESS [Encyclopedia of Social Sciences] V, 76-85.

Le Comte: Louis Daniel Le Comte, Memoirs and Observations … Made in a Late Journey Through the Empire of China, tr. from the Paris ed. (London, 1697).

Lefebvre: Georges Lefebvre, The Coming of the French Revolution, tr. by R. R. Palmer (Princeton, 1947). First published as Quatre-vingt-neuf (Paris, 1939).

Leibniz: Gottfried Wilhelm, freiherr von Leibniz, Novissima Sinica, 2nd ed. (Leipzig? 1699).

Li Chi: The Lî Kî, tr. by James Legge, in Sacred Books of the East XXVII and XXVIII (1885; reprinted London, 1926).

Lovejoy: Arthur O. Lovejoy, “The Chinese Origin of a Romanticism,” in Essays in the History of Ideas (Baltimore, 1948) 99-135.

Maverick: Lewis A. Maverick, China, a Model for Europe (San Antonio, 1946).

Mencius: Mencius, the book named after the philosopher Mêng Tzŭ. The sections are numbered as in Legge's translation.

Montesquieu: Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, The Spirit of Laws, tr. by Thomas Nugent, 2 vols. (Cincinnati, 1873).

Pinot: Virgile Pinot, La Chine et la Formation de l'Esprit Philosophique en France (1640-1740) (Paris, 1932).

Poivre: Pierre Poivre, Travels of a Philosopher, tr. from French, translator unnamed (Dublin, 1770).

Quesnay: François Quesnay, “Despotisme de la Chine,” in Oeuvres Économiques et Philosophiques de F. Quesnay, ed. by Auguste Oncken (Frankfort and Paris, 1888), 563-660. First published serially in the Éphémérides du Citoyen (Paris, 1767); translated in Maverick 141-304.

Reichwein: Adolf Reichwein, China and Europe; Intellectual and Artistic Contacts in the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1925).

Rowbotham: Arnold H. Rowbotham, Missionary and Mandarin, the Jesuits at the Court of China (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1942).

Shih: The Chinese Classics, tr. by James Legge, Vol. IV, The She King, 2 pts. (London, 1871).

Shih(2): The Book of Songs, tr. by Arthur Waley (Boston and New York, 1937).

Shu: The Chinese Classics, tr. by James Legge, Vol. III, The Shoo King, 2 pts. (London, 1865).

Têng: Têng Ssŭ-yü, “Chinese Influence on the Western Examination System,” in Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies VII (Cambridge, 1943), 267-312.

Trigault: Nicholas Trigault, The China That Was, tr. by L. J. Gallagher, from work published in 1615 (Milwaukee, 1942).

Voltaire: Oeuvres Complètes de Voltaire, 92 vols. (Impr. de la Société Littéraire-typographique, 1785-1789).