1. I have said that the Buddhist revolution was an effort of philosophers to free themselves from an inherited faith. The teachers of the last century would still not have looked to such an experiment for encouragement or example. Mysticism belonged to the rebels against the Brahminical system as much as to the system itself, and it inspired them with nothing but contempt. But the Eastern world gave them another object for unbounded admiration. In Khoung-fou-tseu they found everything they missed in the sages of India, without what offended them there. Six centuries before Christ, they heard, here was a man who thought the outward economy of an empire a worthier study than all hidden and abstract lore. He valued maxims of life and conduct above doctrines about the Divinity, and had anticipated some of the most modern propositions about governor and governed. He was no mere name for a set of opinions. He had a distinct personality, and his words and acts were not confined to a small circle or a century or two. He left his impression on the most populous empire in the world. After two thousand years his authority is still sacred to the people, the mandarins and the emperors, and his influence is felt throughout that vast society.
2. Such a fact deserves attention. India and China are very different: in India all history is a philosophy, and in China all philosophy is a history. Yet for each people the search after wisdom is the only satisfactory key to what has befallen it. The long line of dynasties before Khoung-fou-tseu is hard to understand, though his words and acts compel us to believe in it, and that difficulty proves the point. We acknowledge the empire’s antiquity because it is needed to explain the reform he worked in it.
3. So I need not dwell on the old faith of China as I did on that of India. We must examine it largely through his eyes, since he collected and remodelled the books that contain it. He may have left out much that seemed immaterial for educating his country but that a modern critic would value. Still, I do not doubt the general accuracy of his conception of the old institutions and creed. There is abundant proof of the fidelity with which he studied them and his earnest desire to preserve them. No one aspired less to be an innovator; his chief aim was to remove innovations. Yet this was balanced by deep reverence for what was established. Nothing was to be brought back merely for the sake of bringing it back, and order was not to be sacrificed even in the hope of redressing an evil.
4. Khoung-fou-tseu could not have had his effect on China, or been recognised as he has been for so many ages, unless his mind were the highest type of the Chinese mind, in which we can read what it aimed at both before and after he enlightened it. So I accept the view that Chinese religion was from the first less lofty and mysterious than almost any other people’s. The belief in the eternal as distinct from and opposed to the temporal, so characteristic of the Hindoo, existed only dimly and was supplied by reverence for the past. The sense of communion with invisible powers, though not absent, was weak. The emperor must always have been regarded as the highest utterer of the divine mind, and the priest valued chiefly as a minister of court ceremonial. Rites must have had a value of their own, independent of all significance, such as they have scarcely had elsewhere. With this went what may seem incompatible with it: an attachment to whatever is useful and practical. The Chinese must have respected family relationships profoundly, but the relation of father and son will have overshadowed the rest, so that the others were treated as forms of it or sacrificed to it. Implicit obedience to authority will have been the virtue that every institution existed to enforce and that alone would preserve them. Add to the reverence for ancestors, the emperor and the father some Sabean worship, some astrology and speculation about the future, and we probably reach a fair picture of China under the old emperors whom the sage continually cites with admiration and regret.
5. These habits of mind may have been represented more or less perfectly in particular sovereigns, and they had embodied themselves in the forms of Chinese society. A tyrant could upset the whole economy of such a world, and a state resting on custom and observance could quickly fall into confusion. “The dynasty of Yu,” says the Book of Verses, “might be compared to the Most High while it retained the affection of the people: we learn by its decline how hard it is to preserve the command of heaven.” These words must be explained later; I quote them now only to show the starting-point of Confucian philosophy. The wisdom it aims at is whatever can remove a decayed condition of society and restore the principles implied in it. The Chinese books speak of the studious, meditative man almost as much as the Brahminical ones do. As earnestly as the Brahmins, and perhaps more honestly, Khoung-fou-tseu rates thought and study above animal pleasures, wealth and office. Yet no one is less of a Moonee. He began as a man of affairs, a Chinese official, studied the affairs of the empire all his life, and trained his disciples to take part in them. Education was for him the one necessary means to good government, and all education was for the sake of government. To find the ends of government and the means of reaching them was the sage’s one function.
6. Before turning to his doctrines, and to how morals and metaphysics were combined in his political science, I must give some idea of the man himself. The third of the Chinese classical books, the Lun-yu or Philosophical Dialogues, is the most helpful. It records his sayings, which show far more internal evidence of genuineness than those usually attributed to the founders of the Greek schools. It also has the testimonies of affectionate disciples. These are not wholly to be trusted, but they give different impressions of his character, from which we can form our own.
7. M. Pauthier, the recent French translator of the Chinese classics, has put us under great obligation by bringing these treasures within our reach. His enthusiasm, besides his European reputation, shows that he has really mastered the difficulties. He has somewhat rashly compared the Lun-yu dialogues with those in which Socrates is the hero. He candidly adds that the resemblance is chiefly to the sayings Xenophon attributes to his master, and that the artistic beauty and form of the Platonic dialogues are hard to find in the Chinese. He even admits a certain monotony in Khoung-fou-tseu’s utterances, but adds that “even this monotony has something of the serenity and the majesty of a moral instruction, which is bringing successively under our eyes the different sides of human nature contemplated from a higher ground.” I would gladly trade some of this serenity and majesty for the Greek’s hearty, humorous sympathy with all that goes on around him. But I accept it as the mark of another order of genius, eastern rather than western, entitled to its own respect. It is also hardly just to speak of Khoung-fou-tseu as simply looking down on his fellow-men: his deeds and words show fellow-feeling and real humbleness of mind. The dogma that great influence over mankind always goes with such qualities may or may not be true, but it is certainly not contradicted here.
8. So that readers may know the form of this Chinese book, and not only the choice sentences I might pick, I give the substance of some passages that best show his character and way of thinking. He said: I comment on the old books but do not compose new ones; I have faith in the Ancients and love them, and I honour our Lao-pang above all (a sage of the Chang dynasty). To meditate in silence and recall what I have meditated, to study without discouragement, to teach without being cast down: how shall I attain these virtues? My sorrow is that virtue is not cultivated, study not pursued manfully, justice and equity professed but not followed, and the wicked and perverse not corrected. If a man makes no effort to develop his own mind, I will not develop it for him; if he will not use speech to make himself intelligible, I will not guess his meaning; if, once shown one angle of a square, he does not find the other three, I will not do the demonstration for him. He told Yeu-youan that when we are in public office we do our duty and when dismissed we have the repose of private life, and that only the two of them lived so. T’seu-leu asked whom he would take as lieutenant if he led three armies of 12,500 men each. He answered that he would certainly not take the man who would lead them by hand into combat with a tiger, ford a river for no reason, or throw his life away without reason or remorse; he wanted a man who kept steady vigilance over affairs and could form plans and carry them out. To get riches fairly I would take a low occupation if necessary; if the means were unfair, I would rather follow what I delight in. In the kingdom of Tshi he heard the music called Tchao and was so affected that for three months he did not know the taste of his food; he said he did not think such perfection had been reached since. Yeo-yeou wondered whether the master would help the Prince of Wei, and Tseu-koung went to ask, but only indirectly. He asked what the master thought of Pe-i and Chou-tsi. The master called them true sages of the old world, said they had no regrets because they sought humanity and obtained it, and Tseu-koung went back saying the master would not assist the Prince. To eat a little rice, drink water, and have only one’s bent arm to lean on has its own satisfaction; riches and honour got unfairly are like a cloud driven by the wind. If I could add years to my life I would ask fifty to study the Y-king, so as to be free from great faults. When Ye-hong asked Tseu-leu about him and got no answer, he said: tell him that Khoung is a man who in his eagerness for knowledge forgets to eat, in the joy of having it forgets the cost, and does not notice old age. I was not born with knowledge; I loved the ancients and made every effort to acquire what they knew. He never spoke in conversation of extraordinary things, civil troubles or spirits. If three of us travel together I will find two instructors: I imitate the good man and correct myself by the bad. Heaven has planted virtue in me; what can Hoan-teu do to me? Do you think I conceal doctrines from you, my disciples? I have none; I have done nothing that I have not shared with you. I cannot hope to see a holy man, only a wise one (the exact difference will be explained later); I cannot hope to see a truly virtuous man, only one constant and settled in his views. To have nothing and act as if one had plenty, to be empty and show oneself full, to be little and show oneself great, is very hard to keep up. How is it that some act without knowing what they do? I would not behave so. We must hear the advice of many, choose what is good in it and follow it, see much and reflect carefully on what we have seen: that is the second step in knowledge. When a young man from Heou-hing, a people hard to teach, came to his disciples and they doubted whether to receive him, he said that he had admitted him to come, not to go away: the man had purified and renewed himself to enter the school, so praise him for coming so far; I am not responsible for his past or future. Is humanity far from us? I wish to have it, and it comes. A judge of Tchin asked whether Tchou-king understood the rites, and Khoung-fou-tseu said he did. The judge said a great man should never assent to others’ faults, yet he had done so, for the prince had married a woman of his own family name, On, and called her On-mengtsew; a prince should know the rites. When this was reported, the philosopher cried: what a happy man Khoung-fou-tseu is, for if he commits a fault men are sure to know it. In literature I am not equal to others; if I think of one who unites holiness and humanity, how could I compare myself to him? All I know is that I force myself to practise these virtues and teach them without being disheartened. When he was very sick and Tseu-leu begged leave for the disciples to pray for him to the spirits and genii, he asked whether that was proper. Tseu-leu said it was, since the book Leni says to address prayers to the spirits and genii above and below. He said: the prayer of Khoung-fou-tseu is constant. The luxurious are not submissive, the parsimonious are vile and abject, yet baseness is better than disobedience. Tai-pe might be called sovereignly virtuous: he refused the empire three times, and the people saw nothing admirable in it. Deference and respect not regulated by rules or education are mere indulgence of our fancy; circumspection not so regulated is extravagant cowardice; manly courage not so regulated is insubordination; rectitude not so regulated brings the greatest confusion. We may force the people to follow the precepts of justice and reason, but not to comprehend them. He who has unshaken faith in truth and loves study passionately keeps the principles of virtue that follow from them until death. If a state is governed by reason, poverty and misery are shameful; if not, riches and honour are. I see no defect in Yu: he was sober in food and drink and devoutly pious to the spirits and genii; his ordinary clothing was poor, but how beautiful were his robes at ceremonies; his dwelling was humble, but he gave all his energy to digging trenches and canals for the waters.
9. Some of these sentences need illustration from other passages. In the last, Yu is commended for devotion to the spirits and genii, yet on his sick-bed Khoung-fou-tseu seems scarcely to have acknowledged their existence, or at least to have had no faith in their power to help him. The contradiction is only apparent, as the third chapter of the book shows. Asked the meaning of the grand royal sacrifice, he said, “I do not know. He who did know this sense would find everything under Heaven clear and manifest for him. He would find no more difficulty in knowing everything than in putting his finger in the palm of his hand.” When he entered the great temple he inquired minutely about everything, and an onlooker asked who could now say he knew the rites; he answered that he did so in conformity with the rites. When Tseu-kang wished to abolish the sheep sacrificed on the first day of the twelfth moon, he said, “Tse, you are only engaged about the sacrifice of the sheep, I am only concerned about the ceremony.”
From these passages we may judge his religious feeling generally. He saw a mystery in the sacrifice that he could not penetrate. He was far from denying it and would not for the world abolish its expression, but what it meant he did not know and probably did not seek to know. He valued the sacrifice not for itself or for any benefit from it, but as part of an august and awful ceremonial. He worshipped the spirits and genii because it was the ancient law and established custom, which was what made them sacred to him; but he had nothing to tell about them. It does not follow that he feigned a faith for the vulgar which he secretly disowned, or that he thought worship a mere invention to maintain government. His own sincere conduct rules out the first supposition, and his demand for sincerity in ministers and emperors rules out the second. One passage might even seem to overturn all I have said of his ritualism and to show that he did recognise a hidden ground for the customs he preserved. Tseu-hia asked the meaning of the lines in the Book of Verses: “What an agreeable smile there is upon his fine and delicate mouth! how sweet and ravishing his look! The ground of the picture must be prepared if you would paint.” He answered, “You cannot lay on the colours till you have made preparation for them.” Tseu-hia said, “You hint that mere ritual laws are secondary things.” He replied, “You have caught my meaning; you are beginning to understand my discourses on poetry.” He also speaks of a hidden sense in the rites of the dynasty of Hai which laws and the opinions of wise men did not suffice to make known. This leads to his main principle. Ceremonies, formalities, etiquette, in a word social customs, embody the principle of reason, the very secret of order among men. This principle is the divinest thing he knows, and traditional habits and forms are its most accurate expression. They are the great restraints on self-will, and keeping them is the sign of a ruler who wants to be in sympathy with his people. To perceive what they signify is the wise man’s privilege, and he is to communicate it, as far as he can without intentional reserve, to his disciples. It is the great business of education to impress it on rulers and subjects alike. But this wisdom can hardly be better expressed than in the forms themselves. It must be gained by observation, practice and habitual discipline, and must show itself in conduct, gestures and looks as much as in words. It must be uttered, so far as it can be, in short maxims and somewhat enigmatical poetry, which interpret themselves slowly to one who combines honest purpose, diligence and political experience.
In the same way we must understand a phrase very frequent in his discourses, though one disciple strangely says he did not often care to use it. Our French guide renders it, no doubt accurately, as humanity. A few passages show that the word had a profound, almost cabalistical significance for him, which may account for his speaking of it rarely, though his disciples could not help often attributing it to him. Ming-wow-pe asked whether T’seu-lou was humane, and the philosopher said, “I do not know.” Asked again, he said that for commanding the armies of a great kingdom T’seu-lou would be capable, “but I do not know what is his humanity.” Of Kieou he said he might govern a city of a thousand houses or a family of a hundred chariots, but he did not know his humanity. Of Tchi he said that in an official sash at court, with his good elocution, he might receive and hand out guests, but again he did not know his humanity. I have quoted passages showing his great love of music, and the importance he attached to it in education and government is perhaps the one point of resemblance with Plato. He clearly connected new music closely with the sublime virtue, or complex of virtues, he calls humanity. I conceive humanity to mean that order and harmony of relations in the body politic, with the corresponding order and harmony of feelings and faculties in the individual, of which music is the natural expression. One disciple declares that his master’s doctrine consists simply in having rectitude of heart and loving our neighbour as ourselves. M. Pauthier apologises for giving this form to his translation but says he could find none more accurate, and until a greater scholar contradicts him we must accept it. If he supposes that those who believe these words came from higher lips will be scandalised, he mistakes the matter altogether. Those who attach the most awful significance to those lips and to the Person from whom the words fell will be the least inclined to see him as a propounder of great maxims rather than the giver of a new life. They will be the least likely to grudge a Chinese teacher any glimpses he was given of what the true regenerator of humanity should do for it.
Connected with this is another key phrase of the Confucian system, which he too seems always to have uttered with hesitation: it is said he spoke rarely of destiny or of the command of heaven. Perhaps he did not know precisely what he meant by heaven, but he knew it was something real and not imaginary. It fits the character of the original Chinese worship, and of his own mind, that he should be deeply impressed by the order of the heavenly bodies, and by the evenness, calm and steadfastness shown in the succession of day and night. He wanted that order in human society and believed the imperial dignity was meant to represent and uphold it. The emperor executed the mandate of heaven when he presented the image of this order, and disobeyed it when he forgot the principle and promoted or permitted confusion. So Khoung-fou-tseu presumes a direct responsibility in the emperor, but to whom? Many expressions recognise the misery that follows when the sovereign forgets his duties to the governed, and so his modern interpreters keep hoping he dreamed of responsibility to the popular voice. However plausibly some sentences support this, I believe it outrages the whole principle and history of the Confucian doctrine. In the philosopher’s mind the emperor could not transgress the commandment of heaven more than by forgetting he was an emperor and confessing he was a subject. Responsibility to an actual living Being who could call the emperor to account is equally out of the question. What remains is homage to a principle, a law, the idea of duty, and this is what he laboured by all his education and discipline to realise in his own heart and others’. He was wisely conscious of its vagueness and felt the need to connect it with some superior order, even if only a natural one. He did not like to say what the emperor obeyed, yet he felt, and even declared, that the emperor, like all men, indeed because he was the first of men, lived by obedience. Here the teacher’s personal convictions become identical with his political philosophy, of which I must now give a more exact account.
10. Ngrâi-Koung asked Khoung-fou-tseu for the constitutive principles of good government. He said that the laws of the kings Wen and Wou were written on bamboo tablets: if their ministers lived now, their laws would be in force; the ministers are gone and the principles are no longer followed. The combined virtues of a prince’s ministers make the administration good, as the earth, uniting the moist and the dry, makes plants grow; good administration springs up naturally in suitable soil, like reeds on a riverbank. A prince who wants to imitate the old kings must choose ministers by his own sentiments, which must always be inspired by the public good. To keep them so he must conform to the great law of duty, and that law must be sought in humanity, the principle of love for all men. This humanity is man himself, and regard for relations is its first duty. The prince can never cease correcting and perfecting himself. To do so he must render his relations what is due them; to do that he must know and honour wise men, who will instruct him in his duties; and to know them he must have knowledge of heaven and of the law which directs the practice of prescribed duties. The most universal human duties are five, and man has three natural faculties for practising them. The duties are the relations between prince and ministers, father and children, husband and wife, elder and younger brother, and friends. The faculties are conscience, the light of intelligence that distinguishes good from evil; humanity, the equity of the heart; and moral courage, the force of the soul. Whether nature suffices for knowing these duties or study is needed, whether the knowledge comes with difficulty or not, the result is the same once it is had. Whether we practise them naturally and without effort or for profit and advantage, the result is the same once useful works are accomplished. He who loves study, or applying his intelligence to the law of duty, is very near moral science; he who devotes all his efforts to moral duties is near the devotion to man’s happiness called humanity; he who knows how to blush for weakness in duty is very near the force of mind needed to fulfil it. As soon as the prince has regulated and improved himself, the universal duties will be accomplished towards him. When he reveres wise men he will have no doubt of truth and falsehood, good and evil. When his parents have the affection due them, there will be no quarrels among his uncles and brothers. When he treats secondary officials properly, the learned will zealously do their duty in the seminaries. When he loves the people as his son, they will imitate their superior. When he draws savans and artists about him, his wealth will be well spent. When he entertains strangers agreeably, men from the four ends of the empire will flock to his state. When he treats his great vassals kindly, he will be respected throughout the empire. These political axioms must not be separated from the following, which are more purely moral. All virtuous actions and duties resolved beforehand are accomplished, and if not so resolved they are in a state of infraction. If we have determined beforehand the words we must speak, we shall not hesitate; if we have determined our affairs and occupations, they will be easily accomplished. The perfect, the true, disengaged from all mixture, is the law of heaven. The process of perfection, using all one’s efforts to discover the celestial law, the true principle of the mandate of heaven, is the law of man. The perfect man attains this law without outside help and without meditation or long reflection, and arrives at it with calm and tranquillity: this is the holy man. He who keeps tending towards perfection, clings strongly to the good and fears to lose it, is the sage.
11. These extracts come from the second of the classical books, called “The Invariable in the Mean.” The Chinese think it contains the very essence of all philosophy, that of the great school, for which the first school, the school of custom or etiquette, is only the vestibule. Since we shall often meet the doctrine of the mean in the schools of the West, let us see what anticipation of it these passages from the Tchoung-Young contain.
You will have noticed the form in which the Confucian maxims unfold. M. Pauthier says the sorites is clearly a Chinese invention: to be a good emperor you must be a good friend, to be a good friend a good son, to be a good son you must know the law of right, and so on. This is how the sage naturally and habitually speaks. Each duty involves another. What is the first duty, from which all draw their sanction and which makes the others possible? It is hard to find, and often we seem to move in a circle. But clearly all duties involve a rule. To be right is to be regular, and irregularity is the common expression for the violation of all relations. Irregularity is clearly the effect of some bias to one side or another, so the law of rectitude must be the law of the mean, and all study and discipline must serve to preserve it. The book says: “Before joy, satisfaction, anger, sorrow, have been produced in the soul, the state in which we are found is called the mean. When once they have been produced in the soul, and they have not transgressed certain limits, the state in which we are is called harmonic. This Mean is the grand foundation of the world. Harmony is the universal and permanent law of it. When the Mean and the harmony have been carried to the point of perfection, heaven and earth are in a state of perfect tranquillity, and all beings receive their full development.” Khoung-fou-tseu said the man of superior virtue keeps invariably to the mean, and the unprincipled man constantly opposes it. Few know how to keep long in the right way, and he knew the reason: cultivated men pass beyond it, ignorant men do not reach it; men of strong virtue go too far, men of feeble virtue stop short.
Here is the marrow of Chinese life, morals and politics. It explains the passion for minute ceremony that seems so ridiculous to Western people. It explains why the affectionate disciples of so honest and simple a man spend whole pages telling us how his robe, saluting people on either side, fell straight before and behind; how he quickened his step to introduce guests with his arms spread like a bird’s wings; how he bent his body under the palace gate as if it were too low; how before the throne his countenance changed, his step was grave and measured as if fettered, and his words as embarrassed as his feet; how he climbed into the hall holding his robe with both hands, bent, hardly daring to breathe; how his nightdress was half as long again as his body; how he never ate meat not cut in straight lines nor meat lacking its proper sauce. There are a thousand such particulars, and I omit them lest I lessen your respect for a remarkable man, since I mean only to shed light on the national character and show how his philosophy grew out of it and was determined by it. That philosophy is not a collection of dry formalities. It rests on large experience, and it brings out the idea of duty as the West never did until Greek philosophy was remoulded by the Latin mind. It suggests very deep thoughts about the connection of social and individual life, and may help us as much by what it fails to recognise as by what it proclaims. But in China the blanks that are so significant to us have been filled as they could only be filled: by new maxims, a more rigid ceremonial, and intense self-conceit and self-satisfaction. Other experiments have tried to supply Khoung-fou-tseu’s deficiencies, and a mystical rationalism and the Buddhist divinity have both been called in to help out the cold atheism of the authorised creed. But the true Confucian rightly feels these plants are not native to Chinese soil. He clings to his classical books, learns them by heart, and dwells on the equity, contempt of money and reverence for antiquity they enforce. By the contradictions of his acts and life he shows what truth these maxims have and what powerlessness: how faithfully they foretell the decline of a country that does not obey them, and how unable they are to produce obedience. The philosophers of the last century were entitled to point to China’s existence through so many centuries, with its mechanical appliances, early maturity and political experience, and say, “See what can be effected by mere intelligence, content to dwell upon the earth, aspiring to no acquaintance with things divine.” I accept their words and their example. Such intelligence could do this, so God has willed. Alas for human beings, if there is nothing which can do more!
12. I should wrong China if I said nothing of the fourth classical book, which bears another name than the great teacher’s. It is the name of a man who was himself a teacher and reformer, who thought Khoung-fou-tseu the great legislator of the world, and who laboured in a society that had degenerated again to restore his precepts and practice. Meng-tseu belongs to the fourth century B.C. He is immeasurably more interesting to us than his predecessor, and so, I suppose, must seem far inferior to him in Chinese eyes. He probably was inferior in quietness, self-control and adaptation to the habits of the people he spoke with. I can imagine he would never have been a great legislator or left a great impression on his country if Khoung-fou-tseu had not led the way. But in place of his master’s solemnity and general dryness, Meng-tseu seems to have had real humour, a very earnest dislike of oppression, courage in telling disagreeable truths to the highest personages, and a power of seeing how sound maxims apply to the details of government. We cannot contemplate these without admiration and profit after 2,000 years. If I have led readers to think scornfully of eastern wisdom, or to suppose it has no lessons for England in the nineteenth century, I have tempted them to imitate the worst Chinese habits. Let me repair the error by asking them to listen to a conversation between Meng-tseu and Siouan-Wang, king of Tshi.
The king asked whether it was true that King Wen-Wang’s park was seven leagues round. Meng-tseu said history tells us so. “Was not that excessive?” said the king. Meng-tseu said the people thought it too small. The king said his own park was only four leagues round and the people thought it too large; why the difference? Meng-tseu answered that Wen-Wang’s park was shared with the people: all who wanted grass or wood went there, all who wanted pheasants or hares. Since the king had his park in common with the people, they thought it small though it was seven leagues round. “Was that wonderful? When I was about to cross your frontier I inquired what was especially forbidden in your kingdom. I learnt there is a park four leagues round within your line of customs, where the man who kills a stag is punished with death as if he had killed a man. So there is an actual pit of death four leagues round in the heart of your kingdom. The people think that park too great. Is it wonderful?”
From a very long conversation with the same prince, all worth extracting, I take a passage that shows his talent less than many others do, but it will prove his philosophy is not obsolete. To lack the necessaries of life and yet keep an equal and virtuous mind is possible only for men whose intelligence raises them above the multitude. The mass of the people, lacking necessaries, lack also an equal and virtuous mind; then come violation of law, licence and debauchery, and there is nothing they will not do. Then you bring them before judgment-seats and punish them, so you catch the people in a net. If a man truly endowed with humanity occupied the throne, could he commit this criminal action of snaring the people? As things are, the people’s private property is so constituted that children have not wherewith to support their parents, nor fathers their wives and children. In years of abundance they suffer pain and misery to the end of life, and in years of calamity they are not saved from famine and death. In such extremity they think only of escaping death, and have no time for the moral doctrines that would teach them justice and equity. Meng-tseu goes on to suggest remedies: better cultivation, planting trees, rearing animals, making silk, and above all education. One of his great maxims is that the monarch should always share his pleasures with the people. If a prince rejoices in the people’s joy, they rejoice in his; if he sorrows in their sorrows, they sorrow in his. Let him rejoice and sorrow with everybody, and he can find no difficulty in reigning.
The same king, in another conversation, admired two lines in the Book of Verses: “We may be rich and powerful, but we should have compassion on the widows and orphans.” Meng-tseu answered rather abruptly, “Oh, king! if you find them so good, why do you not practise them?” The king said his defect was that he loved riches. Meng-tseu answered that Kong-lieon also loved riches, so he shared them with his people to gratify his love, and the king might try the same. The king said he had another weakness, that he loved pleasure. Meng-tseu answered that Tai-wang loved pleasure and loved his wife dearly, so he contrived that in all his kingdom there should be no celibates. More pointed still is another conversation with this patient prince. Meng-tseu asked what a servant of the king must do if he left his wife and children with a friend while on a journey and on his return found them cold and hungry. The king said he must break with his friend. If the chief judge cannot govern the magistrates under him? He must be deposed. If the provinces at the extreme limits of the kingdom are not well governed? The king looked to right and left and changed the subject. Meng-tseu said the great man has three satisfactions: to have his parents living and no dissension between elder and younger brother; to have nothing to blush for before heaven or man; and to meet wise and virtuous men of his generation. To rule an empire is not among them.
When the prince of Lou wanted Lo-tching-tseu, a disciple of Meng-tseu, to undertake the whole administration of the kingdom, Meng-tseu said he could not sleep for joy. Asked whether Lo-tching-tseu had great energy, prudence and a mind for great designs, or extensive learning, he answered “Not at all” to each. Why then the joy? “Because he is a man who loves what is good.” Is that enough? “To love what is good is more than enough to govern the empire: how much more to govern the kingdom of Lou!” If one proposed for administration loves the good, good men from within the four seas will travel a hundred leagues to counsel him. If he does not, they will say he is a self-satisfied man who always answers “I knew that a long while ago,” and that tone drives good counsellors a hundred leagues away. Then slanderers, flatterers and men whose faces say “Yes” to every word arrive in crowds, and in such company how can he govern well?
A yet higher strain is this. Chun came to the empire from the fields; Fou-youé rose from a mason to be minister; Kiao-he from a seller of fish and salt; Kouan-i-ou from a gaoler. When heaven wishes to give a great office to its chosen men, it first tries their souls and minds with days of sorrow. Their nerves and bones are worn out with toil and their flesh tormented with hunger, and the results of their actions run contrary to their hopes. Thus their souls are stimulated, their natures hardened, and their force increased by an energy without which they could not have fulfilled their high destiny. Men commit faults before they can correct themselves; they know anguish of heart and thwarted plans until at last they come forth. It is universally true that life comes through pains and trials, death through pleasures and repose.
I cannot help thinking that Khoung-fou-tseu himself comes forth in a braver and finer spirit in Meng-tseu’s reports and commentaries. Meng-tseu quotes him as saying that the most honest men of a neighbourhood are the pests of virtue. Wen-tchang asked who they are. Meng-tseu said they are those who take pains never to speak or act differently from all around them. If you try to find them in a fault you never know where to take them, and whatever side you attack you never get at them. What dwells in their heart resembles rectitude and sincerity, and what they practise looks like temperance and integrity. As the whole neighbourhood boasts of them, they think themselves perfect. So Khoung-fou-tseu calls them the pests of virtue. He said: “I detest that which has appearance without reality; I detest clever men, for fear they confound justice; I detest an eloquent mouth, lest it confuse truth; I detest the sounds of the music Tching, because they corrupt music; I detest the colour violet because it mimics purple; I detest the most respectable people of a neighbourhood because they mimic virtue.”
13. In spite of this last extract, Meng-tseu has a much more democratic tendency than his master. He is even reported to have said, “The people is the most noble thing in the world. The spirits of the earth and the fruits of the earth are second to them. The prince is of the least importance of all.” Such a sentiment appears in a book that all educated Chinese learn by heart, side by side with precepts that seem to make the emperor the source of all light and wisdom to his people. It must cause great perplexity among thoughtful members of the Celestial Empire, especially those brought into contact with the notions and history of barbarians. The effects of such teaching may be much greater than we can foresee, though one cannot expect them to favour the real freedom and moral culture of this singular people. The deepest wisdom of both Khoung-fou-tseu and Meng-tseu seems to have lain in awakening monarchs to a consciousness of their position and duties. Their greatest failures seem to have come from being unable to show what higher and more righteous power sustains monarchs in that position and can give them energy for those duties. Whatever teaching can supply that lack may be the instrument of making China what God intends it to be. A subversion of its political order must also subvert its ancient wisdom, without giving it any capacity to acquire fresh light.