When he was at Loyang--Honanfu--one of the things that struck him
most was a bronze statue in the Temple of the Imperial Ancestors,
with a triple, clasp on its mouth. One does not wonder. A Great
Soul from the God World, he kept his eyes resolutely on the world
of men; as if he remembered, nothing of the splendor, and
nothing foresaw. . . . Indeed, I cannot tell; one would give
much to know what really passed between him and Laotse. If you
say that no word of his lightens, for you that 'dusk within the
Holy of holies',--at least he gives you the keys, and leaves you
to find and open the 'Holy of holies' for yourself if you can.
There are lost chapters, that went at the Burning of the Books;
and an old-fashioned Chinaman would often tell you of any Western
idea or invention his countrymen may not have known, that you
should have found all in the lost chapters of Confucius. It may
be;--and that you should have found there better things, too,
than Western ideas and inventions. There is a passage in the
_Analects_ that tells how the disciples thought he was 'keeping
back from them some part of his doctrine: "No, no," he
answered; "if I should not give it all to you, to whom should I
give it?" Distinctly, then, this suggests that there was an
esotericism, a side not made public; and there is no reason to
suppose that it has been made public since. But it is recorded
that he would lift no veils from the Other-worlds. "If you do
not understand life," said he, "how can you understand death?"
Well; we who are stranded here, each on his desert island of
selfhood, thrust out after knowledge: peer for signs at all the
horizons;--are eager to inquire, and avid of the Unknown--which
also we imagine to be something outside of our own being. But
suppose a man, as they say one with Tao, in which all knowledge
rests in solution: what knowledge would he desire? After what
would he be inquisitive? And how much, desiring it, would he
possess? What is the end of being, after all? To perform your
function, your duty; what men and the world,--ay, and the far
suns and stars,--are requiring of you:--that is all. Not to gain
infinite knowledge; but to have at, every step what knowledge
you need; that so you may fill your place in the Universe,
meeting all contours and flowing into them; restoring and
maintaining the Harmony of Things. So we hear much about this
performance of duty. But in reality, to do one's duty is to sing
with the singing spheres; to have the Top of Infinity for the
roof of one's skull, and the bottom of the Great Deep for
one's footsoles: to be a compendium, and the Equal, of Heaven
and Earth. The password into the Tao of Laotse is Silence;
Confucius kept the great Silence more wonderfully than Laotse
did--or so it seems to me now. Laotse said: _Sing with the
singing spheres, and behold, your duty is doing itself uder your
hands._ The password into the Tao of Confucius is _Duty:_ he
said merely _Do that, and,_--the rest is silence. He may have
played that _rest_ on his lute; we are not to hear it in his
words. There was a knowledge that Laotse, enthroned in his
silence, had no means of using; that Confucius riding the
chariot of duty, had no occasion to possess.
Now whether you call Tao _duty,_ or _silence,_--what should the
Man of Tao desire beyond the fulness of it? All the light is
there for him; all the suns are kindled for him;--why should he
light wax candles? That is, for himself: he will light them
fast enough where others may be in need. To us, a great poem may
be a great thing: but to them who have the fulness of which the
greatest poem is but a little glimpse--what should it matter to
them? And of the infinite knowledge at his disposal, would the
Man of Tao choose to burden himself with one little item of which
there was no present need?
So when they say, "Confucius was nobody; there is no evidence
that he knew the great secrets"; answer them:--"Yes, there is.
He knew that supreme secret, how to _teach,_ which is the
office of a Teacher: he knew how to build up the inner life
of his disciples; to coax, train, lure the hidden god into
manifestation in them." And for evidence you can give them this:
Tse Kung--who, you remember, was always comparing this man with
that--asked which was the better, Shih or Shang. (They were two
disciples.) Confucius answered: "Shih goes too far; Shang not
far enough." Said Tse Kung (just as you or I would have done):--
"Then Shih is the better man?"--"Too far," replied Confucius, "is
not better than not far enough."--To my ears there is more
occultism in that than in a thousand ethical injunctions.--Or
answered;--"Whilst thy father and they elder brother are alive,
how canst thou do all thou art taught?" Jan Yu said:--"Shall I
do all I am taught?" The Master said:--"Do all thou art taught."
Kung-hsi Hua said: "Yu asked, 'Shall I do all I am taught?'
and you spoke, Sir, of father and elder brother. Ch'iu asked,
'Shall I do all I am taught?' and you answered: 'Do all thou
art taught.' I am puzzled, and make bold to ask you, Sir." The
Master said:--"Ch'iu is bashful, so I egged him on. Yu has the
pluck of two, so I held him back."
Think it over! Think it over!
This though occurs to me: Was that sadness of his last days
caused by the knowledge that the School could not continue after
his death; because the one man who might have succeeded him as
the Teacher, Yen Huy, was dead? So far as I know, it did not go
on; there was no one to succeed him. That supreme success, that
grand capture of future ages for the Gods, was denied him; or I
daresay our own civilization might have been Confucian--BALANCED
--now. But short of that--how sublime a figure he stands! If
he had known that for twenty-five centuries or so he was to
shine within the vision of the great unthinking masses of his
countrymen as their supreme example; their anchor against the
tides of error, against abnormalities, extravagances, unbalance;
a bulwark against invading time and decay; a check on every bad
emperor, so far as check might be set at all; a central idea to
mold the hundred races of Chu Hia into homogeneity; a stay, a
prop, a warning against headlong courses at all times of cyclic
downtrend;--if he had known all this, he would, I think, have
ordered his life precisely as he did. Is there no strength
implied, as of the Universal, and not of any personal, will,
however titanic, in the fact that moment after moment, day after
day, year after year, he built up this picture, gave the world
this wonderful assurance of a man? In his omissions, no less
than in his fulfilments. He taught,--so far as we know,--nothing
but what the common mind might easily accept; nothing to miss
the mark of the intelligence of dull Li or Ching toiling in the
rice-field;--nor yet too paltry for the notice of the Hwangti on
the Dragon Throne. Laotse had come in the spirit of Plenydd the
Light-bringer; in the spirit of Alawn, to raise up presently
sweet profusions of song. He illuminated the inner worlds; his
was the urge that should again and again, especially later when
reinforced by Buddhism, prick up the Black-haired People to
heights of insight and spiritual achievement.--But the cycles of
insight and spiritual achievement, these too, must always run
their course and fall away; there is no year when it is always
Spring. Dark moments and seasons come; and the Spirit becomes
hidden; and what you need most is not illumination,--which you
cannot get; or if you could, it would be hell, and not heaven,
that would be illuminated for you; not a spur to action,--for as
things are constituted, any spur at such a time would drive you
to wrong and exorbitant action:--what you need is not these, but
simply stability to hold on; simply the habit of propriety, the
power to go on at least following harmless conventions and doing
harmless things; not striking out new lines for yourself, which
would certainly be wrong lines, but following as placidly as may
be lines that were laid down for you, or that you yourself laid
down, in more righteous and more luminous times. A strong
government, however tyrannical, is better than an anarchy in
which the fiend in every man is let loose to run amuck. Under
the tyranny, yes, the aspiring man will find himself hindered and
thwarted; but under the anarchy, since man is no less hell than
heaven, the gates of hell will be opened, and the Soul, normally
speaking, can only retire and wait for better times:--unless it
be the Soul of a Confucius, it can but wait till Karma with
ruthless hands has put down the anarchy and cleared things up.
Unless it be the Soul of a Confucius; and even Such a One is
bound to be a failure in his own day.
But see what he did. The gates of hell were swung wide, and for
the time being, not the hosts of the Seraphim and Cherubim,--not
the armed Bodhisatvas and Dhyanis,--could have forced them back
on their hinges: "the ripple of effect," we read, "thou shalt
let run its course." But in the ideal world he erected a barrier
against them. He set up a colossal statue with arms outthrown to
bar the egress; the statue of Confucius preaching the Balanced
Life. With time it materialized, so to say, and fell into place.
You can never certainly stop the gates of hell,--in this stage of
our evolution. But perhaps as nearly as it can be done, he did
it. Rome fell, and Christendom made a mess of things; it has
never yet achieved that union which is the first condition of
true civilization. But China, older than Rome, despite her sins
and vicissitudes, has made a shift to stand. I shall come to
comparing the two histories presently; then you will see.
When the pralaya came on her, and the forces of life all went
elsewhere--as they do and must from every civilization in their
season,--China lost two of her treasures: Plenydd's vision, and
Alawn's gift of song, were taken from her. But this stability;
these Gloves of Gwron; this instinct for middle courses and the
balance, this Doctrine of the Mean and love of plain sane doings:
she has retained enough of this to keep her in being. And it was
K'ung Ch'iu of Lu that gave it to her. Shall we not call him
Such a One as only the Gods send?
Someone told me the other day what he had seen a couple of
Chinamen do in a Californian garden. They had a flower-bed
to plant, about forty feet long; and each a basket of seedlings
to plant it with, and a slip of wood for a model, with mystic
unintelligible signs inscribed thereon: WELCOME HOME in English
capitals. One went to one end of the bed and the other to the
other, and they began their planting. They made no measurements
or calculations; used no rod or line; but just worked ahead
till they met in the middle. When that happened, and the job was
done, the bed was inscribed, in perfectly formed and proportioned
English capitals made of young plants, WELCOME HOME. There was
no crowding or omission. To account for it you have twenty-four
centuries of Confucianism,--of Katherine Tingley's doctrine of
Middle Lines, the Balanced Life.
It is a very small thing; but it may help us to understand.