THE SAYINGS OF CONFUCIUS
A NEW TRANSLATION OF THE GREATER
PART OF THE CONFUCIAN ANALECTS
WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES
LIONEL GILES, M.A. (Oxon.)
ASSISTANT IN THE DEPARTMENT OF ORIENTAL BOOKS
AND MANUSCRIPTS OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM
THE WISDOM OF THE EAST SERIES
Edited by
L. CRANMER-BYNG
Dr. S. A. KAPADIA.
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY
1910
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL DISCIPLES
GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS
INDIVIDUAL VIRTUE
CONFUCIUS' ESTIMATE OF OTHERS
CONFUCIUS ON HIMSELF
MISCELLANEOUS SAYINGS
PERSONALIA
CONFUCIUS AS SEEN BY OTHERS
SAYINGS OF THE DISCIPLES
EDITORIAL NOTE
The object of the Editors of this series is a very definite one.
They desire above all things that, in their humble way, these books
shall be the ambassadors of goodwill and understanding between East
and West--the old world of Thought and the new of Action. In this
endeavour, and in their own sphere, they are but followers of the
highest example in the land. They are confident that a deeper knowledge
of the great ideals and lofty philosophy of Oriental thought may help
to a revival of that true spirit of Charity which neither despises nor
fears the nations of another creed and colour. Finally, in thanking
press and public for the very cordial reception given to the "Wisdom of
the East" Series, they wish to state that no pains have been spared to
secure the best specialists for the treatment of the various subjects
at hand.
L. CRANMER-BYNG.
S. A. KAPADIA.
NORTHBROOK SOCIETY,
185, PICCADILLY, W.
INTRODUCTION
Confucius is one of the few supremely great figures in the world's
history. A man's greatness must always be measured, in the first
place, by the consensus of opinion in his own country; the judgment of
foreigners can only be allowed to have a secondary value. Especially
is this true when the critics are not only foreigners, but belong to a
totally different order of civilisation from the men whose greatness
they would appraise. For even if they can keep their minds free from
purely national bias of the unreasoning sort, they will naturally look
for such attributes as are highly prized among themselves, and feel
disappointed if these are not much in evidence. They will be apt to see
certain defects too plainly, whereas they may easily overlook or fail
to appreciate to the full those very qualities on which the title to
greatness is mainly based. These errors and prejudices will, doubtless,
tend to disappear as more intimate knowledge is gained and the
essential unity of human nature shows itself beneath the accidents of
custom and environment. But the process will always be slow. The name
of Confucius may be deemed sufficiently familiar in the West to render
unnecessary any revision of the popular verdict which has already been
passed on him. But are his judges equally familiar with the teaching
which his name represents? The name of Shakespeare was well enough
known to Frenchmen in the time of Voltaire. Yet how many generations
had to pass ere they began to recognise his true greatness? The
parallel between dramatist and social reformer may seem strained, but
it is not drawn at random. In both cases, wide differences of language
and the inadequacy of translations to bridge the gap, lie at the root
of the trouble.
No great man has suffered more than Confucius from the stupidity, the
misstatements and the misrepresentations, from the lack of sympathy
and generosity, and, in some points, from the pure ignorance of his
critics. Early travellers arriving from the West, amongst a people
utterly alien to themselves in almost every detail--language,
dress, habits, modes of thought, ethical ideals and general view of
life--would have done well to walk very warily and, in the Confucian
phrase, "to reserve their judgment" on what they saw and heard around
them. But patience and discrimination were the very last virtues
which these inquisitive newcomers had a mind to practise; and,
unluckily, the extraordinary fame of the national sage marked him out
as one of the earliest victims to their thirst for the marvellous.
On the strength of Chinese evidence, readily forthcoming and eagerly
swallowed, the most exaggerated accounts of this new luminary were
poured into the ears of Europe, and it may well be imagined that these
enthusiastic reports suffered no diminution in the telling. Confucius
was the prince of philosophers, the wisest and most consummate of
sages, the loftiest moralist, the most subtle and penetrating intellect
that the world had ever seen. He was a statesman, a bard, an historian
and an antiquary rolled into one. His sagacity put the most illustrious
of ancient and modern philosophers to shame. He was the greatest and
noblest representative of the greatest, happiest, and most highly
civilised people on the face of the earth. Such extravagant eulogy
could only pave the way for disillusionment. When, after the lapse of
a hundred years or so, foreigners had painfully acquired sufficient
knowledge of the language to enable them to begin translating, after
a fashion, parts of the Classics said to have been composed by this
glorious sage, or at least containing the choicest pearls of his
wisdom still extant, it is not altogether surprising that the results
did not come up to the general expectation. Reactionist in, and it
soon became the fashion to decry the once much-lauded philosopher.
His sayings, which had been extolled as the very epitome of wisdom,
were now voted jejune and commonplace. His teaching was found to be
shallow, disjointed, unsatisfying. He was blamed for his materialistic
bias, for his rigid formalism, for his poverty of ideas, for his lack
of spiritual elevation. Comparisons, much in his disfavour, were
drawn between him and the founders of other world-systems of religion
and ethics. All this before the circumstances of his career had been
studied, before the surface of contemporary Chinese history had been so
much as scratched, before the host of native commentators and critics
had been consulted, or their existence even become known; above all,
before the very book which contained his authentic sayings had been
translated with anything approaching to exactness or understanding, or
with a faint realisation of its numerous difficulties and pit-falls.
Such was still the deplorable state of things when Legge set to work
on his translation of the Confucian Canon, which when completed many
years later, with its exhaustive prolegomena, notes and appendices,
formed a truly wonderful monument of research and erudition. With
its publication, Chinese scholarship was carried at once to a higher
plane, and foreign study of Confucian doctrine began in earnest.
The heavy accumulations of ignorance and error were in large part
removed, and the figure of the great Teacher began at last to emerge
from the "obliterating sands of time." His sayings were no longer read
as interesting but desultory fragments of conversation, but studied
in relation to the events of his life. From various Chinese sources,
the chief of which were the Analects themselves and Ssŭ-ma Ch‘ien's
biography, Legge managed to compile a good and coherent account of
the sage's life, work and wanderings, which was an enormous advance
on anything that had been done before, and is not likely, even in the
future, to undergo any considerable addition or amendment. There are
many minor points which may be disputed, and many long blanks which
may never be filled up, but taken as a whole, the chronology and the
leading events of the life of Confucius must now be considered as
finally settled.
If Legge is on firm ground where hard facts are concerned, it is far
otherwise when he comes to draw inferences from these facts, to sum up
the salient principles of Confucian ethics, and to pass judgment on the
character of Confucius himself. His pronouncements on these points,
too hastily accepted as final, need to be carefully re-examined and,
as I shall hope to show, largely modified if not totally reversed. His
opinion, of course, was based chiefly on his own interpretation of the
more important sayings in the Analects, in translating which he had
the oral help of native scholars, besides the benefit of voluminous
standard commentaries. Thus equipped for his task, it cannot but appear
strange that he, admittedly a great sinologue, should have gone so
far astray as to miss the very core and essence of the doctrines to
the elucidation of which he devoted most of his life. The explanation
may lie in the fact that he was a Christian missionary in the first
place, and only secondly a scientific student; he had come to teach
and convert the heathen, not to be taught or converted by them. This
preconceived idea acted as a drag on the free use of his understanding,
and prevented him from entering whole-heartedly into his subject. We
are told that the Master himself had "no foregone conclusions," but
Legge's whole attitude to Confucianism bespoke one comprehensive and
fatal foregone conclusion--the conviction that it must at every point
prove inferior to Christianity. A certain inelasticity of mind showed
itself also in the way in which he approached the work of translation.
He was too apt to look upon a Chinese word as something rigid and
unchanging in its content, which might be uniformly rendered by a
single English equivalent. Delicate shades of meaning he too often
ruthlessly ignored. Now there is a certain number of Chinese terms
which mirror Chinese ideas, but have really no absolute equivalent
in English at all, and must therefore be translated with the aid of
circumlocution, and in such a way as to suit the context and the
general spirit of the passage. It is in such terms, unfortunately,
that the very essence and inner significance of the Confucian teaching
are contained. Obviously, if proper equivalents are not given, the
whole sense of the passages in which they occur will be lost or
violently distorted. Worse still, the judgments laboriously built up
on such rotten foundations will be hopelessly vitiated. Here, indeed,
we have an object-lesson of the importance, clearly recognised by
Confucius himself, of "defining terms" and making "words harmonise
with things." Indispensable as such a process is for any investigation
in which language plays a part, it is doubly so when words have to be
transplanted, as it were, from their native soil to one differing from
it in almost every conceivable quality. Such an operation can only be
successful if carried out with the utmost delicacy and care, and no
amount of erudition can supply the want of that instinctive feeling
for the right word which is the translator's choicest gift. The scope
of the present work forbids my entering into details, but some broad
examples of failure in this respect will be noted later on.
Of the life of Confucius only the barest sketch can be given here,
but stress may be laid on one or two points which it is important to
bear in mind. Confucius was born at a time when the feudal system,
established several centuries earlier by the founder of the Chou
dynasty, was showing unmistakable signs of disruption and decay. It
is almost certain that China had been feudally governed from the very
earliest times, but Wu Wang placed the whole system on a seemingly
firmer basis than ever. He divided his realm into a large number of
vassal states, which he bestowed upon his own kith and kin who had
helped him to the throne. Thus the Empire really came to resemble the
huge united family which Chinese political theorists declare it to be,
and for a short time all seems to have worked smoothly. But as the
bonds of kinship grew looser, the central government gradually lost
all effective control over its unruly children, and the various states
were soon embroiled in perpetual feuds and struggles among themselves,
besides being usually at loggerheads with the parent dynasty. The state
of things that ensued may be likened (though on a far larger scale) to
several Wars of the Roses going on at the same time, or better still,
to the turbulence of the later days of the Holy Roman Empire, when the
fealty of its members had become merely nominal. Matters were further
complicated in many of the states by the upgrowth of large and powerful
families which often attempted either by insidious methods or by open
violence to wrest the supreme authority into their own hands. Thus in
Lu, the comparatively small state to which Confucius belonged, there
were three such families, the Chi, the Mêng, and the Shu; the heads of
these clans, of whom we hear a good deal in the Analects, had already,
by the time of Confucius, reduced their lawful prince (or duke, as
he is generally called) to a condition of virtual dependency. On the
other hand, they themselves were sometimes threatened by the lawless
behaviour of their own officers, such as the ambitious chariot-driver,
Yang Huo,[1] who thought nothing of seizing towns or even the person
of his own chief, in order to hold him to ransom. Thus, though the
period of the "Warring States" is not usually reckoned as beginning
until after the death of Confucius, the date is a purely arbitrary one,
inasmuch as his whole life long disturbances were rife and military
operations well-nigh incessant throughout the length and breadth of
China. In the midst of the prevailing disorder, Confucius comported
himself with an admirable mixture of dignity, tact and outspoken
courage. Wisely opposing the dangerous tendency to decentralisation,
and upholding the supreme authority of the Emperor as against his too
powerful vassals, he heartily disapproved of the illegal usurpations
of the dukes, the great families and the soldiers of fortune that
preyed one upon the other, and did not shrink on occasion from
expressing his disgust in unequivocal terms. But knowing the futility
of protests unbacked by force, he kept himself aloof for the most
part, and devoted himself to a long course of study and teaching,
gathering, it is said, as many as three thousand disciples around him.
This is a palpable exaggeration, but there can be no doubt that he had
become a marked man and gained great fame as a moralist and teacher
many years before he actually took office. In 501 B.C., at the age of
fifty, he at last made his entry on the political stage by accepting
the governorship of a small town in Lu. Here he is said to have been
eminently successful in the work of reform, and he rapidly rose to be
the most trusted adviser of Duke Ting, who on one occasion at least
owed his life to the courage and address of his minister. But it was
not long ere the weak and fickle character of the ruler, carefully
manipulated by rivals to Confucius, brought about a catastrophe. The
neighbouring state of Ch‘i, jealous of the new prosperity of Lu under
the régime of the sage, cunningly sent as a gift to the prince a
band of beautiful women, trained in song and dance, and a number of
magnificent horses, in order to distract his mind from the serious
cares of state. The plotters had evidently taken the measure of their
victim, for the artifice succeeded, and Confucius felt compelled to
resign. Then began the weary years of wandering from state to state, in
which we cannot follow him here, except to note a sagacious prophecy
uttered by a friendly official on the frontier of Wei. Coming out from
an interview with Confucius, he comforted the woebegone disciples by
telling them that their Master's divine mission was now only just
beginning.[2] It may, indeed, be that the ensuing period of homeless
exile, hardships and danger, did more to spread the fame of the great
reformer than either the few brilliant years of office or those spent
as a teacher in the comparative seclusion of Lu. For one thing, it
could not but inspire and fortify his followers to observe that the
lofty principles which a sudden accession to power had failed to
corrupt, were equally capable of standing the test of adversity. His
serene and courageous bearing in many a strange and perilous situation
proved that the conception of a "higher type of man" was for him no
empty ideal, but the worthy object of practical endeavour. It is sad,
however, to reflect that the best years of his life had passed before
the call came which resulted in his return. Had it not been so long
delayed, he would doubtless have thrown himself once more into the
arena of public affairs, and begun rebuilding the fabric of good
government which had been so rudely shattered thirteen years before.
His patience would have been equal to the task; but he was now an old
man, worn out by years of travel, privation and anxiety, at a time of
life when the physical frame begins to demand a certain measure of
quiet and repose. Hence, though he may be said to have returned to his
native state with flying colours, he took no further active part in its
administration, but devoted the rest of his life to literary labours
which have added materially to his fame. Such were the collecting
and editing of certain old national ballads known to us as the Odes,
and the penning of the Spring and Autumn Annals of Lu, which may be
regarded as the first real record of authentic facts, as opposed to the
mere string of speeches and eulogies which we find in the miscalled
Book of History.
To this closing period, too, are to be referred most of the sayings
given in the present volume. These, together with the invaluable
biography by Ssŭ-ma Ch'ien, which is largely built upon them, form the
only really reliable source of information about Confucius and his
doctrines. The Chinese title _Lun Yü_ may be rendered "Conversations"
or "Discussions," but neither is a very apt description of the work,
which contains very little discussion in the ordinary sense. It
consists in fact almost wholly of detached _obiter dicta_, or replies
to questions put by various disciples on subjects chiefly moral or
personal. These sayings were once supposed to have been collected and
committed to writing by the immediate disciples of Confucius, but Legge
has shown sufficient reason to believe that they were transmitted
orally at first, and did not take the form in which we have them
until at least two generations after the Master's death. Nor must it
be imagined that they represent the _ipsissima verba_ of Confucius.
No man could have made offhand remarks in such a crisp, concise and
epigrammatic style. A translation, in which brevity has again and again
to be sacrificed to smoothness and lucidity, hardly allows the European
reader to form any idea of the glittering compactness of these sayings
in the original. So far from having been uttered impromptu, they
appear to have been repeatedly ground and polished, and shorn of every
redundancy, until they shone like diamonds fresh from the hands of the
cutter. At the same time, as expressing the essence of what the Master
thought and the substance of what he said, it is with good reason that
they are to be found inscribed on hundreds of thousands of scrolls
and tablets in every corner of the Empire. These gems, however, are
unsorted. As in most Chinese philosophical works, there is very little
attempt at orderly arrangement; even such a rough classification as
will be found in this volume is absent. This is not necessarily to be
regarded as a defect: jewels jumbled in a heap often have a charm which
they lack when strung symmetrically into a necklace. The only danger
is that unwary readers, looking in vain for a beginning, a middle
and an end, may jump to the conclusion that Confucius himself was
merely a master of casual apophthegms; they may very easily miss the
connecting principles which serve to bind the Confucian teachings into
one rounded system. Even the disciples seem to have been in danger of
overlooking the whole in their admiration of the parts. It needed the
penetration of Tsêng Tzŭ to tell them that the Master's Way was, after
all, simple in its diversity, and might be summed up in two words: duty
to oneself and charity to one's neighbour. Unhappily, owing to the
misinterpretation of these important words, the beautiful simplicity of
the Confucian doctrine has long passed unrecognised.
For what has been, and is perhaps even now, the prevailing conception
of Confucius in the West? Does not the name conjure up in most minds
the figure of a highly starched philosopher, dry, formal, pedantic,
almost inhuman in the unimpeachable correctness of his personal
conduct, rigid and precise in his notions of ceremonial, admirable
no doubt in his sentiments, but always more a man of words than of
deeds? He has been constantly accused of laying undue weight on things
external, of undervaluing natural impulses of the heart. "Propriety,"
says Legge, "was a great stumbling-block in the way of Confucius. His
morality was the result of the balancings of his intellect, fettered by
the decisions of men of old, and not the gushings of a loving heart,
responsive to the promptings of Heaven, and in sympathy with erring and
feeble humanity." It is high time that an effective protest was made
against such an amazing piece of misrepresentation. With bitter truth
we may retort that "propriety"--that is, the Chinese word _li_ which
has been cruelly saddled with this absurd rendering--has indeed been
a stumbling-block, but a stumbling-block not so much to Confucius as
to Dr. Legge himself. The whole tenor of the Master's teaching cries
aloud against such wilful and outrageous distortion. Any one who reads
the sayings carefully will soon discover that this accusation is not
only libellous but grotesque in its remoteness from the truth. If there
is one thing more than another which distinguishes Confucius from the
men of his day, it is the supreme importance which he attached to
_jên_, the feeling in the heart, as the source of all right conduct,
the stress which he laid on the internal as opposed to the external,
and even on motives rather than outward acts, except in so far as
these might be taken as an index to character. Over and over again
he gave proof of the highest and noblest moral courage in ignoring
the narrow rules of conventional morality and etiquette when these
conflicted with good feeling and common sense, and setting up in their
stead the grand rule of conscience which, by asserting the right of
each individual to judge such matters for himself, pushed liberty to
a point which was quite beyond the comprehension of his age. So far
from being "fettered by the decisions of men of old," it was his hand
that valiantly essayed to strike the fetters of bigotry and prejudice
from the necks of his countrymen. But whilst declining to be bound by
the ideas and the standards of others, he was not blind to the danger
of liberty degenerating into license. The new fetters, therefore,
that he forged for mankind were those of an iron self-discipline and
self-control, unaccompanied, however, by anything in the shape of
bodily mortification, a practice which he knew to be at once more showy
and less troublesome than the discipline of the mind.
Another charge not infrequently heard is one of a certain repellent
coldness of temperament and stiffness of demeanour. The warrant for
such a statement is not so readily forthcoming, unless indeed it is
to be found in the stiff and repellent style which characterises some
translations of his sayings. In the Analects we are told the exact
opposite of this. The Master, we read there, was uniformly cheerful
in demeanour, and he evidently unbent to quite an unusual extent with
his disciples, considering the respect and deference universally shown
to age and learning in China. Is it at all conceivable that a man of
cold and unlovable temper should have attracted round him hundreds
of disciples, with many of whom he was on terms of most intimate
intercourse, meeting them not only in the lecture-room, as modern
professors meet their classes, but living with them, eating, drinking,
sleeping and conversing with them, until all their idiosyncrasies,
good or bad, were better known to him than to their own parents? Is it
explicable, except on the ground of deep personal affection, that he
should have been followed into exile by a faithful band of disciples,
not one of whom is known ever to have deserted or turned against him?
Is coldness to be predicated of the man who in his old age, for once
losing something of his habitual self-control, wept passionately for
the death of his dearly loved disciple Yen Hui, and would not be
comforted?
But it has been reserved for the latest English translator of the
Analects, the Rev. Mr. Jennings, to level some of the worst charges
at his head. To begin with, he approvingly quotes, as Legge's final
opinion on Confucius, words occurring in the earliest edition of the
Chinese Classics to the effect that he is "unable to regard him as a
great man," quite heedless of the fact that the following stands in
the edition of 1893 (two years before his own translation appeared):
"But I must now leave the sage. I hope I have not done him injustice;
the more I have studied his character and opinions, the more highly
have I come to regard him. _He was a very great man_, and his influence
has been on the whole a great benefit to the Chinese, while his
teachings suggest important lessons to ourselves who profess to belong
to the school of Christ." This summing-up, though certainly unexpected
in view of much that has gone before, does partly atone for the unjust
strictures which Dr. Legge felt it necessary to pass on Confucius
at an earlier period, though it may require many years entirely
to obliterate their effect. What I wish to emphasise at present,
however, is the unfairness of quoting an early and presumably crude
and ill-considered opinion in preference to the latest and maturest
judgment of an authority who at no time can be said to err On the side
of over-partiality for his subject.
But this is not all. For after pointing out, truly enough, that
Confucius cannot well be blamed for "giving no impulse to religion,"
inasmuch as he never pretended to make this his aim, Mr. Jennings goes
on to pick some holes on his own account, and incontinently falls
into exactly the same error that he had previously rebuked in Dr.
Legge. "In his _reserve_ about great and important matters, while
professing to teach men, he is perhaps most to blame, and in his
holding back what was best in the religion of the ancients." What these
great and important matters were, is not made very clear, but if, as
seems probable, the phrase is simply another way of referring to "the
religion of the ancients," it can only be repeated that religion was
a subject which he disliked to discuss and certainly did not profess
to teach, as is plainly indicated in the Analects. And the reason why
he refrained from descanting on such matters was that, knowing nothing
of them himself, he felt that he would have been guilty of hypocrisy
and fraud had he made a show of instructing others therein. Would that
a like candour distinguished some of our own professed teachers of
religion!
The last accusation against Confucius is the most reckless of all.
"There is," according to Mr. Jennings, "a certain _selfishness_ in
his teaching, which had the effect of making those who came under his
influence soon feel themselves great and self-satisfied." As only the
feeblest of evidence is produced to support this wild statement, it
will not be necessary to consider it at any length, though we may ask
in passing whether Yen Hui, the disciple who profited most from his
Master's teaching and best exemplified it, is depicted as exhibiting
this alleged self-satisfaction in a peculiarly noticeable degree. For
an answer to this question the reader may be referred to Tsêng Tzŭ's
remarks on p. 128.
The truth is, though missionaries and other zealots have long attempted
to obscure the fact, that the moral teaching of Confucius is absolutely
the purest and least open to the charge of selfishness of any in
the world. Its principles are neither utilitarian on the one hand
nor religious on the other, that is to say, it is not based on the
expectation of profit or happiness to be gained either in this world or
in the next (though Confucius doubtless believed that well-being would
as a general rule accompany virtuous conduct). "Virtue for virtue's
sake" is the maxim which, if not enunciated by him in so many words,
was evidently the corner-stone of his ethics and the mainspring of
his own career. Not that he would have quite understood the modern
formula, or that the idea of virtue being practised for anything but
its own sake would ever have occurred to his mind. Virtue resting on
anything but its own basis would not have seemed to him virtue in the
true sense at all, but simply another name for prudence, foresight,
or cunning. Yet material advantage, disguised as much as you will,
but still material advantage in one form or another, is what impels
most men to espouse any particular form of religion. Hence it is
nothing less than a standing miracle that Confucianism, which makes
no promise of blessings to be enjoyed in this life or the next, should
have succeeded without the adjunct of other supernatural elements than
that of ancestor-worship. Even this was accepted by Confucius as a
harmless prevailing custom rather than enjoined by him as an essential
part of his doctrine. Unlike Christianity and Mahometanism, the Way
preached by the Chinese sage knows neither the sanction of punishment
nor the stimulus of reward in an after-life. Even Buddhism holds out
the hope of Nirvana to the pure of heart, and preaches the long torment
of successive rebirths to those who fall short of perfect goodness.
No great religion is devoid of elevated precepts, or has ever failed
to mould numbers of beautiful characters to attest the presence of
something good and great within it. But in every case the element
of supernaturalism, which is of course inseparable from a religion
properly so called, introduces a new motive for men's actions and makes
it no longer possible for virtue to be followed purely for its own
sake, without thought of a hereafter. Thus, if we assent to Comte's
famous law of the Three States, Confucianism really represents a more
advanced stage of civilisation than biblical Christianity. Indeed, as
Mr. Carey Hall has recently pointed out in an article on the subject,
Confucius may be regarded as the true fore-runner runner of Comte in
his positivist mode of thought.
His whole system is based on nothing more nor less than the knowledge
of human nature. The instincts of man are social and therefore
fundamentally good, while egoism is at bottom an artificial product and
evil. Hence the insistence on altruism which we find in the sayings
of Confucius, the injunction to "act socially," to live for others in
living for oneself. The most important word in the Confucian vocabulary
is _jên_, which in the following extracts is translated "virtue" only
for want of a better term. Our English word "virtue" has so many
different shades of meaning and is withal so vague, that in using it,
the idea of altruism is often hardly present to our mind. But in _jên_
the implication of "social good" emerges much more distinctly. Its
connotation has no doubt extended gradually until it seems often to be
rather a compendium of all goodness than any one virtue in particular.
But this development only means that the word is following in the track
of the thing itself. For let a man be but thoroughly imbued with the
altruistic spirit, and he may be termed "good" without qualification,
since all other virtues tend to flow from unselfishness.
The Confucian theory of man's social obligations rests first and
foremost on the fact that he forms part of a great social machine--an
aggregation of units, each of which is called a family. The family, in
Chinese eyes, is a microcosm of the Empire, or rather, since the family
is chronologically prior to the State, it is the pattern on which the
greater organism has moulded itself. The feudal system under which
Confucius lived naturally accentuated the likeness. The Emperor had,
in theory at least, paternal authority over his feudal princes, who
in turn, standing to one another in the relation of elder and younger
brothers, were regarded as the fathers of their respective peoples.
Now, the way to ensure that a machine as a whole may run smoothly and
well, is to see that each part shall fulfil its own function in proper
subordination to the rest. How is this result achieved in the family?
Obviously through the controlling will of the father, who has supreme
authority over all the other members. But this authority is not by any
means the mere brute force of a tyrant. It is based firstly on the
natural order of things, whereby the father is clearly intended to be
the protector of his children; and secondly, as a consequence of this,
on the love and respect which will normally spring up in the minds of
the children for their protector. Such is the genesis of filial piety,
which plays so large a part in Chinese ethics. It is quite untrue,
however, to say with Mr. Jennings, that no corresponding parental
duties are recognised by Confucius, as the following anecdote may
serve to show. During the sage's short period of office as Minister
of Crime, a father came to him bringing some serious charge against
his son. Confucius kept them both in prison for three months, without
making any difference in favour of the father, and then let them go.
The Minister Chi Huan remonstrated with him for this, and reminded him
of his saying, that filial duty was the first thing to be insisted on.
"What hinders you now from putting this unfilial son to death as an
example to all the people?" Confucius' reply was, that the father had
never taught his son to be filial, and that therefore the guilt really
rested with him.
For the harmonious working of a family, then, we need respect for
authority on one side, and self-sacrifice on the other. The father's
object must be entirely altruistic--the good of his family. Then
only will he be doing his duty as a father, just as a son is not
doing his duty unless he shows honour and obedience to his parents.
The all-important element which makes possible the working of the
family machine, the lubricating oil that eases the bearings, is not
merely filial piety without any corresponding feeling on the part
of the parent, but rather a certain subtle principle of harmony and
self-control permeating every member of the family group, which
restrains egoistic propensities and promotes the common good. This is
the Chinese term _li_, which in this sense of a quality of the soul
is hardly translatable by any single word or combination of words,
but is certainly not to be rendered by any such atrocious phrase as
"the rules of propriety."[3] Now Confucius saw that the same general
principles which govern the family are applicable also to that greatest
of families, the State. Here we have the Emperor, in whose hands the
supreme authority must lie, exercising functions exactly analogous to
those of the father of a family. But if his is the supreme authority,
his must also be the supreme responsibility. Veneration and respect
are his due, but only because he identifies himself with the good of
the people. In public affairs, just as in the home, there must be
that same principle of harmony to regulate the relations of governor
and governed, otherwise the machine will not work. There must be _li_
here as well, but as it is not possible for the sovereign to maintain
with his subjects the personal intimacy which unites a father and
his sons, it is necessary to fall back upon symbols, and to give
outward and visible expression to the inward sentiments of loyalty and
respect which should animate the breast of each member of the nation.
These symbols are the rites and ceremonies of which Confucius was
considered such a past-master. He saw indeed their full importance
as symbols, but he also knew that, divorced from the inward feeling,
they were meaningless and without value. In this way it is easy to see
how the word _li_, as a human attribute, acquired its various shades
of meaning, from the harmony in the soul which prompts action in
accordance with true natural instincts, down to ordinary politeness and
good manners--also an indispensable lubricant in the lesser dealings of
life between man and man.
It was in the family again that Confucius found a natural force at work
which he thought might be utilised as an immense incentive to virtue.
This was the universal human proneness to imitation. Knowing that
personal example is the most effective way in which a father can teach
his sons what is right, he unhesitatingly attributed the same powerful
influence to the personal conduct of the sovereign, and went so far as
to declare that if the ruler was personally upright, his subjects would
do their duty unbidden; if he was not upright, they would not obey,
whatever his bidding. "The virtue of the prince," he said, "is like
unto wind; that of the people, like unto grass. For it is the nature of
grass to bend when the wind blows upon it." It must be admitted that
Confucius has in this particular somewhat overshot the mark and formed
too sanguine an estimate of the force of example. It would be unfair,
however, to base our argument on the analogy of modern democratic
states, where the controlling power is split up into several branches,
and the conspicuousness of the monarch is much diminished. Not that
even the constitutional sovereign of to-day may not wield a very
decided influence in morals. But this influence was much greater while
the king retained full despotic power, and greatest of all in feudal
times, when the successive gradations of rank and the nice arrangement
of a hierarchy of officials, each accountable to the one above him,
were specially designed to convey and filter it among all classes of
the community. Had Confucius been able to find a prince who would have
acted consistently on Confucian principles, the results might have been
almost as grand as he anticipated. The experiment was tried, we must
remember, on a small scale, when Confucius himself became governor of
a town in the State of Lu. And although one must be chary of accepting
all the extravagant tales which gathered round his brief official
career, it seems indisputable that this political theory, unlike many
others, proved reasonably successful in actual practice.
Of course the weak point is that every king cannot be a Confucius,
and unless some practical method can be devised of electing rulers
on the ground of merit alone, it is impossible to ensure that their
conduct shall serve as a pattern to their people. "Rotten wood cannot
be carved," the Master himself once remarked, and he found bitter
confirmation of his saying in Duke Ting of Lu. Nothing could ever have
been made out of such utterly weak and worthless material. And he
afterwards spent thirteen years of his life in the fruitless search
for a sovereign who would correspond even faintly to his ideal. Such
unswerving devotion to the abstract cause of right and justice and
good government cannot but puzzle those who have been taught to regard
Confucius as the very type and embodiment of materialistic wisdom and
practical utilitarianism. But in truth, strange though it may sound,
he was a great idealist who gained his hold on his countrymen by
virtue rather of his noble imaginings and lofty aspirations than of
any immediate results or tangible achievements. By the men of his own
day he was more often than not considered a charlatan and an impostor.
It is remarkable that even the two Taoist recluses and the eccentric
Chieh Yü (p. 122) should have condemned him as a visionary and a
"crank." Similar was the impression he made on the gate-keeper who
asked a disciple if his Master was the man "who was always trying to
do what he knew to be impossible." This playful sarcasm is really the
best commentary on his career, and one that pays him unintentionally
the greatest honour. Though often disheartened by the long and bitter
struggle against adverse circumstance and the powers of evil, he never
gave over in disgust. Therein lay his greatness. "Wer immer strebend
sich bemüht, Den können wir erlösen," sing the angels in _Faust_, and
no man ever toiled for the good of his fellow-creatures with greater
perseverance or with less apparent prospect of success. In this, the
truest sense, he could say that his whole life had been a prayer (p.
87). He succeeded in that he seemed to fail. He never achieved the
Utopian object of reforming all mankind by means of a wise and good
sovereign. On the contrary, after his death confusion grew worse
confounded, and the din of arms rose to a pitch from which it did not
subside until after the momentous revolution which swept away the
Chou dynasty and established a new order of things in China. In a
radically individualistic and liberty-loving country like China, the
feudal system was bound sooner or later to perish, even as it perished
in a later day among ourselves. But throughout the anarchy of that
terrible period, the light kindled by Confucius burned steadily and
prepared men's minds for better things. His ideal of government was
not forgotten, his sayings were treasured like gold in the minds of
the people. Above all, his own example shone like a glorious beacon,
darting its rays through the night of misery and oppression and
civil strife which in his lifetime he had striven so earnestly to
remove. And so it came about that his belief in the political value of
personal goodness was in some sort justified after all; for the great
and inspiriting pattern which he sought in vain among the princes of
his time was to be afforded in the end by no other than himself--the
"throneless king," who is for ever enshrined in the hearts of his
countrymen. It is absurd, then, to speak of his life as a failure.
Measured by results--the almost incalculably great and far-reaching
consequences which followed tardily but irresistibly after he was
gone--his life was one of the most successful ever lived by man. Three
others, and only three, are comparable to it in world-wide influence:
Gautama's self-sacrificing sojourn among men, the stormy career of
the Arab Prophet, and the "sinless years" which found their close on
Golgotha.
[1] See p. 121.
[2] See p. 118.
[3] See note on p. 60.
LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL DISCIPLES
The proper names occurring in the Analects present some difficulty to
the European reader, as one and the same person is often referred to
in several different ways--by his surname and personal name, by his
"style," or by a combination of the two, while among intimates the
personal name only is employed. Mr. Ku has on this account eliminated
almost all proper names from his translation, using a periphrasis
instead. But by this method one misses much of the characterisation
which is such an attractive feature of the Analects. I have judged
it better to give the names of the principal disciples exactly as
they appear in the Chinese, and to provide a table of their various
appellations for easy reference. An asterisk denotes the name most
frequently used.
Surname and Style. Mixed Appellation.
Personal Name.
Yen Hui Tzŭ Yüan Yen Yüan.*
Min Sun } Tzŭ Ch‘ien Min Tzŭ-ch‘ien,*
(Min Tzŭ)}
Jan Kêng Po Niu* Jan Po-niu.
Jan Yung Chung Kung*
Jan Ch‘iu Tzŭ Yu Jan Yu.*
Chung Yu Tzŭ Lu*}
Chi Lu }
Tsai Yü Tzŭ Wo Tsai Wo.*
Tuan-mu Tz‘ŭ Tzŭ Kung*
Yen Yen Tzŭ Yŭ* Yen Yu.
Pu Shang Tzŭ Hsia*
Chuan-sun Shih Tzŭ Chang*
Tsêng Shên } Tzŭ Yŭ
(Tsêng Tzŭ*)}
Fan Hsü Tzŭ Ch‘ih Fan Ch‘ih.*
Ssŭ-ma Kêng Tzŭ Niu Ssŭ-ma Niu.*
Kung-hsi Ch‘ih Tzŭ Hua Kung-hsi Hua.*
Yu Jo } Tzŭ Jo
(Yu Tzŭ*)}
GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS
The Master said: In ruling a country of a thousand chariots there
should be scrupulous attention to business, honesty, economy, charity,
and employment of the people at the proper season.
A virtuous ruler is like the Pole-star, which keeps its place, while
all the other stars do homage to it.
People despotically governed and kept in order by punishments may avoid
infraction of the law, but they will lose their moral sense. People
virtuously governed and kept in order by the inner law of self-control
will retain their moral sense, and moreover become good.
Duke Ai[1] asked, saying: What must I do that my people may be
contented?--Confucius replied: Promote the upright and dismiss all
evil-doers, and the people will be contented. Promote the
evil-doers and dismiss the upright, and the people will be discontented.
Chi K‘ang Tzu[2] asked by what means he might cause his people to be
respectful and loyal, and encourage them in the path of virtue. The
Master replied: Conduct yourself towards them with dignity, and you
will earn their respect; be a good son and a kind prince, and you will
find them loyal; promote the deserving and instruct those who fall
short, and they will be encouraged to follow the path of virtue.
Some one, addressing Confucius, said: Why, Sir, do you take no part in
the government?--The Master replied: What does the Book of History say
about filial piety?--Do your duty as a son and as a brother, and these
qualities will make themselves felt in the government. This, then,
really amounts to taking part in the government. Holding office need
not be considered essential.
The people can be made to follow a certain path, but they cannot be
made to know the reason why.
Tzu Kung asked for a definition of good government. The Master replied:
It consists in providing enough food to eat, in keeping enough
soldiers to guard the State, and in winning the confidence of the
people.--And if one of these three things had to be sacrificed, which
should go first?--The Master replied: Sacrifice the soldiers.--And if
of the two remaining things one had to be sacrificed, which should
it be?--The Master said: Let it be the food. From the beginning, men
have always had to die. But without the confidence of the people no
government can stand at all.
Ching, Duke of the Ch‘i State, questioned Confucius on the art of
government. Confucius replied: Let the sovereign do his duty as a
sovereign, the subject his duty as a subject, the father his duty as a
father, and the son his duty as a son.--A good answer! said the Duke;
for unless sovereign and subject, father and son do their respective
duties, however much grain there may be in the land, I could obtain
none to eat.
Tzu Chang put a question about the art of governing. The Master said:
Devote yourself patiently to the theory, and conscientiously to the
practice, of government.
Chi K‘ang Tzŭ asked Confucius for advice on the subject of government.
Confucius replied: To govern is to keep straight.[3] If you, Sir, lead
the people straight, which of your subjects will venture to fall out of
line?
Chi K‘ang Tzŭ, being vexed by robbers, asked Confucius for his advice.
Confucius replied, saying: If you, sir, can check your own cupidity,
there will be no stealing, even though rewards should be offered for
theft.
Chi K‘ang Tzŭ questioned Confucius on a point of government, saying:
Ought not I to cut off the lawless in order to establish law and order?
What do you think?--Confucius replied: Sir, what need is there of the
death penalty in your system of government? If you showed a sincere
desire to be good, your people would likewise be good. The virtue of
the prince is like unto wind; that of the people, like unto grass. For
it is the nature of grass to bend when the wind blows upon it.
Tzŭ Lu asked for a hint on the art of governing. The Master replied:
Take the lead and set the example of diligent toil.--Asked for a
further hint, he said: Be patient and untiring.
Chung Kung, being Prime Minister to the head of the Chi clan, asked for
advice on governing. The Master said: Make a point of employing your
subordinates, overlook trifling mistakes, raise to office worthy and
able men.--But, said Chung Kung, how am I to discover these worthy men
and single them out for promotion?--Promote those that you know, was
the reply. As for those that you do not know, will not their claims be
brought before you by others?