Various religious notions and practices of the people of Weihaiwei have been already dealt with in connection with other subjects, but it remains to investigate more thoroughly the relations that exist in this part of the Empire between the so-called Three Religions of China (Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism) and the extent to which they severally contribute to the religious life of the people.

A writer quoted in the Ning-hai Chronicle says of the inhabitants of this district that their customs are thoroughly orthodox, or, as he expresses it, "in complete accordance with the doctrines of Tsou and Lu,"—the native states of Mencius and Confucius respectively. The rituals connected with the worship—if it may be so termed[251]—of Confucius himself have, however, no place in the ordinary religious observances of the millions of China, and this is just as true of Shantung—the modern province which includes the two ancient states just mentioned—as of any other part of the Empire. Practically those rituals are carried out only by the governing classes in their official capacity; one therefore finds few traces of the personal Confucian cult except in the cities, at the spring and autumn ceremonies held under the auspices of the district-magistrates and higher officials in the ShÊng Miao or Holy (Confucian) Temples. Such rites, accordingly, have no place in the Territory of Weihaiwei, though they are carried out with all the orthodox ceremonies in the neighbouring cities of Jung-ch'Êng, WÊn-tÊng and Ning-hai. Not only is it the case that the officials alone are regarded as competent to carry out the elaborate memorial or semi-religious services connected with the cult of the sage, but to a great extent the same is true in respect of some of the far more ancient rites which are regarded as coming under the head of Confucianism because Confucius "transmitted" them to posterity with his consecrating approval. Such are the biennial sacrifices to Heaven and Earth and to the Land and Grain, and the spring sacrifice at the Altar of Agriculture. The high-priest at these great ceremonies is the Emperor himself, and it is only by his deputies (that is to say the ti-fang kuan or territorial officials) that similar rites can be performed in places other than the capital.

Yet it must not be supposed that there is no such thing as Confucianism in China outside the ranks of the official classes. Confucian ideals of life and conduct, Confucian doctrines of the relations between rulers and ruled, Confucian views of the reciprocal rights and duties of parents and children, friends, neighbours, strangers, the Confucian sanction of the cult of Ancestors, these are all strong living forces in the China of to-day. "Wherever Chinamen go," says Dr. H. A. Giles, "they carry with them in their hearts the two leading features of Confucianism, the patriarchal system and ancestral worship."[252] The influx of new light from the West is doubtless bringing about a change in the traditional attitude of the Chinese towards the person of the teacher whom their forefathers have revered for more than two thousand years; but though the Confucian cult conceivably at some future time may be formally disestablished and the Confucian temples turned into technical colleges, it is to be hoped for the sake of China that many centuries will elapse before Confucianism as a moral force, as a guide of life, fades away from the hearts and minds of the people. Confucianism is not a mere code of rules that can be established or abrogated as the fancy takes any prominent statesman who happens to have the ear of the throne; it has intertwined itself with the very roots of the tree of Chinese life, and if that venerable tree, in spite of a mutilated branch or two, is still very far from hopeless decay it is to Confucianism that much of its strength and vigour is due.[253]

Perhaps no teacher of antiquity has suffered more disastrously at the hands of most of his interpreters and translators than has Confucius. Even his Chinese commentators have not always been successful; it is then little to be wondered at that European students, often lacking both a complete equipment of Chinese scholarship and a power of sympathetic insight into alien modes of thought, and above all possessed by an intensely strong bias against "heathendom" and "heathen" thinkers, have failed again and again to give their fellow-countrymen an adequate account either of the Confucian system as a whole or of the personal character of the Master himself.

Confucius, as one of his most recent English translators reminds us, was one of the most open-minded of men, and approached no subject with "foregone conclusions"; but the whole attitude of the Englishman who is still regarded as the great expounder of Confucianism to the English-speaking world (Dr. Legge) "bespoke one comprehensive and fatal foregone conclusion—the conviction that it must at every point prove inferior to Christianity."[254]

Now what is the impression that Confucianism gives to a European student who is not only a good Chinese scholar and therefore able to dispense with translations, but is also entirely free from religious prejudice?

"The moral teaching of Confucius," says the writer just quoted, "is absolutely the purest and least open to the charge of selfishness of any in the world.... '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.... 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."[255]

I have italicised certain words in this quotation for a reason which will soon be apparent. As is well known, Confucianism and ancestor-worship, as well as Buddhism and Taoism, all established themselves in Japan. Confucianism is said to have entered Japan in the sixth century of our era, though it remained in a stationary position, somewhat inferior in influence to Buddhism, for about a thousand years. But during the last three hundred years at least, "the developed Confucian philosophy," says an authority on Japanese religion,[256]" has been the creed of a majority of the educated men of Japan." Later on he refers to "the prevalence of the Confucian ethics and their universal acceptance by the people of Japan."[257] Of course the Confucian system underwent certain changes in its new island home, as Dr. Griffis is careful to point out,—especially in the direction of emphasising loyalty to sovereign and overlord: but it still remained recognisable Confucianism. Mr. P. Vivian, in a highly interesting volume,[258] mentions the fact that "Confucianism is an agnostic ethical system which the educated classes of Japan have adopted for centuries, and its splendid results are just now much in evidence." Later on he quotes an exceedingly significant and important statement made by the Rev. Henry Scott Jeffreys, a missionary in Japan. "After seven years' residence among this people I wish to place on record my humble testimony to their native virtues.... They love virtue for its own sake, and not from fear of punishment or hope of reward." Could higher praise than this be given to any people on earth? He goes on, "The conversion of this people to the Christian faith is a most complex and perplexing problem, not because they are so bad but because they are so good."[259]

I have italicised the words that are of special interest when considered in connection with the statement already quoted from Mr. Lionel Giles. It is true that the praise given to the Japanese is a great deal too high: there is no nation, whether Christian or non-Christian, that deserves such praise. At the same time most Europeans might find it no easy task to prove to the satisfaction of an intelligent visitor from another planet that the Christian nations are, on the whole, more virtuous than the people of Japan. The European advocate would, of course, lay stress on the alleged weakness of Japanese commercial morality, and perhaps with very good cause. But there is no valid reason for supposing that the Japanese, without Christianity, cannot and will not amend their ways in this respect, and in any case commercial immorality receives no more justification from Confucian than it does from Christian ethics.[260]

But Japan is not China: and if Confucianism be such a good thing, exclaims the wondering European, how is it that China is in a state of decay, that Chinese officials are corrupt, that the population is sodden with opium, that the country is only now, after centuries of sloth and stagnation, beginning to show an interest in Western civilisation and modern science? The real condition of China, or at least of the Chinese people, is perhaps not so rotten as it is sometimes believed to be, in spite of the grave political and social dangers that at present lie ahead. But waiving this point and admitting that reforms are coming not a day too soon, let us consider one or two of the most obvious causes to which the present state of China may be attributed. China was for many centuries so easily supreme in her own quarter of the globe that a strenuous life became for her unnecessary. Conflict is a law of nature, but owing to peculiar circumstances China as a nation became to a great extent temporarily exempt from that law.[261] She sank into inactivity because it was not necessary for her, as it was and is for the great nations of Europe, to be continually sharpening her wits against those of her neighbours, or to be for ever engaged in the Sisyphean task of redressing "the balance of power." Do the nations of modern Europe sufficiently realise to what extent they owe their progress and civilisation and even their mechanical inventions to the fact that they have all been pitted against each other in a more or less equal struggle for existence in which none has ever succeeded in establishing a supremacy over all the rest? Had powerful and united non-Chinese kingdoms established themselves in the Indo-Chinese peninsula, in India itself, in the plains and mountains of Tibet and Mongolia, in Korea and in mediÆval Japan,—kingdoms capable of contending with China on fairly level terms, competent to defend themselves against her attacks yet not strong enough to overcome her,—can it seriously be supposed that China would have been politically corrupt, unwarlike and unprogressive to-day?

That unhappy bird the great auk ceased to make use of its wings—perhaps owing to a fatal love for fish—and thereby incurred the punishment that inexorable Nature provides for those who neglect to exercise the faculties she provides them with. Somewhat in the same way China, fatally set at liberty from the invigorating impetus of competition, seems to have lost the use of those powers and qualities which ages ago carried her to the apex of the Asiatic world. Unlike the great auk, however, China has not yet become extinct, nor indeed is extinction likely to be her fate. To take an illustration of a very different kind, is it not the case that many a successful and energetic man of business is only saved from yielding to the insidious habit of taking afternoon naps by the incessant ringing of his telephone-bell? For ages China could count on undisturbed slumber whenever she required it—and it must be admitted that she seemed to require it long and often. The telephone-bell has now been ringing her up continuously for some little time; she ignored it at first, or perhaps it only gave a new colour to her dreams, or occasionally turned them into nightmares; but now she has risen, slowly and unwillingly it may be, and has put the receiver to her ear. She has taken down the messages sent her, and she is beginning to understand them; and among other things she is realising that afternoon slumbers for her are joys of the past.

If China thinks, or Europe persuades her into the belief, that her backward position among the great Powers of the world is due to Confucianism, she will be doing a great wrong to the memory of one of her greatest sons and a greater wrong to herself.[262] It would be just as reasonable to make the Founder of Christianity, one of the most gracious and most pitiful of men, responsible for the injustice and cruelty of the Crusades or for the frightful atrocities practised in Europe on the bodies of heretics, or for such priestly and monkish abuses as the sale of "pardons" and the traffic in saintly relics and fragments of the "True Cross"; indeed it would perhaps be rather more reasonable, for the mediÆval popes and monks at least professed to act in the name of their Lord, whereas it is not in the name of Confucius that offices in China are bought and sold or that Chinese magistrates take bribes and "squeezes," or that the naval and military defences of the country have been allowed to fall into decay. Does any one in Europe now suppose that if Christ had returned to earth in the Middle Ages He would have accepted a seat beside the Grand Inquisitors and joined them in sentencing innocent men and women "to the thumbscrew and the stake, for the glory of the Lord"? Or that if He had appeared in England in 1646 He would have supported the Act which made it a capital offence to deny the truth of any of the dogmas that the English Church of that period chose to consider essential?

This is how a papal legate in 1209 wrote to Innocent III. after a victorious crusade against the Albigenses: "Our troops, sparing neither sex nor age, put to the sword nearly twenty thousand; splendid deeds were accomplished in the overthrow of the enemy, the whole city was sacked and burned by a divine revenge marvellous fierce." A pope may have taken this doughty champion of the Church to his bosom, but is it conceivable that the Carpenter of Nazareth would have greeted this monster, whose sword was reeking with human blood, with the welcoming words, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant"? If we refuse, as we well may, to lay on Jesus the least tittle of responsibility for the terrible crimes perpetrated in Europe for many consecutive centuries in the name of the Christian religion, would it not be becoming on our part to hesitate before we ascribe the faults and disasters of the Chinese people and their Government wholly or even partially to their faith in the teachings of Confucius?

I once heard a kind-hearted Englishman say that he could forgive China all her faults except the torturing of prisoners in the law-courts and in the gaols. Torture in China—which is very slowly becoming obsolete—has very naturally made Europeans shudder with horror: but where does Confucius give countenance to torture? And after all, the extent of China's crime is only this, that she has not abolished the practice of torture quite so early as the nations of Western Europe and America. Perhaps the missionaries and others who have pointed out to the Chinese the enormity of their crime in permitting torture have sometimes omitted to state that only in comparatively recent times have we ourselves become so merciful as to forbid the practice. Without dwelling on the abominable punishments devised for heretical offenders in every country in Europe, it is as well to remember that torture was continually inflicted in England during the Tudor reigns,[263] and also under the Stuarts. In Scotland it was long a recognised part of criminal procedure, and was not finally abolished in that country till the eighteenth century.[264] The Most High and Mighty Prince whose name adorns the front page of our English Bibles, in one memorable case directed the application, if necessary, of "the most severe" tortures, and expressed the devout wish that the Almighty would "speed the good work."

When confronted with so lofty an ethical system as that taught by Confucius, European writers who wish to prove the justice of their contention that "it must at every point prove inferior to Christianity" are naturally driven to make the utmost of any passage in the Chinese classics that appears to reveal something of the Chinese sage's moral imperfections. Just as an anti-foreign Chinese commentator on the Christian religion might utilise certain texts in the Old Testament to show that the Christian God was neither just nor merciful, and certain texts in the New Testament to show that Jesus of Nazareth shared the superstitions of his age and was sometimes lacking in self-control, so European expounders of Confucianism have seized upon a few passages in the Confucian canon to prove to their own satisfaction that the great Sage of China did not always speak the truth. The passages are three in number. In one we are told that a certain brave man was commended by the Master for his absence of boastfulness, because though he nobly brought up the rear during a retreat, he said, "It is not courage that makes me last, it is my horse that won't gallop fast enough."[265] As courage really was the cause of his conduct, Prof. Legge and those who think with him take the view that the man's own explanation of what he had done was untruthful and that Confucius by awarding him praise condoned a lie. Considering that Confucius's only remark on the subject was that the man was no braggart, probably few of us except sanctimonious pedants would say that either the sage or his hero was guilty of an act or a word that was in any way discreditable.

In another famous passage it is narrated that "A man who wanted to see Confucius called on him. Confucius, not wishing to see him, sent to say he was sick. When the servant with the message went to the door, Confucius took up his musical instrument and sang aloud purposely to let the visitor hear it and know that he was not really sick."[266] It is interesting to note that in citing this little story as evidence of Confucius's lack of veracity, Prof. Legge omits to quote the second part of the passage,[267] though it ought to be obvious to the most casual reader that it was only for the sake of the remark about the music that the story was preserved in the Confucian canon at all. So far from proving that Confucius could tell a lie, it goes to show that even in small matters of everyday social intercourse Confucius's nature was superior to all the little "white lies" and deceptions that are and no doubt always have been continually practised in "Society." Probably in his day, as in our own, it was considered more polite to an unwelcome visitor to plead indisposition or absence from home as an excuse for not admitting him than to send him the blunt message, "You are not wanted: go away!" Confucius, however, wishing to make it quite clear to his visitor that the plea of sickness was merely a social subterfuge and was not intended to deceive (as a lie must surely be), took up his musical instrument and played it in his visitor's hearing.

So far from this passage proving that Confucius had an inadequate regard for the truth, it will perhaps strike a good many people as indicating that untruth and insincerity were abhorrent to Confucius's nature: and this was undoubtedly the impression that the disciple who remembered and recorded the incident wished to convey.

So much for two out of the three solitary occasions on which Confucius is said to have laid himself open to what Prof. Legge calls "the most serious charge that can be brought against him, the charge of insincerity." The events recorded in connection with the third occasion are much more grave and deserve closer attention. The story goes that Confucius when travelling to a place called Wei was captured by a rebel-brigand of that state, who would only release him on condition that he would take an oath to give up his proposed expedition to Wei. Confucius took the oath, and on his release forthwith continued his journey to the place he had sworn to avoid. On one of his disciples asking him whether it was a right thing to break his word, Confucius replied: "It was a forced oath. The spirits do not hear such." Now of the moral question here involved Sir Robert Douglas takes the view that it is "a nice question for casuists," but expresses the conviction that by most people Confucius "will not be held to be very blameworthy for that which, at the worst, was a mistaken notion of truthfulness."[268] On the other hand many of us will hold the equally strong conviction that if this story is true there is an ugly blot on the character of Confucius. If he deliberately and knowingly broke his word, as this story would indicate, then he was no gentleman.[269]

Le bon sang ne pent mentir, as the old French proverb says. Not his can have been what Burke in thrilling words calls "that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound." But the evidence from other sources that Confucius was a gentleman—a man to whom truth and sincerity were very precious—is overwhelming. His teachings and actions, so far as we know them—all but this one—prove conclusively that he laid almost greater emphasis on truth and honour than on any other quality. "Hold faithfulness and sincerity," he said, "as first principles."[270] One of his English commentators remarks that "the earnestness with which he insists on this, repeating the same injunction over and over again, is a point in his teaching which is well worthy of admiration."[271]

How then is this strange story of the broken oath to be explained? Probably by the simple statement that the story is not true. The incident is one which finds no place in the accepted Confucian canon: as Prof. H. A. Giles says, it "occurs in an admittedly spurious work,"[272]—namely the Chia YÜ, which in its present form is believed to have been composed in the third century A.D. The only other authority for it is the great historian Ssu-ma Ch'ien. Confucius was born in 551 B.C., Ssu-ma Ch'ien no less than four hundred years later. It may, doubtless, be urged by those who believe in the story and wish at the same time to save the honour of Confucius, that the standard of truth at that time was very low and that Confucius was only acting in accordance with the practice of the age in breaking his plighted word. But we have no reason whatever to suppose that the standard was any lower than it is to-day in Christendom: and what no writer, so far as I am aware, seems to have made a note of is the important fact that the story, if true at all, is of itself a clear proof that the standard of honour was remarkably high. The rebel would not have given Confucius the option of taking an oath unless there had been an expectation on his part that Confucius would keep that oath; and if the expectation existed, it must even in those far-off days have been founded on a belief that a gentleman's word was "as good as his bond." Thus if we believe in the story we are compelled to adopt the conclusion that Confucius was not, as one would have thought, superior to his contemporaries in matters of morals, but was immeasurably their inferior: a conclusion which is patently absurd. To suppose after hearing the evidence of the canonical books that Confucius was a man who could deliberately break his word seems almost as unreasonable as to suppose that Sir Walter Scott ("true gentleman, heart, blood and bone," as Tennyson called him) could have acted dishonourably or that Sir Philip Sidney, the prince of chivalry, could have told a lie.

I cannot hope that these remarks will re-establish Confucius's reputation as a lover of truth in the minds of those who wish for proselytising purposes to convince the Chinese that their sage was a grievous sinner. Such persons will doubtless in any case continue to hold that the Chinese as a people are untruthful, and that whether or not the untruthfulness is a legacy left them by Confucius it is a vice which only Christianity can extirpate. This question of Chinese untruthfulness we have already considered,[273] and a few words are all that is necessary here.

Persons who believe that the untruthfulness of the Chinese (presuming that it exists) is due to their "heathenism" and that truth is a typically or exclusively Christian virtue may have some difficulty in proving the justice of their view. "We have proof in the Bible," as Herbert Spencer remarks, "that apart from the lying which constituted false witness, and was to the injury of a neighbour, there was among the Hebrews but little reprobation of lying."[274] He goes on to admit, very properly, that in the writings of the Hebrew prophets and in parts of the New Testament lying is strongly condemned. Missionaries often say that the Chinese will never become a truthful people until they become a Christian people. If truthfulness had been an unknown virtue until Christianity appeared, one might perhaps be unable to question the accuracy of this statement. But what does Herodotus, writing in the fourth century B.C., tell us about the Persians of his day? "They educate their children, beginning at five years old and going on till twenty, in three things only, in riding, in shooting, and in speaking the truth ... and the most disgraceful thing in their estimation is to tell a lie."[275]

And would not most of us trust the word of Socrates, if we had the chance, as fully as we would trust the word of an archbishop? If truthfulness is a characteristically Christian virtue, how was it that in the Merovingian period "oaths taken by rulers, even with their hands on the altar, were forthwith broken"?[276] And what are we to say of the alleged Jesuitical doctrine that the end justifies the means, or about that immoral dogma of the Decretals (surely just as bad as Confucius's supposed doctrine regarding forced oaths): Juramentum contra utilitatem ecclesiasticam praestitum non tenet?

There are non-Christian peoples in southern India to-day of whom it has been said that they are characterised by "complete truthfulness. They do not know how to tell a lie"; in central India certain aborigines are described as "the most truthful of beings."[277] But the list might be indefinitely extended. There are numerous races in the world among whom truth is held in the highest honour, and as many others who appear to regard a skilful liar as a specially clever fellow. There is certainly very little reason to believe that truth is a monopoly of the Christian or that the "heathen" is necessarily a liar.[278]

The average Englishman or American does not always find that his pious acquaintances are the most truthful:[279] indeed in many cases he will prefer to trust the word of a man who from the Church's point of view is a notorious sinner but who happens at the same time to be a gentleman. It is of course easy to declare that a Christian who tells a lie cannot be a true Christian. It is equally easy and equally just to assert that the native of China who tells a lie cannot be a true Confucian.

If in Weihaiwei as elsewhere in rural China the influence of Confucius is to be traced not in temples and religious or commemorative ceremonial but in the customs, manners and character of the people, it is clear that a description of the Confucianism of this corner of the Empire would involve a repetition of much that has been already set forth at length in the course of the foregoing pages. But there is a feature of Confucianism that so far has been treated less thoroughly than it deserves, although it constitutes by far the most important element in the religious life of the people. This is the cult of Ancestors.

There is perhaps a popular tendency in Europe (notwithstanding the doctrines of Herbert Spencer) to regard this cult as something peculiar to the Far East and without parallel in Western modes of religious thought and practice: but, as students of comparative religion well know, such is not the case. That ancestor-worship or something very like it existed among the ancient Egyptians might be assumed from the extraordinary measures which they took to preserve the bodies of the dead: but we know from other evidence that the ancestral Ghost was regularly approached with veneration and sacrifices. Cakes and other articles were offered to the Egyptian ka just as they are offered to the spirits of the dead in China to-day; and, as in China, the sacrificial ceremonies were made the occasion of family gatherings and genial festivities.[280] Great religious revolutions have taken place in Egypt in the course of ages, but among the Egyptian Mohammedans and the Copts traces of ancestor-worship exist to this day. The evidence at present available hardly justifies us in declaring that this cult was also practised in Babylonia, though it seems at least certain that heroes and distinguished men were deified and venerated. There is less doubt about the early Israelites. "It is impossible to avoid the conclusion," says the Rev. A. W. Oxford,[281] "that the pre-Jehovistic worship was that of ancestors." He observes that "the importance attached to a father's blessing before his death and the great fear caused by a curse (Judges xvii. 2) were relics of the old cult of ancestors."

The importance of the same cult in Greece and Rome can hardly be exaggerated. In Greece, Zeus himself was regarded in one of his aspects as pat????, the ancestral god. "The central point of old Roman religion," as Grant Allen has said,[282] "was clearly the household; the family ghosts or lares were the most honoured gods." In various parts of the "Dark Continent" ancestor-worship is the prevailing religion. "Nowhere," says Max MÜller, "is a belief and a worship of ancestral spirits so widely spread as in Africa."[283] That it existed and still exists in many Eastern countries besides China need hardly be emphasised. It is deeply embedded in Hinduism, and in Japan it has grafted itself on Shinto.[284]

It is perhaps of greater interest to Europeans to know that the cult of ancestors existed in pre-Christian days in the forests of old Germany. "Our early Teutonic forefathers," says Mr. F. York Powell, "worshipped the dead and treated their deceased ancestors as gods."[285] But old customs, especially religious ones, die hard; and so we need not be surprised to find that just as the Isis and Horus of the ancient Egyptians have become the Madonna and Child of the modern Italians,[286] so the ancestor-worship of our Teutonic forefathers has been transformed under Christian influences into solemn commemorations of the dead, and masses for the souls of the "faithful departed." The transformation, indeed, is in some places hardly complete to this day.

"Although full ancestor-worship," says Dr. Tylor, "is not practised in modern Christendom, there remains even now within its limits a well-marked worship of the dead. A crowd of saints, who were once men and women, now form an order of inferior deities, active in the affairs of men, and receiving from them reverence and prayer, thus coming strictly under the definition of manes. This Christian cultus of the dead, belonging in principle to the older manes worship, was adapted to answer another purpose in the course of religious transition in Europe."[287]

It appears that in one part of Christendom, at least, actual ancestor-worship is not yet extinct. In backward parts of Russia at this day, we are told, "the dead in return for the offerings are supplicated to guard and foster the family and crops. 'Ye spirits of the long departed, guard and preserve us well. Make none of us cripples. Send no plagues upon us. Cause the corn, the wine, and the food to prosper with us.'"[288] Evidently if ancestor-worship is idolatrous, Europe is not without its idolatry even in this twentieth century.

The Ancestral cult, as every one knows, received the hall-mark of Confucius's approval, though Confucius himself did not profess to be a theologian or to speak with authority on matters spiritual. It is an extraordinary thing that Confucius's reticence with regard to these matters has been selected by Christian missionaries as a subject for special reproach. Prof. Legge, after quoting some of Confucius's utterances on the subject of the unseen world, asks why he did not "candidly tell his real thoughts on so interesting a subject,"[289] and exclaims "Surely this was not the teaching proper to a sage." Elsewhere he solves this question himself, for he decides that Confucius was no sage.[290] Unfortunately he does not define the word Sage, though he seems to imply that the word can be fittingly applied only to a Christian teacher. He did not perhaps quite appreciate the significance of the Horatian remark Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona.

Meadows remarks that every consistent Confucianist ought to be a blank atheist, though probably he is using the word in the sense that used erroneously to be attached to it a good many years ago,[291] when "atheist" was the term applied to all persons who were outside the Christian fold. In that sense Confucius was an atheist, and inasmuch as he lived half a millennium before Christ was born it is obvious that he could not possibly have been anything else. Mr. Arthur H. Smith states that the mass of Confucian scholars are "thoroughly agnostic and atheistic,"[292] though if these terms are correctly used it is difficult to see how they could be both at the same time. Mr. W. E. Griffis thinks it "more than probable" that Confucius laid "unnecessary emphasis upon social and political duties, and may not have been sufficiently interested in the honour to be paid to Shang Ti or God. He practically ignored the Godward side of men's duties."[293] Confucius would probably have said that if people fully and completely discharge all their duties on the manward side they need have no fear that they are neglecting the Godward side. Griffis goes on to compare Confucianism with a child-headed giant, because it is exaggerated on its moral and ceremonial side as compared with its spiritual development. It must surely be clear to an unprejudiced mind that Confucius deserves no blame whatever for omitting to lay down the law on subjects about which he never professed to know anything. Men have existed on this planet for tens of thousands of years: if, as many occidental peoples hold, the Deity revealed Himself only nineteen centuries ago, it is absurd to find fault with an honest philosopher for not having known facts which had been preserved as a secret in the archives of heaven for countless ages in the past and were to remain undisclosed for another five hundred years in the future. Some of us, perhaps, may be inclined to the opinion that the great secret remains a secret still. "We are born to enquire after truth," said the wise Montaigne; "it belongs to a greater power to possess it." But supposing for the sake of argument that Truth, or a certain aspect of Truth, came to man's knowledge by a miraculous act on the part of a Divine Power nineteen centuries ago, one cannot blame Confucius for not having obtained it from heaven five hundred years sooner. One might as well blame St. Paul for not anticipating the astronomical discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo, or St. Augustine for not telling us how to deal with the modern Women's Suffrage problem, or the Founder of Christianity Himself for not explaining the mechanism of motor-omnibuses and aeroplanes. Prometheus is said to have succeeded in wrenching a valuable secret from heaven without divine permission, but Prometheus was a Titan and Confucius never pretended to be anything more than a humble-minded man.

The remarks made both orally and in writing on the subject of Confucius and his religious views are often so framed as to convey the idea, either that he was somehow to blame for his want of knowledge, or that he really knew all the time about God and other spiritual beings, but was deliberately and wickedly keeping the knowledge up his sleeve. It is presumably for this reason that some missionaries have found it their painful duty to explain to the Chinese (whom they are trying to convert to a belief in a merciful and loving Deity) that Confucius is now writhing in hell.[294] It is open to them to add that good Chinese Christians may look forward to the happy day when they, from their heavenly mansions, may behold their national Sage undergoing the tortures prescribed for him in the nethermost regions: for was it not Tertullian who, perhaps in a spirit of irony or mockery, declared[295] that one of the joys of the blessed when they reach heaven will be to watch the torments of the damned?[296] Fortunately bigotry and intolerance of this kind are (thanks partly to secular pressure) rapidly disappearing from Christian apologetics, but the charge against Confucius that his views on spiritual matters were not only unsound but were also discreditable to himself and to those who followed his teachings, is still occasionally heard in the missionary camp.

It is perhaps worth while to consider briefly what those views were. They are not to be found in any consecutive form; all one can do is to pick up hints here and there and piece them together as best one may. It must be remembered that Confucius seems very rarely to have offered any remarks on spiritual matters on his own initiative: he did not profess to be an authority on such subjects, and it was only in answer to direct questions that he said anything at all. His attitude may be compared with that of Mohammed, who administered rebukes to his disciples when he heard them debating about fate and destiny. Such things, he taught, were beyond all human knowledge. If one might presume to construct a kind of paraphrase of Confucius's occasional utterances on spiritual subjects, and put it in the form of a continuous discourse, it might perhaps run somewhat as follows:

"You need not ask me about the gods and spirits or the world beyond the grave, because I really cannot tell you anything about them. You ask me what death is. I do not know. I think it will be time enough to consider the problems of death when we have solved those presented by life: and it will be a long time before we have done that.[297] You ask me about serving the dead. First make sure that you are doing everything possible in the service of living men, then you may consider, if you will, whether any changes should be made in our ancestral modes of serving the spirits of the dead. You ask if the departed have any knowledge of the sacrifices we offer them, or if they are totally unconscious of what we are doing for them. How can I answer you? If I were to tell you that the dead are conscious, you might waste your substance in funerals and sacrifices, and thus neglect the living to pay court to the dead. If on the other hand I were to tell you that the dead are unconscious, filial piety might diminish and sons begin to leave the bodies of their parents uncared for and unburied. Seek not to know whether the departed are indeed conscious. If they are, you will know it some day; meanwhile study the world you live in and have no fear that you will exhaust its treasures of knowledge: the world takes a lot of knowing. What is the use of my giving you my personal opinion about death and spiritual beings? You, or others less intelligent than you, might take my opinions as definite statements of truth, and if they happen to be erroneous opinions I might very properly be charged with the propagation of error. It is the custom of our race to offer sacrifices to the spirits of the dead and I consider this a good old custom and one that ought to be kept up, because even if there are no spirits to receive our homage the practice is in itself a harmless one and helps to foster reverence for one's elders and for those in authority. Therefore I say to you, carry out the solemn sacrifices to which you have been accustomed, and when you do so, honour the spirits as if they were present,[298] but do not be so foolish as to attempt familiar intercourse with them. It was not we who made the chasm that lies between ourselves and the spiritual world, nor have we any right (so far as we know) to try to bridge that chasm. God—if there be a God—knows why the chasm is there, and God can bridge it if He will.

"My advice to you is this. Be zealous in the services you owe to your fellow-men; behave towards them as you would wish them to behave towards yourself. Be not too proud to admit when you are wrong or that you 'do not know.' The man who sees what is right and honest and dares not do it is a craven. Do not repine if you are misunderstood by men; repine rather that there are men who are misunderstood by you. Choose as your familiar companions only those who are at least equal to yourself in virtue. Speak and act with sincerity and truth. Be true to yourself and charitable towards your neighbour. Carry out those rites of filial piety and of religious worship that have been handed down to you by your fathers, even if you have doubts about the nature or even the very existence of the objects of your worship; there is nothing to be ashamed of in honest doubt, but do not let doubts interfere with your duty. Let not your knowledge and practice of the traditional rituals mislead you into thinking that you are on intimate terms with the spiritual world; treat the unseen Powers with all reverence but keep aloof from them. Do not fear that God will hold you guilty of neglect of heavenly things provided you neglect nothing of the duties you owe to men."

It is true that several remarks of Confucius are on record which seem to indicate that he had a belief—however indefinite—in the existence of a God or at least of spiritual beings who were both greater and better than men. For instance he is said to have remarked that men had failed to understand him, adding proudly, "But there is Heaven: THAT knows me!" There is also the famous reply which he gave to Tzu-lu on the subject of prayer: "My praying," said Confucius, "has been for a long time."[299] Some English translators incline to the opinion that according to this remark Confucius really did offer up prayers to an unseen Power. What one knows of Confucius's life and teachings as well as the context of this particular passage makes this highly improbable; and indeed the remark loses most of its beauty and dignity if Confucius referred merely to prayers in the ordinary sense. As one of his English editors says, "his whole life had been one long prayer"[300]—in a sense that the narrow religious pedant perhaps does not and cannot understand. One is reminded of the landscape-painter who scandalised the pious natives of a beautiful Welsh village by painting on Sundays. "How is it," asked the local parson reproachfully, "that we have not yet seen you in God's house?" "I am not aware," was the artist's quiet reply, "that I was ever out of it." Those of us who can respect this answer will be able to respect that given by Confucius when he said, "My praying has been for a long time."

[251] It is perhaps still necessary to explain that in spite of the honorary epithets heaped on Confucius by imperial decree (as in the decree that confers upon him an "equality with heaven and earth"), Confucius is not worshipped as a god. This was frankly admitted by Prof. Legge in his later years. "I used to think," he said, "that Confucius in this service received religious worship, and denounced it. But I was wrong. What he received was the homage of gratitude, and not the worship of adoration." "The Religion of China" in Religious Systems of the World (8th ed.), p. 72.