Persons whose religion is bounded by dogmas and rituals, and who take such a dismal view of human nature that they cannot conceive of the existence of moral goodness apart from faith in a particular creed, are always (consciously or unconsciously) on the look-out for evidences of "sin" or imperfection or human frailty in the doctrines of those who are ethical rather than religious teachers, and who do not profess to have been favoured with a "divine revelation." Some of the failings ascribed to Confucius—such as his alleged insincerity—have been already dealt with; but if his Christian critics are unable to substantiate their charges of moral depravity they are on much firmer ground when they declare that Confucianism is not a religion at all, but merely (though why "merely"?) a system of morals. This is a point which every one will decide for himself in accordance with his own views of what constitutes Religion. Cardinal Newman said that by Religion he meant "the knowledge of God, of His Will, of our duties towards Him." According to this definition Confucianism can hardly be called a Religion. Carlyle said that whoever believes in the infinite nature of Duty has religion. If this be so, it may after all be argued that a religion is possessed by the true Confucian. Legge, who admired Confucius as "a very great man," but was prompt to seek out evidence that the Confucian system was altogether inferior to Christianity, admitted that Confucianism was not "merely" a system of morality, but also contained religion.[301] Sir Charles Eliot, on the contrary, says "it has produced twenty centuries of gentlemen. Still, it is not in any ordinary sense a religion."[302] Similarly Sir Thomas Wade declared that the Chinese "have indeed a cult, or rather a mixture of cults, but no creed." Hegel said that Religion is the Infinite Spirit of God becoming self-conscious through the medium of the finite spirit. The late Father Tyrrell held that what distinguishes religion from ethics is "the belief in another world and the endeavour to hold intercourse with it." Kant said that when moral duties are regarded as divine commands, that is religion. Fichte said that religion was Knowledge rather than morality. Matthew Arnold defined religion as "morality touched with emotion." Schleiermacher said that religion consisted in the consciousness of absolute dependence on a Power which influences us though we cannot influence it in turn.

It is obvious that until we are all agreed on what we mean by Religion it is useless to enquire whether the Confucian system is or is not entitled to the name. One might as well try to determine whether a given literary composition is a poem before we have agreed upon a definition of Poetry. Some writers have been apt to look for some quality that is common to all religion as the best basis for a definition; but, as Edward Caird has reminded us, "such a quality, if it could be found, would be something so vague and abstract that little or nothing could be made of it."[303] As nobody has yet invented a definition which will satisfy every one, we must perforce leave Confucianism unlabelled: though if we all agree that a religious attitude implies a deep sense of moral responsibility (either to our own higher selves or to an external Power) and a feeling that to do what we believe to be right—irrespective of how we come to have ideas of right and wrong at all—is "wisdom in the scorn of consequence," then we cannot go far astray in asserting that Confucianism is not an irreligious or unreligious system, but is merely an untheological one.

If the word Religion may be said to have almost as many meanings as there are cultivated human minds, what is to be said of the word God? The Christian objection to Chinese ancestor-worship, of which Confucius approved, is that it is a form of idolatry, inasmuch as the deceased ancestors are worshipped as gods. Here again our concurrence or dissent must depend upon the exact shade of meaning to be attached to the word "god." A rough unhewn stone may be a "god" at one place and time—though probably, as in the case of the meteoric stone that is said to have been carried in the Ark of Jahveh, it is never regarded by "initiates" as more than a sacred emblem or representation. At another place and time God becomes an ineffable Spirit invisible to the human eye and only partially attainable by human thought. "Of Thee," said Hooker, "our fittest eloquence is silence, while we confess without confessing that Thy Glory is unsearchable and beyond our reach." Nor need it be supposed that the sublimer conception of Deity is the newly-won possession of Christians only. Perhaps no loftier idea of the Godhead has ever existed in man's mind than that of the composers of some of the Indian Vedas and Upanishads which were produced many hundreds if not thousands of years B.C.; indeed Hooker's prayer and many other Christian prayers grander and nobler would not seem at all out of place if they were put into the mouth of an Indian forest-sage or a prehistoric Brahman.

It is very difficult, then, to know without precise definition what is the exact meaning of those who declare that the Chinese make gods of their dead fathers. Du Bose has condemned the Chinese ancestral cult because it inculcates the worship of "parents once human but now divine," and he quotes with apparent approval the words of another writer who describes it as "one of the subtlest phases of idolatry—essentially evil with the guise of goodness—ever established among men."[304] Wells Williams says that Chinese ancestor-worship is distinctly idolatrous; yet he admits that the rites consist "merely of pouring out libations and burning paper and candles at the grave, and then a family meeting at a social feast, with a few simple prostrations and petitions ... all is pleasant, decorous, and harmonious ... and the family meeting on this occasion is looked forward to by all with much the same feeling that Christmas is in Old England or Thanksgiving in New England."[305] So says the earnest American missionary; and those of us who not only see nothing wrong in the Chinese ancestral ceremonies but would be exceedingly sorry to see them abolished, will perhaps feel inclined to smile at the reproachful terms in which he refers to Sir John Davis, who had expressed the heterodox opinion that the rites were "harmless, if not meritorious, forms of respect for the dead."

Another American writer, well known as an authority on China, is equally strongly opposed to any compromise with the cult of ancestors.

"It makes dead men into gods, and its only gods are dead men. Its love, its gratitude, and its fears are for earthly parents only. It has no conception of a Heavenly Father, and feels no interest in such a being when He is made known. Either Christianity will never be introduced into China or ancestral worship will be given up, for they are contradictories. In the death struggle between them the fittest only will survive."[306]

To show that this is not quite the view taken by all American missionaries, let us quote the words of yet a third. Dr. W. A. P. Martin, whose Lore of Cathay is one of the most interesting books of its kind on China yet produced, has a valuable chapter on ancestor-worship in which he takes a much more liberal view than that of his colleagues, though as a champion of Christianity he feels himself obliged to find fault with "the transformation of the deceased into tutelar divinities" and with "the invocation of departed spirits." He admits that the ceremonies connected with the cult are of an exceedingly impressive nature.

"The spectacle of a great nation," he says, "with its whole population gathered round the altars of their ancestors, tracing their lineage up to the hundredth generation, and recognising the ties of kindred to the hundredth degree, is one that partakes of the sublime."[307]

Most of my readers are doubtless aware that it has been, and perhaps still is, the custom of many missionaries to require their converts to surrender their ancestral tablets, or to destroy them, as a proof of their sincerity before baptism. There are many sad stories connected with this cruel proceeding,[308] and it is refreshing to listen to the frank confession of so experienced and fair-minded a missionary as Dr. Martin, who admits that he himself once insisted on a convert giving up his ancestral tablets, and has ever since regarded this as one of the mistakes of his life, and looks back upon it with "poignant grief." As he adds decisively, "I had no right to impose such a test," it is to be hoped that his words have served as a warning to some, at least, of his successors in the missionary field.

If Christianity is to win its way to the hearts of the Chinese people it will probably have to condescend to a compromise on the question of ancestor-worship. A recent writer in The Spectator evidently thinks it is the Chinese who will make all the compromise. "There is no reason," he says, "why the Chinese, in accordance with their proved mental habit, should not adopt a kind of metaphysical reading of ancestor-worship such as would enjoy the hearty sanction of the Church which preaches the 'Communion of Saints.'"[309]

It is indeed likely enough that as time goes on certain superannuated features of ancestor-worship, as of other Chinese religious practices, will gradually disappear, but it is probable that this will be due rather to rationalistic pressure than to Christianity. The Chinese are beginning to imbibe Western culture—especially Western science and philosophy—with avidity, and the more they do so the more ready will they be to abandon some of their traditional ideas with regard to demonology, fÊng-shui, the burning of paper furniture and money, the worship of the "gods" of Taoism, and many other superstitious beliefs and practices; indeed this lopping off of the rotten branches of the religious life of China began several years ago, and is not likely to cease until there are no more rotten branches left on the tree. But it is a very noteworthy fact that the abandonment of many popular superstitions does not necessarily imply the establishment of Christian dogmas in their place.

A year ago, while travelling in the province of Anhui, I visited a town which had so far abandoned its "heathen" rites that a long row of images had been dragged from their roadside shrines and tossed into the river. Yet I was told by resident European missionaries that their converts had had nothing whatever, directly or indirectly, to do with this proceeding; it had been carried out solely by the young local literati, who had shown themselves as absolutely impervious to the Christian propaganda as they were contemptuous of the puerile superstitions of the masses. But it will be a long time yet before the essential rites and observances connected with the cult of ancestors begin to suffer from the inroads either of Rationalism or of Christianity. Buddhism and Taoism are China's privileged guests, who—unless they speedily adapt themselves to new conditions—may shortly find they have outstayed their welcome; but the cult of ancestors is enthroned in the hearts of the people, and if Christianity is ever to dislodge it, or even find a place by its side, the intruder will be obliged to adopt a less arrogant and less uncompromising attitude than it has assumed hitherto. Dr. A. H. Smith, Dr. Edkins,[310] and other missionaries declare that China must choose between Christianity and ancestor-worship. She made up her mind on the subject in the middle of the eighteenth century, as a result of the controversy between the Jesuits and the Vatican,[311] and there is no indication that she regrets her choice.

It will be remembered that in the controversy alluded to, the Jesuit missionaries, who had hitherto been amazingly successful in their propaganda, strongly advocated the toleration of ancestor-worship on the ground that the rites were merely civil and commemorative, and were not idolatrous. This view, after lengthy disputes, was finally condemned as erroneous, and the cult of ancestors on the part of Christians was prohibited by the Roman pontiff (Benedict XIV.) "without qualification or concession of any kind."[312] The result of this was the collapse of the young and vigorous Roman Church in China. The Chinese Emperor, who had found himself contradicted on Chinese soil by papal edicts, was naturally disinclined to treat the foreign religion and its professors with the tolerance and respect that had hitherto been extended to it.[313] It is interesting to note the Protestant attitude towards the papal decision on this matter. "It is not easy to perceive, perhaps," writes Dr. Wells Williams, "why the Pope and the Dominicans were so much opposed to the worship of ancestral penates among the Chinese when they performed much the same services themselves before the images of Mary, Joseph, Cecilia, Ignatius, and hundreds of other deified mortals."[314]

Evidently the good Doctor could not withstand the temptation to administer a sharp Protestant pin-prick to his Romanist rivals, though "it is not easy to perceive" why he should find fault with the Papists in this respect when missionaries of his own branch of Christianity were (as some still are) equally ready to attempt the cheerless task of reconciling contradictories. They condemn the Chinese for their demonology and superstitious follies, yet many of them are merely substituting Western superstition for Eastern. They expel demons from the bodies of sick men, they report in their journals the occurrence of miracles wrought by the Deity on behalf of their propaganda, they pray for the supersession of the laws of meteorology, they report cases of real devils actually speaking through "idols," they believe in the existence of real witches, and they still teach the "heathen" fabulous stories of the creation of the world and the origin of man.[315]

That missionaries of this class are less numerous than formerly is fortunately true, but their teachings presumably remain the treasured possession of their converts, and if those converts or their descendants ever break out in acts of fanatical bigotry and intolerance, or take to enforcing their beliefs on others, the responsibility will rest with the Mission Boards for sending out Christian teachers whose religious beliefs were of a type that flourished widely in our own land in the age of witch-burning and about the time of Mr. Praise-God Barebones, but which, thanks chiefly to Biblical criticism and the study of comparative mythology and the advance of scientific knowledge, has happily become all but extinct among our educated classes.

But to return to the specific charge brought against Romanists by Dr. Wells Williams—that the Pope and the Dominicans condemned ancestor-worship as idolatrous although they conducted much the same services themselves before the images of the Mater Dei and other deified mortals—this charge is one that has never yet been rebutted in a manner satisfactory to those who are not Romanists.

If a Chinese goes to his t'u ti (village "god") or to Kuan Yin or to the Queen of Heaven (ShÊng Mu T'ien Hou) or to Lung Wang the ruler of clouds and water, with prayers for rain, or for the cure of disease, or for safety from shipwreck; or if he beseeches the spirits of his dead ancestors to protect the family and grant its members health and prosperity, his proceedings are immediately condemned as idolatrous. But if a Christian goes and prays to St. Hubert for an antidote to a mad dog's bite or to St. Apollonia for a toothache-cure, or to St. Theodorus at Rome for the life of a sick child, or to the Blessed John Berchmans for the eradication of cancer in the breast, or to Our Lady of Lourdes for the cure of a diseased bone, this is not idolatry but good Christianity! As a matter of fact the ancestral spirits of the Chinese and the great majority of the Taoist deities are neither more nor less "gods" than the saints of Christendom. They—like the saints—are regarded as the spirits of certain dead men who in their new life beyond the grave are supposed to have acquired more or less limited powers over some of the forces of nature and over certain of the threads of human destiny. One is just as much a "god" as the other. The Christian refuses to call his saints gods because that would be confessing to polytheism, and as he professes to be a monotheist that would never do; but he insists on accusing the Chinese of turning dead men into gods because he wants to prove that the Chinese are idolatrous and polytheistic.

If he says that he goes by the verdict of the Chinese themselves, who apply to their dead men the title shÊn and (in some cases) the higher title ti, it is fair to remind him that if he insists upon translating the former of these terms by the word "god" he should at the same time supply a clear definition of the precise meaning which that word is intended to convey; when he has done that it will be time enough for us to consider whether the word "god" gives a fair idea of the meaning of the Chinese when they declare that their deceased ancestors have become shÊn. As to the supposed functions of the Chinese "deities" and the Christian "saints," it would puzzle a keen dialectician to say how the miracle-working of the one essentially differs from that of the other, or how it is that St. Thomas of Canterbury, in spite of his wonder-working bones, is a mere saint, while Kuan Ti—who was once a stout soldier, but having been canonised by imperial decree is now famous throughout the Chinese Empire as the spiritual Patron of War—is to be hooted at as a false "god."[316]

It would seem that what the Christian says, in effect, is this: If the Pope—the earthly head of our religion—canonises a dead man, that dead man becomes a saint, and you may pray to him as much as you like; if the earthly head of your religion—the Emperor of China—canonises a man, he becomes a false god, possibly a demon, and if you commit the sin of praying to him you do so on the peril of your soul. It is an exemplification of the old saying, "Orthodoxy is my doxy, heterodoxy is your doxy." In other words—you are right if you agree with me: if you don't you are wrong! That was indeed a true saying of Thackeray's, "We view the world through our own eyes, each of us, and make from within us the things we see."

Of course there are many degrees of "godhead"—if we are to employ that term—within the ranks of the Chinese "pantheon." The man who, on account of his distinguished career in this world, or the supposed miracles wrought by him since his removal to the next, has been canonised or "deified" by imperial decree, holds a much more important and imposing position than the ordinary father of a family who, as it were, automatically becomes shÊn—a spirit or ancestral divinity—through the simple and inevitable process of dying. But the difference is rather in degree than in kind. The Emperor, as Father of his people and as their High Priest or Pope, can raise any one he chooses to the position of a Ti, and can subsequently elevate or degrade him in the ranks of the national divinities in accordance with his imperial will. As a matter of fact the process is intimately connected with statecraft and considerations of practical expediency. "In the Chinese Government," as Sir Alfred Lyall says, "the temporal and spiritual powers, instead of leaning towards different centres, meet and support each other like an arch, of which the Emperor's civil and sacred prerogative is the keystone."[317]

What the Emperor can do on a large scale every head of a Chinese family does regularly on a small one. In a sense no ceremony is necessary: a man becomes an ancestral spirit as soon as he dies, irrespective of anything that his son may do for him. But his position as a shÊn is hardly a regular one—he is a mere "homeless ghost"—until the son has carried out the traditional rites. The shÊn chu[318]—the "spirit-tablet"—becomes the dead man's representative; no longer visible and audible, he is believed to be still carrying on his existence on a non-material plane, and to be still capable, in some mysterious way which the Chinese themselves do not pretend to understand, of protecting and watching over the living members of the family and of bringing prosperity and happiness to future generations. The filial affection of son for father is deepened on the father's death into permanent religious reverence, and this reverential feeling finds its natural expression in a system of rites and ceremonies which, for the want of a better term, we call ancestor-worship. The "idolatry" consists in bowing with clasped hands towards the tombs or spirit-tablets, placing before them little cups and dishes containing wine and food, and burning incense in front of the family portraits in the ancestral temple at the season of New Year, or (if there are no portraits) before a scroll containing the family pedigree. If the disembodied members of a family were "gods" in the sense usually attributed to the word their spiritual powers would not be confined—as they normally are—to the affairs of their own descendants. The orthodox Chinese knows that it is not only useless but wrong to "worship"[319] the spirits of any family but his own. "For a man to sacrifice to a spirit which does not belong to him," said Confucius, "is flattery."[320]

For the sake of brevity and convenience we may and sometimes do speak of the private ancestral spirits and of the great national divinities as "gods," but we should preserve the necessary distinctions of meaning in our own minds. That it is only a rough-and-ready mode of speech may easily be perceived when we attempt to make a single Chinese term apply to both these classes of spiritual beings. It is true enough that both (in most cases) sprang from the same human origin, so that their powers and functions differ, as already pointed out, in degree rather than in kind; but if—whether from ignorance or from a desire to be exceptionally polite—we were to describe a man's deceased forefathers as Ti (the nearest equivalent to "God" that the Chinese language possesses) we should probably be the innocent cause of an outburst of genial mirth. The average Chinese takes a very much humbler view of the degree of deification that has fallen to his dead father's lot than would be implied by the use of so distinguished a title.

It is a rather common opinion that "the worship of ancestors probably had its origin in the fear of the evil which might be done by ghosts."[321] Lafcadio Hearn, a devoted disciple of Herbert Spencer, took a similar view of Japanese religion, and held that Shinto was at one time a religion of "perpetual fear." Nobushige Hozumi, Dr. W. G. Aston and others have disposed of this opinion with reference to Japan. The former writer, who was called to the English Bar and subsequently became a Professor of Law at Tokyo, and was still proud to own himself an ancestor-worshipper, declared that "it was the love of ancestors, not the dread of them, which gave rise to the custom of worshipping and making offerings of food and drink to their spirits.... Respect for their parents may, in some cases, have become akin to awe, yet it was love, not dread, which caused this feeling of awe.... We celebrate the anniversary of our ancestors, pay visits to their graves, offer flowers, food and drink, burn incense, and bow before their tombs entirely from a feeling of love and respect for their memory, and no question of 'dread' enters our minds in doing so."[322]

So far as I have had opportunities of judging of Chinese ancestor-worship, I am strongly of opinion that, subject to what has been said in an earlier chapter,[323] the words of this writer are as applicable to China as they are to Japan.[324] There seems, indeed, to be very little reason why any one should propound or hold the theory that a loving father was liable to turn into a malevolent ghost. What the Chinese believe is that their deceased ancestors are well-disposed towards them, and will give them reasonable help and protection throughout the course of their lives: though if the ancestral graves are left uncared-for or the periodical sacrifices neglected or the spirit-tablets not treated with respect, or if living members of the family have wasted the family property or have been guilty of discreditable conduct, then no doubt the spirits will be angry and will punish them for the crime of lack of filial piety (pu hsiao), the worst crime of which a Chinese can be guilty.

The Chinese are quite satisfied that so long as they behave in a filial manner (the word "filial" being taken in its widest possible signification) they have nothing whatever to fear from their ghostly ancestors. To be truly filial a Chinese must not merely behave with dutiful obedience towards his parents when they are alive and with dutiful reverence towards their manes when they are dead, but he must also act in such a way as to reflect no speck of discredit upon them by his own misdeeds. If his parents are themselves guilty of wrongdoing he is entitled to remonstrate with them, because after all his parents as well as himself owe filial reverence to their common ancestors. If the wrongdoing is all his own he is twice guilty, for he has committed an action which is in itself intrinsically wrong, and by degrading his own moral nature he has brought disgrace on his parents. According to this theory, the Chinese who commits a dishonourable action is unfilial; if he breaks the law he is unfilial; if he does not discharge all his dead father's obligations he is unfilial; if he ruins his own health through immorality or excesses of any kind he is unfilial; if he fails to bring up legitimate offspring (to continue the family and carry on the ancestral rites) he is unfilial.[325]

Needless to say there is no such person as a perfectly filial son in all China—or anywhere else in the world for that matter: but that fact no more justifies us in attempting to disparage the noble and lofty Chinese ideal of filial piety than the failure of Christian men and Christian Governments to act in accordance with the doctrines of the Sermon on the Mount justifies us in disparaging the highest ethical ideal of Christianity. If the ideal—in either the Christian or the Chinese system—were actually attainable, it would become necessary to form a new ideal to take the place of that which had ceased as such to exist or had been seen to "fade into the light of common day." Some Western observers are apt to think that the Chinese doctrine of filial piety is too one-sided to be practical: that it makes the son the slave of his parents and gives the parents at the same time the position of irresponsible tyrants. No greater mistake could possibly be made. The responsibilities of the parent are correlative to the duties of the child.

The locus classicus for this is a famous story told of Confucius himself. When he was Minister of Crime in his native state a father brought an accusation against his own son. Confucius sent them both to gaol, and when he was questioned as to why he punished the father as well as the son and did not rather condemn the son for the gross crime of disobeying his father, he replied thus: "Am I to punish for unfilial conduct one who has not been taught filial duties? Is not he who fails to teach his son his duties equally guilty with the son who fails to fulfil them?"[326]

This is a point of view which the Chinese—or at least those who have not succumbed to the seductive whispers of Western individualism—thoroughly understand and appreciate to this day. Cases have been heard in the British courts at Weihaiwei which prove this to be so. On the rare occasions when a father has been compelled to bring an action against his son, or on the more numerous occasions when a father is summoned to the court in connection with a criminal case in which his own son is the accused, he frequently begins by making a humble acknowledgment that his own failure to perform his duties as father must at least partially account for his son's depravity; or if in accordance with the Chinese practice the British magistrate sternly lectures a father on the enormity of his offence in bringing up his son so badly that the son has fallen into the clutches of the law, the unhappy man admits the justice of the charge promptly and without reserve. YÜ ts'o: ling tsui,—"I am guilty: I accept punishment."

But the Chinese doctrine of filial piety does not concern itself only with the relations between parent and child. We have seen that the whole of Chinese society is regarded as a vast family of which the Emperor is Father; similarly the territorial officials are in loco parentis to the heads of the families living within their respective jurisdictions: they are the fu-mu kuan—the father-and-mother officials.[327] The doctrine of Hsiao—Filial Piety—applies not only to domestic relationships but also to the relations between Emperor and Minister and between rulers and ruled. The head of a family who disobeys an official proclamation is guilty of an offence towards the local fu-mu kuan which is almost identical in kind with the offence of a son who wilfully disobeys his father. Here again the responsibilities are not all on one side: the fu-mu kuan is by the higher authorities held theoretically responsible for the peace and good order and contentment of the district over which he presides, just as Confucius is said to have held the father responsible for the misbehaviour of his son.

Sometimes, indeed, this doctrine is carried too far, as when an official is degraded for not preventing an outbreak of crime which he could not possibly have foreseen. Western peoples have taken advantage of this theory when they have called upon the Government to punish an official within whose jurisdiction the slaughter of a missionary has occurred, even when the official's complicity is quite unproved. The people themselves know well that their officials are theoretically responsible for their well-being, and often—through their lack of scientific knowledge—blame their fu-mu kuan for troubles which the very best and most diligent of officials could not have averted. The local officials—nay, viceroys of provinces and even the Emperor himself—are regarded by their subordinates or subjects, or profess to regard themselves, as personally responsible for such occurrences as disastrous earthquakes, epidemics and inundations.[328] In 1909 the appointment of a new governor to the province of Shantung happened to be followed by a serious drought; he became highly unpopular at once and received the disagreeable nickname of the Drought-Governor. As recently as 1908 I passed through a district in the province of Shansi in which no rain had fallen for several months. On entering the magisterial town of the district I noticed that the streets were thronged with crowds of people from the country, all wearing willow-wreaths as a sign that the crops were threatened with destruction and that public prayers were being offered for rain.[329] The whole town was in confusion, and the sudden appearance of a foreigner made matters worse. A noisy and restless crowd followed me into my inn and proved so troublesome (though by no means violent) that I was obliged to send a message to the local magistrate to request him to have the inn-yard cleared. My messenger soon came back to report that the magistrate's official residence or yamÊn was also closely invested by a clamouring mob and that the wretched man had been obliged to barricade his windows and doors to save himself from personal violence. He was therefore powerless to grant my request. The crowd had no complaint whatever against him except that his official prayers for rain had failed to have the desired result and that his culpable inability to establish friendly relations with the divine Powers was the evident cause of the drought.

This of course is carrying the theory of the mutual responsibilities of father and son, ruler and ruled, a great deal too far: but occurrences of this kind will become less and less frequent with the gradual advance of scientific and general knowledge; and it is surely far better that the changes should occur automatically than by forcible interference with customs and superstitions which in their fall might involve the indiscriminate destruction of good and bad. We may now perceive, perhaps, how it was that Confucius, who was evidently almost an agnostic with regard to gods and spiritual beings,[330] was strenuously opposed to the abandonment of the rites and ceremonies that presupposed the existence of such beings. He insisted upon the importance of keeping up the cult of ancestors not so much for the sake of the dead but because it fostered among living men feelings of love, respect, reverence, and duty towards family and State. The souls of the dead might or might not be unconscious of what was done for them, but it was in the interests of social harmony and political stability that the traditional religious and commemorative ceremonies should be jealously preserved and handed down to posterity and that during the performance of such ceremonies the presence of the ancestral spirits should at least be tacitly assumed.

There is one alleged objection to ancestor-worship which only a few years ago might have been regarded as most serious; and indeed it has been urged again and again by missionaries, travellers, ethical writers and sociologists. It was supposed that the cult of ancestors kept the race that practised it in the grip of a remorseless conservatism; that the ancestor-worshipper always turned his back on progress and reform on the plea that what was good enough for his grandfather was good enough for him; that ancestor-worship was the secret of Oriental stagnation, and that no Eastern race could be expected to advance in civilisation and culture until it had learned to work for the good of its posterity rather than for the barren honour of its ancestry.

"As a system, ancestral worship," says a European writer, "is tenfold more potent for keeping the people in darkness than all the idols in the land." "By its deadening influences," says another, "the nation has been kept for ages looking backward and downward instead of forward and upward."[331] A few years ago, be it repeated, the theory was one that had some weight: not because it was convincing in itself but because facts were wanting by which it could be refuted. The leap of Japan into the front rank of civilised nations has for ever disposed of the argument that ancestor-worshippers are necessarily impervious to change and reform. The cult of ancestors, be it remembered, is nearly if not quite as prominent a feature in the religious life of Japan as in that of China. Says a foreign observer, "The ancestor-worship of the Japanese is no superstition: it is the great essential fact of their lives."[332] Says a native observer, "the introduction of Western civilisation, which has wrought so many social and political changes during the last sixty years, has had no influence whatever in the direction of modifying the custom."[333]

According to Lafcadio Hearn, ancestor-worship is "that which specially directs national life and shapes national character. Patriotism belongs to it. Loyalty is based on it." Little wonder is it that, knowing what the ancestral cult has done for Japan, Prof. H. A. Giles in quoting this passage adds a significant remark. "It would seem," he writes, "that so far from backing up missionaries who are imploring the Chinese to get rid of ancestral worship, the sooner we establish it in this country the better for our own interests." That ancestor-worship can be introduced or reintroduced into an occidental country in the twentieth century is of course out of the question: but before we continue to devote human lives and vast treasure to the self-imposed task of uprooting it from its congenial oriental soil, would it not be well earnestly to consider whether our work may not be regarded by our own distant posterity as the most stupendous folly or as the gravest and most disastrous of errors ever committed by the nations of the West? By all means let it be admitted that ancestor-worship helped to make China content—perhaps foolishly content—with her traditional culture, and too heedless of the rapid development of the occidental Powers in wealth and civilisation and scientific equipment: on the other hand it helped to make her people industrious, frugal, patient, cheerful, law-abiding, filial, good fathers, loyal to the past, hopeful and thoughtful for the future. Most emphatically may we say this, that it is not essential to China's future progress that ancestor-worship should be abolished. Among the people of China their ancestors occupy the place of a kind of Second Chamber—a phantom House of Lords, strongly antagonistic to sudden change and to rash experiments whether in social life, religion or politics; a House of Lords which—like Upper Houses elsewhere—may at times have opposed real progress and useful reform, but which perhaps far oftener has saved the nation from the consequences of its own excesses by exercising a sacred right of veto of which no Lower House has the least desire to deprive it: a veto which is none the less effective, none the less binding on living men, through being exercised by a silent crowd of viewless ghosts.

[301] "The Religion of China," in Religious Systems of the World (8th ed.), pp. 61 seq.