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I order you anything about the affairs of the world, then I am nothing more than a man.’ What stronger ferman can social reformers demand for the abolition of polygamy, slavery, and for other changes required by the changed circumstances of the time, than these solemn words of their own wise Prophet ?
THE RELIGIONS OF CHINA1.
1. Confucianism.
Cl HINA has had for a long time not one but three J State religions — that is, three religions tolerated, supported, and protected by the State. The most widely spread and thoroughly national, however, is that which was restored and preserved, though not founded, by Confucius. Though it goes by his name as Confucianism, he himself, it should be remembered, never claims the books on which it rests as his own. These books are the Five Kings: —
(i) The Yih King, the Book of Changes.
(2) The ShU King, the Book of Historical Docm ments.
(3) The She King, the Book of Poetry.
(4) The Le Ke, the Record of Rites.
(5) The Ch'eun Tsew, Spring and Autumn, a chronicle of events from 721 B. C. to 480.
Secondly the four books, the Shu, or the books of the Four Philosophers : —
(1) The Lun Fit, the Digested Conversations, chiefly the sayings of Confucius.
(2) The Ta HeS, or Great Learning, commonly attributed to Tsang Sin, a disciple of Confucius.
1 Nineteenth Century, September, October, and November, 1900.
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(3) The Chung Yung , or the Doctrine of the Mean, ascribed to K'ung Keih, the grandson of Confucius.
(4) The Works of Mencius1.
Confucius calls himself a transmitter only, not a maker, believing in and loving the ancients. When speaking of himself, he says : ‘ At fifteen I had my mind bent on learning. At thirty I stood firm. At forty I had no doubts. At fifty I knew the decrees of heaven. At sixty my ear was an obedient organ for the reception of truth. At seventy I could follow what my heart desired, without transgressing what was right.’ Confucius died in 478 B.C., complaining that among all the Princes of the Empire there was not one who had adopted his principles, not one who would obey his lessons. This shows— what is, in fact, confirmed from other sources — that he himself was not an active reformer, so that while alive he scarcely produced a ripple on the smooth and silent surface of the religious thought of his own country. He was, no doubt, in advance of his- contemporaries, but he took his stand chiefly on certain verities that had come down to him from ancient times, and his faith in these verities and in their coming revival has certainly not been belied by what happened after his death. His grandson already speaks of him as the ideal of a sage, as a sage is the ideal of all humanity. But even this grandson was far from claiming divine honours for his grandsire, though he certainly seems to exalt his wisdom and virtue beyond the limits of human nature. Thus he writes : —
‘ He may be compared to heaven and earth in their supporting and containing, their overshadowing and curtaining all things ; he
1 See Legge, Confucius, pp. 1, 2.
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may be compared to the four seasons in their alternating progress, and to the sun and moon in their successive shining. . . . Quick in appx-eliension, clear in discernment, of far-reaching intellect and all-embracing knowledge, he was fitted to exercise rule. Magnanimous, generous, benign, and mild, he was fitted to exercise forbearance. Impulsive, energetic, firm and enduring, he was fitted to maintain a firm hold. Self-adjusted, grave, never swerving from the mean, and correct, he was fitted to command reverence. Accomplished, distinctive, coneentrative, and searching, he was fitted to exercise discrimination '. . . . All-embracing and vast, he was like heaven ; deep and active as a fountain, he was like the abyss. . . . Therefore his fame overspreads the Middle Kingdom and extends to ail barbarous tribes. Wherever ships and carriages reach, wherever the strength of man penetrates, wherever the heavens overshadow and the earth sustains, wherever the sun and moon shine, wherever frost and dews fall, all who have blood and breath unfeignedly honour and love him. Hence it is said, He is the equal of Heaven.’
Considering that all this is said of a man who died as a simple official in a provincial town, the fact that in the second generation after him he was called the equal of Heaven is certainly surprising, particularly if we remember that Heaven is here used in the sense of the Divine. Confucius himself would have most strongly protested against any of the doctrines of his religion, as taught in the Five Kings and the Four Shus, being ascribed to him or to any superhuman source. There is no other founder of any religious or philosophical system so anxious to hide his own personality, and to confess the general truth that what we receive is much, and what we add ourselves is little — infinitesimally little if compared with what we receive. And what is the result ? Hundreds of millions are now professedly followers of Confucius, while we are told that Hegel on his death-bed
1 Several of these adjectives can be translated approximately only, as there is nothing exactly corresponding to them in English.
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declared that he had left one disciple only, and that this disciple had misunderstood him. If some of our modern philosophers lay so much stress on what they imagine is entirely their own invention — such as, for instance, evolution or development or grotvth or Werden — is not that chiefly owing to their ignorance of the history of philosophy ? Religion is in that respect very much like language. People may preserve, they may even improve, purify, and add to their language, but in the end they are, like Confucius, not inventors, but only transmitters of language and religion.
How closely the fundamental ideas of the Chinese religion are connected with language has been shown for the first time by Professor Legge. He has laid bare a whole stratum of language and religion in China of which we had formerly no idea, and it is owing to our ignorance of that stratum that the Chinese religion has so often been represented as unconnected with Nature- worship such as we find in all Aryan religions ; as without any mythology — nay, as without any God. But it cannot be doubted that several of these mythological and religious ideas appear even at an earlier time in China than in India or in Egypt and Babylon. And they appear there not only in the words, but, as Professor Legge has shown, even in the written symbols of the words which are generally ascribed to nearly 4,000 or 6,000 years before our time.
This surely requires the attention of all students of antiquity. It has generally been supposed that it was chiefly among the Aryan nations that Nature led on to Nature’s gods ; and it is hardly doubted now that not only the heavenly luminaries, but dawn
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and night, rain and thunder, rivers and trees and mountains, were worshipped in the Veda, though while this kind of worship led to Polytheism, there were always faint rays of Monotheism which may possibly be due to a more ancient worship of the sky and the sun, and which afterwards developed into the conception of one God, or of one God above all gods. I say possibly, though what we know of the religious ideas of other nations, and even of savage and uncivil- ized races, seems to admit of this explanation only. That similar traces of a worship of Nature would be found in China was never even suspected. At all events the religion of the Chinese seemed to have left the mythological stage long before the time of Confucius. It seemed to be a prosaic and thoroughly unpoetical religion — full of sensible and wise saws, but a system of morality and of worldly wisdom rather than of religious dogmas and personal devotion. If it was full of eternal verities, it was also full of truisms. Again, if we mean by religion a revelation of the Deity, of its existence, its acts and its qualities, miraculously imparted to inspired seers and prophets, Confucius and those who followed him knew of none of these things, and hence they were even accused of having had no religion at all, or of having been Atheists in disguise. Against such a charge however, as Professor Legge has clearly shown, the Chinese language, nay, even the Chinese system of writing, protests most strongly. I ought to mention, perhaps, that Professor Legge was well acquainted with what I had written about Dyaus , Zeus, and Jupiter. He knew that in Sanskrit dyaus, as a feminine, means sky, the bright one, from a root DIY or DJIT, to
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shine ; while Dyaus, as a masculine, is the bright sky, conceived as an agent, and that he was at one time the first and oldest god of the Aryan pantheon. Dyaus was in fact the same word as Zeus, and as Jovis and Ju in Jujtiter, while the original meaning of Jovis breaks through in such comparisons as sub Jove frigido, under the cold sky1.
In Chinese, as Professor Legge 2 showed, tien, is the sign for sky and day, but it is also the name for God. It is true that Chinese scholars derive this sign from — * (yi, one) and ^ ( ta , great), so that it would have signified from the beginning ‘ the One and greatest.’ This, however, would psychologically, if not chronologically, be a late name for Deity. It is true that the Chinese written symbols go back to nearly 5,000 years before our time, or to between the third and fourth millennium B.c. If Hwang-ti was the inventor of the written characters, his first year was 2697 B. c.; if Fu-hsi invented them, the first year of his reign was 369 7 B.c.3 This is a very ancient date, but the question before us is whether we may not even go behind these Chinese inventors of alphabets, and look upon the explanation of their symbol for Tien, as meaning by its component parts the One and the Greatest Being, as ben trovato rather than vero. When Confucius, however, uses such terms as Tien, heaven, Ti, Lord, and Sliang-Ti, Supreme Lord, synonymously, it is quite clear that with him Tien meant no longer the visible sky only, but the in-
1 See Nineteenth Century, 1885, ‘The Lesson of Jupiter’; see also Chips, iv. pp. 368-411.
2 Legge, Religions of China, p. 9.
3 Ibid., p. 59.
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visible agent behind the sky. The interval between Tien, the sky, and Tien, God, may be as large as that between Dyaus, the skj^, and Dyaus, the God, but the original conception of the Divine, in China as well as in India, was clearly taken from something visible in nature, and in this case from the visible sky.
This Tien or Ti, we are told, was never prostituted to express the many gods or idols, but in spite of all the changes that followed in the history of their reli- gion, kept the Chinese to their monotheistic belief1 in heaven, and then only in a God in heaven, the One and the Greatest. But when Tien, or Ti, or Shang-Ti, is said to be the ruler of men and of all this lower world, when men are said to be His peculiar care, when He is said to have appointed grain to be the nourishment of all, and to have exalted kings to their high position for their good, Heaven is no longer the visible heaven only, as little as it is so in the New Testament, when the prodigal son says, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven, and before thee.’ That same Tien, Heaven, watches, as we are told, over the kings ; he smells the savour of their offerings, and blesses them and their people with abundance, while he punishes them if they are negligent of their duties. Any psychologist who knows the secret workings of the mind, and has observed how changes of thought and changes of language run parallel, can easily understand how even the mere application of such a word as dear to the sky — Dear Sky, £> changes the sky into more than a mere animal or living thing, such as is postulated by Animism ; while expressions such as the ‘ sky rains,’ or ‘ he rains,’
1 Legge, Religions of China, pp. n, 16.
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instead of c it rains,’ completes the personification of any inanimate agent, whether sky, or hill, or river, or tree. Very learned terms are used for what is in reality perfectly simple, and nothing seems so de- structive of clear thought on these subjects as high- sounding names, such as Fetishism, Animism, &c. ‘ Feiti^o ’ ( factitius ) or ‘fbtiche,’ or ‘fetish’ is a name given by ignorant Portuguese sailors to the amulets of the negroes on the West Coast of Africa; and fetichi&me, as a system, was invented by that most ignorant and pedantic of ethnologists, De Brosses, whose wild ideas of Fetishism as a primitive form of religion have survived even the ridicule of Voltaire, and have not been made less ridiculous by the patronage bestowed upon it by Comte and his followers. As to Animism, anybody who watches uncivilized races or common people even in Europe knows perfectly well that when, for instance, the moon is called in German ‘Dear Moon,’ or Herr Mond1, he becomes at once an agent, an active, but not yet a masculine or feminine person. Anyhow, these merely grammatical changes, which have been fully discussed by Grimm in his German Grammar, are sufficient to explain to any student of psychology and language the natural transition of inanimate to animate objects. They require no mysterious help from what is called Animism, particularly if Animism is supposed to refer to that anima, breath, which presupposes lungs and throat.
It is important to have a clear conception of all this before we approach the so-called spirits of Nature and the spirits of the departed, who are said to have 1 Grimm, Deutsche Grammatik, iii. p. 346.
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been worshipped by the Chinese from very early times. Anyhow, their names and their written signs existed, and they by themselves would carry us back at least to about 2697 b.c. But what idea can we connect with such beings as Shan, the spirits of the sky, Ch'i, the spirits of the earth, and Kwei , the spirits of the departed or the Chinese manes ? We are told that to judge from the ideograph for CKi or Shi, the spirits of the earth, it was meant originally for mani- festation and what is above. In the sign for Shan also there is the element indicating what is above. The sign for Kwei, the manes, is explained by native Chinese scholars in the most fanciful way. But it is quite clear that every one of these names and signs for so-called spirits does not stand for something independent of clouds, rain, thunder, and winds, or for something animated or breathing, still less for a mere amulet or an idol, as little as Agni in the Veda means something independent of fire. If the Chinese speak of the spirit of rain, thunder, &c., they do not mean something apart from the rain, but rain and thunder conceived as active. We may do what we like, thunder as a spirit is no more than thunder as an agent, or as active; and to imagine that the term Animism, to say nothing of Fetishism, helps us in the least to understand the origin of these concepts is simply to blind ourselves by a mist of words. If we must have a technical term instead of Animism, it should be Agentism, which, barbarous as it sounds, is not more so than many other technical terms, and is certainly better, if only properly understood. The language of the Chinese seems almost to have been constructed in order to prevent the misrepresentation
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that the religion of China took its form from the principles of Animism1 and Fetishism.
The step from thunder and rain as agents to the spirits of thunder and rain is easily perceived as almost inevitable, in China as well as in ancient India. Only in China the subordination of these spirits to Tien or Ti, the Supreme Lord, was more clearly felt than in India. There is a danger indeed, as Professor Legge fully admitted, of the spiritual potencies being regarded as independent, and being elevated to the place of gods, as they were in the Veda; but in China the most ancient and strong conviction of the existence of one God, originally the one Heaven, prevented the rising of the manifesta- tions of nature into the so-called spirits and their claiming equality with Tien as the One God. This is the real difference in China between the One God and the many gods or spirits or agents of nature which in other countries have given rise to various systems of Polytheism.
It is curious to observe that even the name of heaven and earth is used, not as the name of two Deities, like Dyava-PWthivyau, heaven and earth, in the Veda, but as the name of one, namely of Tien, the one Supreme God. Thus we read Heaven and Earth is the parent (like father or mother) of all creatures. In order to avoid all danger of having two supreme Deities instead of one, Confucius says distinctly : the ceremonies of the sacrifices to Heaven and Earth are those by which we serve Shcing-Ti 2, the Supreme God.
Little as such a naturalistic origin of Chinese
1 Logge, The Religions of China, p. 19. 2 Ibid. p. 30.
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religion was suspected, we can hardly doubt that Professor Legge was right in rejecting Animism and Fetishism, whatever they may be said to mean, as at the bottom of the home-grown religion of China, and tracing its origin straight to the same source from which we know the ancient religious beliefs of the Aryan races to have sprung. This is a most important discovery, and it is extraordinary how little its importance has hitherto been appreciated, though nothing has been said against any of his arguments. Professor Legge did not only know Chinese, but, like Stanislas Julien, he almost was a Chinese in his thoughts and feelings. One feels that one can trust him as a true scholar. It is true, no doubt, that the religion, such as we find it in the Kings and the Shlls, has little to do with a worship of nature or of Aryan Devas who might be called spirits or agents of nature, but we may in future take it as a fact that the religious ideas which lay far away behind Confucius were decidedly naturalistic, though the Chinese always retained their primitive belief in the one Supreme Lord, Tien, Heaven, or Ti, Lord, as a preservative against every trace of poly- theistic infection.
Confucianism was certainly the last religion for which we should have expected a naturalistic back- ground. It is so simple and dry, full of truisms and quaint observations, but free from all poetry, free from everything supernatural and miraculous, whether concerning the origin of man, or the inter- course between God and man, or the life of man after death. On all these things Confucius considers it next to madness to speculate or to assert anything
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positively. In fact, it has been doubted whether this ancient and widely spread system deserves to be called a religion at all, and as we understand that name, no doubt, religion is not quite the name for the doctrines of Confucius. His chief object is to inculcate good behaviour, propriety, unselfishness, virtue, but as to revelation or anything revealed, as to miracle, and even as to a priesthood, he is per- sistently silent.
There are, however, many things in his teaching which a Christian could honestly accept. The golden rule of Christianity : ‘All things whatsoever you would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them,’ occurs again and again in the Kings. What is now called altruism Confucius called reciprocity, as when Tsze-Kung is introduced, asking if there is not one word Which may serve as a rule of practice for all one’s life, he is answered by Confucius, ‘ Is not reciprocity such a word? What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.’ And again, in the Analects, V. ii : ‘ What I do not wish men to do to me, I also wish not to do to men.’ It seems rather a nice distinction when Dr. Legge says that Confucius only forbids men to do what they feel to be wrong and hurtful, while the Gospel commands men to do what they feel to be right and good.
I confess this savours a little of the missionary rather than the historian of religions. If we must find a difference, it seems to me rather to lie in that Confucius cites no authority, sacred or profane, in support of his rule, while Christ appeals to the Law and the Prophets. This is a peculiarity, perhaps a defect, that runs through the whole of Confucius’s
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teaching. If he were asked by whose authority he taught, he would find it difficult to answer, except by appealing, as he always does, to antiquity.
One may discover some of the old belief in nature, in the teaching of Confucius to act like nature, to obey the Will of Heaven, and to submit to nature’s laws, also to look upon man as part of nature. But this would hardly suffice as a basis for morality, whether in a family or in the State. He declines all metaphysics, but as he pei'ceived an unostentatious working of perfect wisdom in all parts of nature, he believed that there was a Power ruling the world, and this was what he meant by the Will of Heaven. But he went no further. Everything infinite and super- human, too, was looked upon by him as incompre- hensible to a finite and human mind. He did not deny a God, or a future life, but toiling among such metaphysical uncertainties seemed to him worse than useless. What seemed to him certain was man and his perfectibility on earth. For this he strove by every word he said and by every deed he did. Death had nothing terrible for him, as little as birth. It was but a part of the working of Nature, and, as such, regular and beneficent like all her works. He could not admit anything miraculous, for everything supernatural or against the laws of nature seemed to him a slur on the wisdom of the Will of Heaven, though it might rest on the testimony of ever so many persons, ancient or modern. The ways of heaven and earth, he said, are without any doubleness, and produce things in a manner that is altogether unfathomable.
When Confucius enters upon ethics and politics he
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explains how every individual should first of all improve himself and then try to improve the family and the State. The foundation of a State is, according to him, Filial Piety, and this forms the constant sub- ject of his discourses, and of the discourses of other sages preserved by him. Some people have imagined that the origin of filial piety, as a sacred duty, is to be found in the worship paid to ancestors, which in China ranked next to the worship of God. But the question is, which came first, the filial piety shown to living parents or the worship paid to ancestors 1 Confucius himself declares : ‘ The services of love and reverence to parents when alive, and those of grief and sorrow for them when dead, these discharge completely the fundamental duty of living men.’ The filial piety, or Hsiao , is represented by a very ancient written sign, consisting of the symbols of an old man supported by his son. Confucius explains what is meant by filial piety.
‘In his general conduct,’ he says, ‘he manifests to them the utmost reverence; in his nourishing them, his endeavour is to give them the utmost pleasure ; when they are ill he feels the greatest anxiety ; in mourning for them when dead he exhibits every demonstration of grief ; in sacrificing to them he displays the utmost solemnity. When a son is complete in these five things he may be pronounced able to serve his parents.’
He then, goes on and describes the result of such filial piety : ‘ He who thus serves his parents will, in a high situation, he free from pride.’
There is one book that treats entirely of Hsiao, or filial piety, and which on account of its age and its authority has received the name Hsiao-Hing. If we possess the same book of which Confucius speaks, it would be one of the oldest classics in China. Confucius
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said, as we are told : 1 My aim is seen in the Ghhun fs ew (Spring and Autumn, a chronicle of events from b. c. 721 to 480), my rule of conduct is in the Hsido- King It was destroyed no doubt in the persecu- tion of the Emperor Chhi-Hoang-Ti, when that emperor in 213 B. c. issued his edict1 that all the old classical books should be consigned to the flames, except those belonging to the great scholars in the service of the State, and the Yih-King, which was for the purpose of divination and conjuring. For- tunately that emperor died four years after the issuing of his edict, and though his orders seem to have been most effectively carried out, yet much was saved by copies being hidden and by individuals whose memory seems to have been as wonderful as the memory of the Brahmans in India. In China a new dynasty, that of the Han, began in the year 202 B. c., and in 191 b. c. the edict for the destruction of all books was formally repealed. It is true that later on a formidable opponent of the new dynasty of Han carried on the work of destruction during three months, and that many palaces and public buildings were at that time de- stroyed by fire. But even from that persecution the literary treasures of China are said to have escaped unscathed, and with regard to the Hsido-King, the book on Filial Piety, the Catalogue of the Imperial Library prepared immediately before the commence- ment of our era attests the existence of two copies containing the old text which had belonged to the family of Confucius. There are, however, two texts of the Hsido-King in existence — the longer or older, and the modern or shorter text — and there has been
1 See Legge, Life of Confucius , p. 8.
T
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much controversy among native scholars as to the age and genuineness of these two texts. That classic represents itself as containing the conversations between Confucius and one of his disciples, and it makes little difference to us whether these conversations were written down by that disciple himself or by his dis- ciples again. The doctrines contained in the book are the doctrines of Confucius, as they may be gathered from the five Kings and from the Shus, and they certainly give us the most primitive and simple ideas of the political philosophy of China that can well be imagined.
We are told in the beginning of the book that Confucius was once sitting unoccupied, and that one of his most distinguished disciples was sitting by in attendance on him. Then the master said, ‘ Shan, the ancient kings had perfect virtue and an all- embracing rule of conduct, through which they were in accord with heaven. By the practice of it people were brought to live in peace and harmony, and there was no ill-will between superiors and inferiors. Do you know what it was ? The whole world has been looking for that secret, without as yet having found it.’
No wonder, therefore, that the disciple, Shan, rose from his mat and said, ‘ How should I, who am so devoid of intelligence, be able to know this ? ’
Then the master said, ‘ It was Filial Piety. Filial piety is the root of all virtue and the stem out of which grows all moral teaching. Sit down again and I will explain the subject to you. Our bodies, to every hair and bit of skin, are received by us from our parents, and we must not presume to injure or
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wound them ; this is the beginning of filial piety. When we have established our character by the practice of filial piety, so as to make our name famous in future ages and thereby glorify our parents, we have reached the end of filial piety. It commences with the service of parents ; it proceeds to the service of the ruler ; and it is completed in the establishment of character.5
We see already from these introductory remarks what Confucius is aiming at. Looking at the family as the unit of political life, he holds that organizations of all political bodies can be built up with these units, and that if children have once learnt to discharge their duties to their parents, they will have learnt how to treat their superiors in larger political associa- tions, and to show proper respect to their rulers in Church and State. Peace and harmony will be pre- served, and those who honour their father and mother will, in the language of the Old Testament, live long ; that is, live long in peace in the land which God has given them.
Confucius then proceeds to show how filial piety should pervade all classes, from the common people to the very Son of Heaven ; that is, the Emperor.
The common people must follow the course of heaven (in the revolving seasons) ; that is to say, they must observe the order of the heavenly signs for the purpose of agriculture, or, as he expresses it, they must distinguish the advantages afforded by different soils, be careful in their conduct and economical in their expenditure, in order to nourish their parents. This is the filial piety of the common people.
Inferior officers show their filial piety in serving
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their fathers and loving their mothers, and in serving their rulers and reverencing them. Love is what is chiefly rendered to mothers, reverence to the rulers, and both love and reverence to fathers. When they serve their ruler with filial piety they are loyal, and when they serve their superiors with reverence they are obedient, and when they never fail in this loyalty and obedience in serving those above them they are able to preserve their emoluments and to maintain their sacrifices. This is the filial piety of the inferior officers.
Chief ministers and great officers, if controlled by filial piety, must never presume to wear robes other than those appointed by the laws of ancient kings, nor to speak words other than those sanctioned by their speech, nor to exhibit conduct other than that exemplified by virtuous ways (morality). When these things are all as they should be they can preserve their ancestral temples. This is the filial piety of the ministers and great officers.
But the Princes of States also, nay the Emperor himself, or the Son of Heaven, as he has been called ever since the Shang dynasty, have the duties of filial piety to fulfil. If he loves his parents he will not dare to incur the risk of being hated by any man or being contemned by any man. When the Son of Heaven has carried to the utmost the service of his parents, the lessons of his virtue will affect all the people and he will become a pattern to all within the four seas.
Well may the disciple exclaim after this : * Immense indeed is the greatness of filial piety’ ; while Confucius adds : Yes, filial piety is the constant course of Heaven,
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the righteousness of earth and the practical duty of man. Heaven and earth invariably pursue that course, and the people take it as their pattern. The ancient kings imitated the brilliant luminaries of Heaven, and acted in accordance with the varying advantages afforded by the earth, so that they were in accord with everything under Heaven, and in consequence their teachings without being severe were successful, and their government without being rigorous secured perfect order.
This was probably what Confucius meant by acting in harmony with Heaven or the will of Heaven, and by the people being led by the rules of propriety and by music. The order of nature was the proto- type to be imitated by rulers and subjects, every one proceeding in order like the heavenly luminaries, every one holding his own place and not interfering with those before or behind him, but showing respect and love to all. * In such a state of things,’ as Confucius says, parents, while alive, reposed on the glory of their sons, and when sacrificed to after death, their disembodied spirits enjoyed their offerings ; disasters and calamities did not occur ; misfortunes and re- bellions did not arise.
All this may be called very primitive, whether from a political or from an ethical point of view. Yet the frequent appeals to the happiness enjoyed by the people under sovereigns imbued with the prin- ciples of filial piety, as laid down in the Hsiao-King by Confucius, show that in ancient times they proved successful in maintaining peace and order, and this is more than can be said of many more recent systems of policy and ethics. It is impossible here to give larger
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extracts from the Hsido-King, but those who care for these early attempts at political science will come across many things worthy of consideration in the third volume of my Sacred Boohs of the East, where they will find a complete translation of the Hsido- King, and likewise of the Shll-King and Shi-King, while later volumes contain the Yih-King (vol. xvi), the Le Ke, or the Rules of Propriety (vols. xxvii and xxviii), and the Texts of Taoism (vols. xxxix and xl), all translated by my friend, the late Professor Legge. Anyhow, when one reads these books, however justly they may be suspected of representing ideals rather than realities, one begins to doubt whether the believers in evolution are right in supposing that all evolution and all development proceeded from the less perfect to the more perfect, from the ape to the savage, from the savage to the sage, or whether there was not in China also from time to time a reculer , let us hope, however, pour mieux sauter 1.
2. Taoism.
The next home-grown religion in China is Taoism, ascribed to Lao-tze. Of him and of his life, if we exclude mere legends, even less is known than of Confucius. Some have indeed gone so far as to deny his existence altogether, and though his reported
1 Confucius is the Latinized form which Roman missionaries gave to the Chinese name Kong-fu-tze, i. e. the venerable teacher Kong. It is a pity that they did not adopt a similar latinized name for Lao-tze, calling him Laocius. But they did not take much notice of that philosopher, who therefore became known to the world under his Chinese name only.
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interview with Confucius has been generally con- sidered as establishing once for all the historical character of both these sages, even that meeting, fixed as having taken place about 517 b. c., might well be the product of tradition only. Something like it has happened, indeed, to most founders of religion. Tradition adds so many fanciful and miraculous traits to the real story of their lives that, like a tree smothered and killed by ivy, the subject of all these fables, the stem round which the ivy clusters, becomes almost invisible, and seems at last to be fabulous itself. Still the trunk must have been there, and must have been real in order to serve as the support of that luxuriant ivy. It is said, for instance, of Lao-tzfi that his mother bore him for seventy-two years, and that, when he was born at last, in 604 B.C., he had already white hair. Is it not palpable how this tradition arose1? Lao-tze was the name given to him, and that name signifies Old Child, or Old Boy. This name being once given, everything else followed. He was born with white hair, and spoke words of wisdom like an old man. Even the very widely spread idea that the fathers of these wonderful heroes were old men recurs in this instance, for the father of Confucius also was said to have been well stricken in years. But, after all, the parents and what was fabled or believed about them in China are nothing to us. What we want to know is what the Old Boy thought and taught, and this is what we find in the Tdo-teh-King. Nor does it help us much if we read of the modern state of Taoism, in which the sublime ideas of Lao-tz^ seem entirely swamped by superstitions, jugglery, foolish ceremonies, and idolatry.
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LAST ESSAYS.
On the contrary, we shall have to forget all that Taoism has become in later times, and what it is at the present day, if we want to understand the ideas of the old philosopher. We are told that at present those who profess Taoism belong to the lowest and most degraded classes of society in China, nor do we ever hear of the spreading of Taoism beyond its national frontiers or of any attempts to spread it abroad by means of missionary efforts. In fact, we can hardly doubt that Taoism, in this respect at least, resembled Confucianism. Both were home-grown national forms of religious and mythological faith, both spiang up from a confused and ill-defined mass of local customs and popular legends, sacrificial tradi- tions, medical and hygienic observances— with this difference, however, that the teaching of Confucius acted from the very first prohibitively against the mass of existing superstitious beliefs and practices of the common people, and laid the strongest stress on ethical and political principles, excluded polytheism and all talk about transcendent matters, while Taoism excluded little or nothing, but was ready to accept whatever the people had believed in for centuries, only adding what must always have been a philo- sophy first, and a religion afterwards — the belief in Tao. In 140 B.c. a learned scholar of the name of Tung Chung-shi recommended to the Emperor Wu that all studies not found in the six departments of knowledge and in other arts sanctioned by Confucius should be strictly forbidden, so that the people should know what to follow, and that the depraved and per- verse talk which was heard at that time should cease once for all. But the Emperor, though aware of the
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evil, threw himself for many years into the arms of the charlatans, mostly Taoists, much as he afterwards repented of his folly. What made Taoism so popular was that the Taoists preferred to practise ever so many of the black arts. They professed to chaDge baser metals into gold, to brew the elixir of immor- tality, to produce manifestations of the spirits, and to perform similar tricks which have found credence at all times and in all countries amons; the ignorant masses, sometimes even at Courts and among people who ought to have known better.
When Confucius warned his people to keep aloof
from spirits, this warning, which looks at first very
like a warning against, all spiritual beliefs, may
possibly refer to the motley worship of the so-called
spirits only, with which Taoism was deeply infested.
It may be said that Confucianism was later than
Taoism, and could therefore avoid the dangers on
which Taoism was wrecked. But the background
of the two religions was evidently the same. Only
while Confucius tried to discard whatever seemed to
him hurtful, Taoism seems never to have been strong
enough for so unpopular a task. We ought not to
make Lao-tze, the author of Taoism, responsible for
the national substratum of his religion, nor for the
rubbish that entered into its construction. Thouo-h
©
he was raised in later times to be one of the chief gods and spirits of the Taoists, Lao-tzd him- self was far too sensible to aspire to such an honour.
The corruption of Taoism, owing to the vitiated elements which it had admitted into its system, seems to have been very rapid. If we look first at the
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LAST ESSAYS.
degraded state of those who profess Taoism in China, and examine the popular beliefs and the public wor- ship in which they rejoice, we can hardly trust our eyes when we come to read the Tdo-feh-King, the only book which Lao-tze has left behind, and on which his real teaching, whether we call it philosophy or religion, was founded. In early times, and even in China itself, Lao-tzd is spoken of as the superior of Confucius in his sublime flights of speculation and fancy. Certainly Confucius must have been a man of great humility. He is said to have exclaimed, ‘ Alas ! there is no one that knows me !’ adding, how- ever, ‘ But there is Heaven — He knows me.’ A man who can say that must be a man of independent thought and of a strongly marked religious character. But, though he dare not admit it himself, he was known, and was known even during his life-time, as one of the so-called ‘ superior men,’ far superior even to Yao and Shun, the phoenix among birds, the T'ai moun- tain among mounds and ant-hills. Still, as he was the younger, being thirty-five when Lao-tzd was eighty- eight years of age, Confucius, having heard of Lao-tze’s fame, went to see him in 517 B.C. Lao-tzd received Confucius with a certain air of superiority, but Con- fucius, after his interview with Lao-tzd was over, was evidently full of admiration for the old philosopher. He is reported to have said to his own disciples : 1 1 know how birds can fly, fishes swim, and animals run ; but the runner may be snared, the swimmer hooked, and the flyer shot by the arrow. But there is the dragon ; I cannot tell how he mounts on the wind through the clouds and rises to heaven. To-day I have seen Lao-tze, and can only compare him to the
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dragon1.’ The followers of Confucius and Lao-tzd, however, did not remain united in friendship and admiration, like their respective teachers. In the first century, as Sze-ma Chien relates, the believers in Tao had become a separate school, opposed to the adhe- rents of Confucius and opposed by them. Many more legends gathered round Lao-tze. He was deified, he was believed to have existed in a former life, and, what has often been repeated, as pointing to Christi- anity, he was believed to have predicted a coming teacher — a teacher that would come from the west. This is, no doubt, a curious prophecy ; the difficulty is only to find out at what time it arose and by whom it was first mentioned. The earlier legend speaks only of Lao-tzd as leaving his home in disgust and going to the north-west. Here the keeper of the gate is said to have asked him to compose a book. He agreed, wrote the book, the Tdo-teh-King, and then proceeded alone on his distant journey and disap- peared, no one knowing whither he had gone and how he died.
But, though we are told that during all his life he had been teaching the doctrine of the Tao, it seems almost impossible, in spite of all that has been written on the subject by Chinese and European savants, to say what Tao really meant. We have now many translations of the Tdo-teli-King, but even they do not throw much real light on this n^sterious being. It is clear, however, that Tao was not a man, nor a visible or palpable thing. But if it was a concept, we ask again whence that concept arose, what it compre- hended, and how it ever sprang up in the mind of
1 Legge, Religion of Chinn , p. 206.
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LAST ESSAYS.
man. We are accustomed to find concepts in every language to which there is no word corresponding in other languages. Concepts such as revelation and inspiration mean very different things in different languages, and there is no word so difficult to render into any language as Logos, the Word. Still, we can generally define the category of thoughts to which such names belong ; but even that seems impossible with Tao. Hence some philosophers — and it is clearty a subject for philosophers rather than for Chinese scholars — speak with open contempt of Lao-tze and his Tao, while others, particularly those who first discovered the Tao-teh-King and translated it, are rapturous in their admiration of that ancient philo- sophy. The first who published a translation of the Tdo-teh-King was Remusat, a member of the French Institute, and certainly a man thoroughly inured to the hardest philosophical speculations. In 1825 Remusat wrote in the first volume of his Asiatic Miscellanies , p. 8 :■ —
‘The current traditions regarding this philosopher (Lao-Tseu), the knowledge of which is due to the missionaries, were not of a character to encourage the first inquirers. The study of his book altered all the ideas which I had been able to form about him. Instead of the originator of a set of jugglers, professors of the black art, and astrologers, who seek for immortality and the means of raising themselves through the sky to heaven, I found a genuine philosopher, a single-eyed moralist, an eloquent theologian, and a subtle metaphysician. His style has the sublimity of the Platonic, and also, we must say, something of its obscurity. He produces quite similar thoughts in nearly the same words. More- over, his whole philosophy breathes mildness and goodwill. His condemnation is directed only against hard hearts and violent men. His opinions on the origin and constitution of the universe show neither ridiculous fables nor a scandalous want of sense ; they bear the stamp of a noble and high spirit : and in the sublime views
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which they disclose show a remarkable and incontestable agreement with the teaching which the schools of Pythagoras and Plato exhibited a little later V
Professor Legge uses much more sober language when speaking of the Tdo-teh-King, yet he also calls it a KTrjga es det. In Remusat’s words we see an expression of the same surprise of which we spoke just now, and which everybody must feel who com- pares the so-called religion of the Taoists in China with the Tdo-teh-King of their founder. The two are different things, though they go by the same name. Professor Legge, who knew the Chinese mind and Chinese literature in all its branches, from long familiarity with China and the Chinese, seems far less surprised at this treasure found in ancient China. It may be true, as Legge and other Chinese scholars maintain, that Taoism, though known long before the introduction of Buddhism into China in the first century after our era, became an established religion with a fully developed system of ceremonial worship, chiefly through the influence of that foreign religion. It may have been a perfectly natural wish on the part of the followers of Lao-tzd, who stood in a kind of opposition to the orthodox and conservative Con- fucianism, to assume a more settled form, and particu- larly to adopt something like the elaborate worship of the Buddhists, with their monasteries, their public processions, their vestments, their statues and idols. If Professor Legge is right, the existing religion of Taoism was begotten by Buddhism out of the old
1 See also Memoire sur la Vie et les Opinions de Lao-Tseu, Philosophe Chinois du Vlme Siecle avant noire Ere, qui a professe les Opinions attribuees communement a, Pythagore, a Platon et d leurs Disciples. Paris, 1823.
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LAST ESSAYS.
superstitions of the country, and it was not till after statues of Buddha had been brought to China that statues of Confucius and other great men of the past began to be made, nor was any image ever fashioned of the Confucian God of the old classics1. But now, if you go into a Taoist temple, you are immediately confronted by three vast images, looking exactly like Buddhas. They are, however, the great gods of the Taoists, the three Pure Holy Ones — the Perfect Holy, the Highest Holy, and the Great Holy One. They actually are called Shang-Ti, the Confucian name for God, the Supreme Lord. The second is meant for Lao-tzd, here called the Most High Prince Lao. The third is the Gemmeous sovereign God, who is sup- posed to exercise control over the physical world and to superintend all human affairs. Many legends are told about these three Pure or Holy Ones. The first, who is also called P'an-ku, is the first man who opened up heaven and earth. He is sometimes repre- sented as a shaggy, dwarfish Hercules, developing from a bear rather than from an ape, and wielding an immense hammer and chisel, with which he is break- ing the chaotic rocks and fashioning the earth. There are ever so many legends told about the third of these popular idols, who is represented as the ruler of the world. Yet the original of that idol, too, is said to have been a magician of the family of Lao-tzd, and the story is told of him that he and another magician, called Lift, rode a race on waggons up to heaven, a novel position for the ruler of the world to find himself in. This is a fair specimen of the vulgar Taoism, with its grotesque fancies and its unbeautiful 1 Religion of China, p. 167.
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art. It is true that Buddhism also had a very fancy- ful mythology and collection of legends, but we can generally discover a meaning in them, while in Tao- ism everything is a kind of dumb show. The three Precious Ones of Buddhism, often represented by statues and images, are said to be emblematic of the intelligence personified by Buddha, the Law, and the Community or Church, or, as the people thought, the Buddha Past, Present, and To Come. We shall see that the Buddhism which found most favour in China was not only the purely ethical and at the same time historical Buddhism of India, as represented in Pali, the Triphaka, the so-called Hinayana, the Little- go, but the Mahayana, the Great-go, a system of Buddhism the origin of which is still enveloped in great obscurity, and which may have borrowed from tribes beyond the Himalayan chain as much as it gave to them. Neither Buddha, who died 477 b. c., nor Confucius, who died 478 B.C., nor Lao-tzd, the older contemporary of Confucius, cared about any of these purely external embellishments of religion. In one instance we can almost watch an exchange of opinion between Confucius and Lao-tzd. All three agreed on the principle that we should treat others as we wish that they should treat ourselves. Lao-tzd, however, went even a step beyond, and commanded his followers to return good for evil. One of the school of Confucius, we are told, heard this maxim, and, being puzzled by it, consulted the master. Con- fucius thought for a moment and then replied, ‘ What, then, will you return for good ? ’ And his decision was, ‘Recompense injury with justice, and return good for good!’ Lao-tzd’s sentiment may seem more
288
LAST ESSAYS.
sublime, but the answer of Confucius was certainly more logical.
But what is Tao which Lao-tze proclaimed, and on which the whole of his philosophy was founded ? If we once know this, we shall be able to judge for our- selves whether, as Samuel Johnson observes, this ancient book contains really ‘ water from unseen wells and life from original fountains,’ or whether what we find there is muddy water only, of which the very spring, the Tao, defies all accurate definition, nay, even translation. If we take the title Tao-teh-King we find that King means ‘ book,’ particularly a classi- cal book ; Teh means ‘ virtue ’ or ‘ outcome ’ ; and it we consult Lao-tze himself, he says, ‘ If I were sud- denly to become known, and (put into a position) to conduct (a government according to the Great Tao), what I should be most afraid of would be a boastful display. The great Tao (or way) is very level and easy ; but people love the by-ways.’ This shows, though not very clearly, that with him Tao was the straight path, the right tendency ; but in what sense he meant this straight path to be understood remains uncertain. The old Latin translator uses Ratio. Remusat says, ‘ Ce mot me semble ne pas pouvoir etre bien traduit si ce n’est par le mot Aoyos dans le triple sens de souverain Etre, de Raison et de Parole.’ In many respects Logos would certainly seem a good substitute for Tao, though not in all. If, however, Professor Legge thinks it could not be rendered by Logos, because it had a father and was believed to have pre-existed, he should have remembered that some early theologians claimed pre-existence for the Logos also, though conceived as the Son. He even
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seems to admit that people would not be far wrong if they took Tao in the sense of Nature, when by a metonymy of the effect for the cause the word is used for the Creator, Author, or Producer of things, or for the powers that produce them. Dr. Hardwick, again, took Tao for an abstract cause, or the initial principle of life and order. Watters and Balfour agree that Tao is best matched by the word ‘ Nature,’ if used in the sense of Natura naturans, while all that exists (in Chinese, Tien te waoo wu) denotes the Natura naturata. Still Professor Legge is not quite satisfied with any of these renderings, because the Tao was not of a visible nature, but was the quiet, orderly course, the unseen but admirable method, in which nature developed into that Kosmos which we see.
Strauss boldly translates Tao by God ; but this, again, is impossible, because there is very little that is personal in the Tao, and the old name for God was there already in Chinese — namely, Tien. When Lao- tze says, ‘ I do not know whose son Tao is ; it might seem to be before God,’ he certainly seems to give a personal character to Tao ; but even in this con- nexion ‘ son ’ has been understood to mean no more than product, while what seems to be before God cannot well be the son of God. Again he says, ‘ Before there were heaven and earth, from of old, there It was, securely existing. From It came the mysterious existence of spirits ; from It the mysterious existence of God (Ti).’ What wonder that missionaries thought they discovered in the Tdo-teh-King sanctissimae Trinitatis et Dei incarnati mysteria ? It is very strange that, different as these various renderings of Tao are, yet we find while reading the various trans-