vicious thoughts, to encourage virtuous
meditations, to confer benefits upon others, and
to avoid doing injuries, are the foundations
of his moral code. He quotes the aphorisms of
sages, but recognises no prophets. He habitually
admitted the existence of a mysterious, supreme,
intelligent cause, directing and controlling
all things, to which man must bend in reverent
submission. He concerned himself little with
the religious rites observed by his countrymen;
but referred inquirers on such subjects
to those who were specially charged with
the conduct of the libations (then always
simple, never sanguinary), to the spirits of
heaven and earth, of the seasons, the harvests,
and the elements. These observances, but
especially the duties of the ancestral rituals,
were rather of a civil than of an ecclesiastical
character. All external ceremonials were
regulated by the emperor and his council;
they belonged not to the domain of the moralist
and the philosopher, except in so far as their
observance became a portion of that general
law to which he taught submission and
obedience. There is no reason to suppose that the
objects of worship were at this period personified
in the shape of images, or that the worship could
be properly called idolatry. There are in the
Wisdom of Solomon, especially in the thirteenth
chapter, and in various other parts of the book
of Ecclesiasticus, beautiful descriptions of the
gods who, in the patriarchal ages, were supposed
"to govern the world," and. the pictures are
striking resemblances of the theology of China
in the time of Confucius.

On one occasion Confucius was reproached
for his silence, and asked how, without speech,
he was to be known to posterity? He answered:
"How does Heaven speak? The four seasons
fulfil their courses; one after another, beings
are called into life. How does Heaven speak?"
The commentator adds, "There are other voices
than those of words." Thus, before Shakespeare,
there were those who

Found tongues in trees, books in the running brook,
Sermons in stones,

though perhaps they were not so clear-visioncd
as to find

Good in everything.

When asked how wealth was to be amassed,
he refused to open his lips. One of his followers,
who sought information about agriculture,
received this gentle rebuke: "Consult not me,
but an old (experienced) farmer." "He would
never," writes a disciple, "speak about strange,
or turbulent, or violent, or spiritual things."
"I detest," he said, " the bold and the forward,
who talk without knowledge."

Here is a narrative which fiction has
decorated. Confucius was the minister of Lu,
and it is recorded that he found means of
recovering an article which had been lost in
a water-pipe, when everybody else had failed.
A neighbouring king, wishing to overthrow
the sovereign of Lu, sent a dancing-girl
(crushed feet were not then in fashion) to
fascinate him, and Confucius, failing in the
counsels he gave his master that he should
repel the attempt at seduction, surrendered his
post, and departed to the adjacent country.
When he reached the frontier, he was
surrounded by guards, and left for seven days without
food; but the people came to his deliverance,
and escorted him to the court. The king
would not give him office, because the minister
represented that nations could not be ruled by
the gentle and persuasive means which alone the
sage would consent to employ. After some
time he returned home, where he opened an
academy for teaching lessons of morality, and
was followed by many disciples. Then he wrote
his "Spring and Autumn" for the reproof of the
servile manners of his time, and his "Filial
Duty," for the instruction of youth. Tradition
says that about this period the Kilin appeared—
a mysterious creature—a unicorn stag, with
scales, one of whose legs was broken at the
time of its capture, when it held in its mouth a
jasper tablet on which was written the prophecy
that Confucius would be a king without a kingdom.
Confucius knew that his teachings were
in advance of his age, and he determined to be
the commentator and corrector of the books of
the sages who had preceded him, and which had
already a strong hold on the minds of the people.
Afterwards he travelled with Tze Kung, his
most opulent disciple, and other followers, and
visiting Shantung, pointed out a hill, named
Kin-fan, which he selected for his burial-place.
Tze Kung expressed his apprehension that it
might be invaded and disturbed, on which the
sage directed that two imperishable pine-trees
should be planted there to mark the spot, well
knowing it would thus be secured from after
desecration; and there Confucius was buried.
The disciples mourned for him three years on
the spot: Tze Kung six years, and the story says
he covered the cofiin with magnets for its protection.
A wicked emperor sent a body of men to
destroy the tomb, but their mattocks were
arrested by the loadstones, which, attracting
their coats of mail, dragged and confined them,
to the ground, so that they were helpless and
unable to pursue their work. The pine-trees still
live, and flourish or decay with the fortunes of
the empire. Whenever a new dynasty is
invested with sovereignty, a new branch appears.

Confucius instructed his disciples never to rest
satisfied with their acquiremeuts, but constantly
to put to themselves the question, "Is this
sufficient for excellence?" He taught that
there might be as much courage in retreating
from, as in confronting, danger. "I would not,
fight," he said, "unless I were sure to conquer."
"The experience of seventy years," he declared,
"has taught me to moderate my desires." He,
like one greater than he, refused to be called
"good," or even wise. One of his followers
asked him, "Are you not a saint?" He
replied, "I, a saint? No. I study incessantly the
precepts of the saints, and teach their precepts."
The biographers describe him as "affable, kind,
respectful, economical, yielding." He was