"On meeting a mourner, were he a friend, his face changed. Even in every-day clothes, when he met anyone in full dress, or a blind man, his face grew staid. When he met men in mourning, he bowed over the cross-bar. Before choice meats he rose with a changed look. At sharp thunder or fierce wind, his countenance changed. In mounting his chariot he stood straight and grasped the cord. When in his chariot, he did not look round, speak fast, or point."
There you have one side of the outer man; and the most has been made of it. "Always figuring, always posturing," we hear. I merely point to the seventy n.o.ble generations, the personality made up of that courtly heredity, whose smallest quite spontaneous acts and habits seemed to men worth recording, as showing how the perfect gentleman behaved: a model. Another side is found in the lover of poetry, the devotee of music, the man of keen and intense affections. Surely, if a _poseur,_ he might have posed when bereavement touched him; he might have a.s.sumed a high philosophic calm. But no; he never bothered to; even though reproached for inconsistency. His mother died when he was twenty-four; and he broke through all rites and customs by raising a mound over her grave; that, as he said, he might have a place to turn to and think of as his home whereever he might be on his wanderings. He mourned for her the orthodox twenty-seven months; then for five days longer would not touch his lute. On the sixth day he took it and began to play; but when he tried to sing, broke down and wept. One is surprised; but there is no posing about it. Yen Hui was his saint John, the Beloved disciple. "When Yen Hui died," we read, "the Master cried, "Woe is me! I am undone of Heaven! I am undone of Heaven!" When Yen Hui died the Master gave way to grief. The disciples said: "Sir, you are giving way."--"Am I giving way?"
said he. "If for this man I do not give way, for whom shall I give way?... Hui treated me as a son his father; I have failed to treat him as a father his son."" Confucius was old then, and near his own death... But what I think you will recognise in his speech, again and again, is the peculiarly spontaneous... indeed impetuous ... ring of it. He had that way of repeating a sentence twice that marks a naturally impetuous man.--Of his sense of humor I shall speak later.
He dearly loved his disciples, and was homesick when away from them.--"My batch of boys, ambitious and hasty--I must go home to them! I must go home to them!" said he. Once when he was very ill, Tse Lu "moved the disciples to act as ministers":--to behave to him as if he were a king and they his ministers.--"I know, I know!" said Confucius; "Tse Lu has been making believe. This show of ministers, when I have none,--whom will it deceive? Will it deceive Heaven? I had rather die in your arms, my boys, than be a king and die in the arms of my ministers."--"Seeing the disciple Min standing at his side in winning strength, Tse Lu with warlike front, Jan Yu and Tse Kung fresh and strong, the Master"s heart was glad," we read. He considered what he calls "love" the highest state,--the condition of the Adept or Sage; but that other thing that goes by the same name,--of that he would not speak;--nor of crime,--nor of feats of strength, --nor of doom,--nor of ghosts and spirits. Anything that implied a forsaking of middle lines, a losing of the balance, extravagance,--he abhorred.--And now back to that other side of him again: the Man of Action.
The task that lay before him was to reform the state of Lu.
Something was rotten in it; it needed some reforming.--The rotten thing, to begin with, was Marquis Ting himself; who was of such stuff as Confucius referred to when he said: "You cannot carve rotten wood." But brittle and crumbling as it was, it would serve his turn for the moment; it would give him the chance to show twenty-five Chinese centuries the likeness of an Adept at the head of a state. So it should be proved to them that Such a One--they call him _Such a One_ generally, I believe, to avoid the light repet.i.tion of a name grown sacred--is no impractical idealist merely, but a Master of Splendid Successes here in this world: that the Way of Heaven is the way that succeeds on earth--if only it be honestly tried.
Ting was by no means master in his own marquisate. As in England under Stephen, bold bad robber barons had fortified their castles everywhere, and from these strongholds defied the government.
The mightiest magnate of all was the Chief of Clan Chi, who ordered things over his royal master"s head, and was very much a power for the new Minister of Crime to reckon with. A clash came before long. Ex-marquis Chao--he that had been driven into exile--died in Ts"i; and his body was sent home for burial with his ancestors. Chi, who had been chief among those responsible for the dead man"s exile, by way of insulting the corpse, gave orders that it should be buried outside the royal cemetery; and his orders were carried out. Confucius heard of it, and was indignant. To have had the corpse exhumed and reburied would have been a new indignity, I suppose; therefore he gave orders that the cemetery should be enlarged so as to include the grave; --and went down and saw it done.--"I have done this on your behalf," he informed Chi, "to hide the shame of your disloyalty.
To insult the memory of a dead prince is against all decency."
The great man gnashed his teeth; but the Minister of Crime"s action stood.
He turned his attention to the robber-barons, and reduced them.
I do not know how; he was entirely against war; but it is certain that in a very short time those castles were leveled with the ground, and the writ of the Marquis ran through Lu. He hated capital punishment; but signed the death warrant for the worst of the offenders;--and that despite the protest of some of his disciples, who would have had him consistent above all things. But his back was up, and the man was executed. One makes no excuse for it; except perhaps, to say that such an action, isolated, and ordained by Such a One, needs no excuse.
He was in the habit of fulfilling his duty; and duty may at times present itself in strange shapes. It was a startling thing to do; and Lu straight-way, as they say, sat right up and began to take concentrated notice of a situation the like of which had not been seen for centuries.
He had the final decision in all legal cases. A father brought a charge against his son; relying on the bias of the Minister whose life had been so largely given to preaching filial piety.
"If you had brought up your son properly," said Confucius, "this would not have happened"; and astounded plaintiff, defendant, and the world at large by putting both in prison for three months. In a year or so he had done for Lu what he had done for Chung-tu during his magistracy.
By this time Ts"i and Sung and Wei and the whole empire were taking notice too. There was actually a state where crime was unknown; where law ruled and the government was strong, and yet, the people more than contented; a state--and such a state!-- looming ahead as the probable seat of a Bretwalda. Lu with the hegemony! This old orthodox strict Lu!--this home of lost causes!--this back number, and quaint _chinoiserie_ to be laughed at!--As if Morgan Shuster had carried on his work in Persia until Persia had become of a strength to threaten the world. Lu was growing strong; and Ts"i--renowned military Ts"i--thought she ought to be doing something. Thus in our own time, whenever somnolent obsolete Turkey tried to clean her house, Russia, land-hungry and looking to a Thanksgiving Dinner presently, felt a call to send down emissaries, and--see that the cleaning should not be done.
Duke Ching of Ts"i, at the first attempt, bungled his plans badly. He would not strike at the root of things, Confucius; perhaps retained too much respect for him; perhaps simply did not understand; but at that harmless mutton Marquis Ting who Confucius had successfully camouflaged up to look like a lion.
To that end he formally sought an alliance with Lu, and the Lu Minister of Crime concurred. He intended that there should be more of these alliances.
An altar was raised on the frontier, where the two princes were to meet and sign the treaty. Duke Ching had laid his plans; but they did not include the presence of Confucius at the altar as Master or the Ceremonies on the side of Lu. There he was, however; and after all, it could hardly make much difference.
The preliminary rites went forward. Suddenly, a roll of drums; a rush of "savages" out of ambush;--there were savage tribes in those parts;--confusion; the Marquis"s guard, as the Duke"s, is at some little distance; and clearly it is for the Marquis that these "savages" are making. But Confucius is there. He steps between the kidnappers and his master, "with elbows spread like wings" hustles the latter off into safety; takes hold of the situation; issues sharp orders to the savages--who are of course Ts"i troops in disquise: _Attention! About face!--Double march!_--snaps out the words of command in right military style, right in the presence of their own duke, who stands by amazed and helpless;--and off they go. Then s.p.a.ciously clears the matter up. Finds, no doubt, that it is all a mistake; supplies, very likely, an easy and acceptable explanation to save Ching"s face; shortly has all things peaceably _in status quo._ Then brings back his marquis, and goes forward with the treaty; but now as Master of the Ceremonies and something more. There had been a land question between Lu and Ts"i: Lu territory seized some time since by her strong neighbor, and the cause of much soreness on the one hand and exultation on the other. By the time that treaty had been signed Duke Ching of Ts"i had ceded back the land to Marquis Ting of Lu,--a thing a.s.suredly he had never dreamed of doing; and an alliance had been established between the two states. Since the Duke of Chow"s time, Lu had never stood so high.
Was our man a prig at all? Was he a pedant? have those who have sedulously spread that report of him in the West told the truth about him? Or--hath a pleasant little lie or twain served their turn?
Duke Ching went home and thought things over. He had learned his lesson: that ting was but a camouflage lion, and by no means the one to strike at, if business was to be done. He devised a plan, sweet in it simplicity, marvelous in its knowledge of what we are pleased to call "human" nature. He ransacked his realm for beautiful singing and dancing girls, and sent the best eighty he could find to his dear friend and ally of Lu. Not to make the thing too pointed, he added a hundred and twenty fine horses-- with their trappings. What could be more appropriate than such a gift?
It worked. Ting retired to his harem, and day after day pa.s.sed over a Lu unlighted by his countenance. Government was at a standstill; the great Minister of Crime could get nothing done.
The Annual Sacrifice was at hand; a solemnity Confucius hoped would remind Ting of realities and bring him to his right mind.
According to the ritual, a portion of the offering should be sent to each high official of the state: none came to Confucius. Day after day he waited; but Ting"s character was quite gone: the lion-skin had fallen off, and the native egregious muttonhood or worse stood revealed.--"Master," said Tse Lu, "it is time you went." But he was very loath to go. At last he gathered his disciples, and slowly went out from the city. He lingered much on the way, looking back often, still hoping for sight of the messenger who should recall him. But none came. That was in 497.
The old century had ended about the time he took office; and with it, of course, the last quarter in which, as always, the Doors of the Lodge were open, and the spiritual influx pouring into the world. So the effort of that age had its consummation and fine flower in the three years of his official life: to be considered a triumph. Now, Laotse had long since ridden away into the West; the Doors were shut; the tides were no longer flowing; and the G.o.d"s great Confucius remained in a world that knew him not. As for holding office and governing states, he had done all that was necessary.
XI. CONFUCIUS THE HERO
He had done enough in the way of holding office and governing states. Laotse had taught that of old time, before Tao was lost, the Yellow Emperor sat on his throne and all the world was governed without knowing it. Confucius worked out the doctrine thus: True government is by example; given the true ruler, and he will have the means of ruling at his disposal, and they will be altogether different from physical force. "Example" does not covey it either: his thought was much deeper. There is a word _li_--I get all this from Dr. Lionel Giles--which the egregious have been egregiously translating "the rules of propriety"; but which Confucius used primarily for a state of harmony within the soul, which should enable beneficent forces from the Infinite to flow through into the outer world;--whereof a result would also be, on the social plane, perfect courtesy and politeness, these the most outward expression of it. On these too Confucius insisted which is the very worst you can say about him.--Now, the ruler stands between G.o.ds and men; let his _li_ be perfect--let the forces of heaven flow through him unimpeded,--and the people are regenerated day by day: the government is by regeneration.
Here lies the secret of all his insistence on loyalty and filial piety: the regeneration of society is dependent on the maintenance of the natural relation between the Ruler who rules-- that is, lets the _li_ of heaven flow through him--and his people. They are to maintain such an att.i.tude towards him as will enable them to receive the _li._ In the family, he is the father; in the state, he is the king. In very truth, this is the Doctrine of the Golden Age, and proof of the profound occult wisdom of Confucius: even the (comparatively) little of it that was ever made practical lifted China to the grand height she has held. It is hinted at in the _Bhagavad-Gita:_--"whatsoever is practised by the most excellent men"; again, it is the Aryan doctrine of the Guruparampara Chain. The whole idea is so remote from modern practice and theory that it must seem to the west utopian, even absurd; but we have Asoka"s reign in India, and Confucius"s Ministry in Lu, to prove its basic truth. During that Ministry he had flashed the picture of such a ruler on to the screen of time: and it was enough. China could never forget.
But if, knowing it to have been enough,--knowing that the hour of the Open Door had pa.s.sed, and that he should never see success again,--he had then and there retired into private life, content to teach his disciples and leave the stubborn world to save or d.a.m.n itself:--enough it would not have been. He had flashed the picture on to the screen of time, but it would have faded.
Twenty years of wandering, of indomitability, of disappointment and of ignoring defeat and failure, lay before him: in which to make his creation, not a momentary picture, but a carving in jade and granite and adamant. It is not the ever-victorious and successful that we take into the adyta of our hearts. It is the poignancy of heroism still heroism in defeat,--
"unchanged, though fallen on evil years,"
--that wins admittance there. Someone sneered at Confucius, in his latter years, as the man who was always trying to do the impossible. He was; and the sneerer had no idea what high tribute he was paying him. It is because he was that: the hero, the flaming idealist: that his figure shines out so clear and splendidly. His outer attempts--to make a Man of Marquis This or Duke That, and a model state of Lu or Wei--these were but carvings in rotten wood, foredoomed to quick failure.
All the material of the world was rotten wood: he might have learned that lesson;--only there are lessons that Such a One never learns. Well; we in turn may learn a lesson from him: applicable now. The rotten wood crumbled under his hands time and again: under his bodily hands;--but it made no difference to him. He went on and on, still hoping to begin his life"s work, and never recognising failure; and by reason and virtue of that, the hands of his spirit were carving, not in rotten wood, but in precious jade and adamant spiritual, to endure forever. On those inner planes he was building up his Raja-Yoga; which time saw to it should materialize and redeem his race presently. Confucius in the brief moment of his victory illuminated the world indeed; but Confucius in the long years of his defeat has bowed the hearts of twenty-five centuries of the Black-haired People. We can see this now; I wonder did he see it then? I mean, had that certain knowledge and clear vision in his conscious mind, that was possessed in the divinity of his Soul--as it is in every Soul. I imagine not; for in his last days he--the personality-- could give way and weep over the utter failure of his efforts.
One loves him the more for it: one thinks his grandeur only the more grand. It is a very human and at last a very pathetic figure--this Man that did save his people.
Due west from Lu, and on the road thence to Honanfu the Chow capital, lay the Duchy of Wei; whither now he turned his steps.
He had no narrow patriotism: if his own Lu rejected him, he might still save this foreign state, and through it, perhaps, All the Chinas. He was at this time one of the most famous men alive; and his first experience in Wei might have been thought to augur well. On the frontier he was met by messengers from a local Wei official, begging for their master an interview:-- "Every ill.u.s.trious stranger has granted me one; let me not ask it of you, Sir, in vain." Confucius complied; was conducted to the yamen, and went in, leaving his disciples outside. To these the magistrate came out, while the Master was still resting within.--"Sirs," said he, "never grieve for your Teacher"s fall from office. His work is but now to begin. These many years the empire has been in perilous case; but now Heaven has raised up Confucius, its tocsin to call the people to awakenment."--A wise man, that Wei official!
At the capital, Duke Ling received him with all honor, and at once a.s.signed him a pension equal to the salary he had been paid as Minister of Crime in Lu. He even consulted him now and again; but reserved to himself liberty to neglect the advice asked for.
However, the courtiers intrigued; and before the year was out, Confucius had taken to his wanderings again: he would try the state of Ch"in now, in the far south-east. "If any prince would employ me," said he, "within a twelvemonth I should have done something considerable; in three years the government would be perfect."
He was to pa.s.s through the town of Kw.a.n.g, in Sung; it had lately been raided by a robber named Yang Hu, in face and figure resembling himself. Someone who saw him in the street put it abroad that Yang Hu was in the town, and followed him to the house he had taken for the night. Before long a mob had gathered, intent on vengeance. The situation was dangerous; the mob in no mood to hear reason;--and as to that, Yang Hu also would have said that he was not the man they took him for,--very likely would have claimed to be the renowned Confucius. The disciples, as well they might be, were alarmed: the prospect was, short shrift for the whole party.--"Boys," said the Master, "do you think Heaven entrusted the Cause of Truth to me, to let me be harmed by the towns-men of Kw.a.n.g? "--The besiegers looked for protests, and then for a fight. What they did not look for was to hear someone inside singing to a lute;--it was that great musician Confucius. When he sang and played you stopped to listen; and so did the Kw.a.n.g mob now. They listened, and wondered, and enjoyed their free concert; then made reasonable inquiries, and apologies,--and went their ways in peace.
In those South-eastern states there was no prospect for him, and after a while he returneci to Wei. He liked Duke Ling personally, and the liking was mutual; time and again he went back there, hoping against hope that something might be done,--or seeing no other horizon so hopeful. Now Ling had a consort of some irregular kind: Nantse, famed for her beauty and brilliance and wickedness. Perhaps _ennuyee,_ and hoping for contact with a mind equal to her own, she was much stirred by the news of Confucius" return, and sent to him asking an interview. Such a request was a characteristic flouting of the conventions on her part; for him to grant it would be much more so on his. But he did grant it; and they conversed, after the custom of the time, with a screen between, neither seeing the other. Tse Lu was much disturbed; considering it all a very dangerous innovation, inconsistent in Confucius, and improper. So in the eyes of the world it would have seemed. But Nantse held the Duke, and Confucius might influence Nantse. He never let conventions stand in his way, when there was a chance of doing good work by breaking them.
One suspects that the lady wished to make her vices respectable by giving them a seeming backing by incarnate virtue; and that to this end she brought about the sequel. Duke Ling was to make a Progress through the city; and requested Confucius to follow his carriage in another. He did so; not knowing that Nantse had seen to it that she was to be sitting at the Duke"s side.
Her position and reputation even in those days needed some regularizing; and she had chosen this means to do it. But to the people, the spectacle was highly symbolic; and Confucius heard their jeers as he pa.s.sed:--Flaunting Vice in front, Slighted Virtue in the rear.--"I have met none," said he, "who loves virtue more than women." It was time for him to go; and now he would try the south again. In reality, perhaps, it matter little whither he went or where he stayed: there was no place for him anywhere. All that was important was, that he should keep up the effort.
An official in Sung, one Hwan Tuy, held the roads against him, accusing him of "a proud air and many desires; an insinuating habit and a wild will." From this time on he was subject to persecution. The "insinuating habit" reminds one of an old parrot-cry one has heard: "She hypnotizes them." He turned westward from this opposition, and visited one state, and then another; in neither was there any disposition to use him. He had found no more likely material than Duke Ling of Wei, who at least was always glad to see and talk with him:--might not be jade to carve, but was the wood least rotten at hand. But at Wei, as usual, there was nothing but disappointment in store.
Pih Hsih, a rebel, was holding a town in Tsin, modern Shansi, against the king of that state; and now sent messengers inviting Confucius to visit him. Tse Lu protested: had he not always preached obedience to the Powers that Were, and that the True Gentleman did not a.s.sociate with rebels?--"Am I a bitter gourd,"
said Confucius, "to be hung up out of the way of being eaten?"
He was always big enough to be inconsistent. He had come to see that the Powers that Were were hopeless, and was for catching at any straw. But something delayed his setting out; and when he reached the Yellow River, news came of the execution of Tsin of two men whom he admired. "How beautiful they were!" said he; "how beautiful they were! This river is not more majestic! And I was not there to save them!"
The truth seems to be that he would set out for any place where the smallest opening presented itself; and while that opening existed, would not be turned aside from his purpose; but if it vanished, or if something better came in sight, he would turn and follow that. Thus he did not go on into Tsin when he heard of these executions; but one, when he was on the road to Wei and a band of roughs waylaid him and made him promise never to go there again, he simply gave the promise and went straight on.
At Wei now Duke Ling was really inclined to use him;--but as his military adviser. It was the last straw; he left, and would not return in Ling"s lifetime. He was in Ch"in for awhile; and then for three years at Ts"ae, a new state built of the rebellion of certain subjects or va.s.sals of the great sourthern kingdom of Ts"u. On hearing of his arrival, the Duke of Ts"ae had the idea to send for Tse Lu, who had a broad reputation of his own as a brave and practical man, and to inquire of him what kind of man the master really was. But Tse Lu, as we have seen, was rigid as to rebels, and vouchsafed no answer.--"You might have told him,"
said Confucius, "that I am simply one who forgets his food in the pursuit of wisdom, and his sorrows in the joys of attaining it, and who does not perceive old age coming on."
Missionary writers have cast it at him, that were of old he had preached against rebellion, now he was willing enough to "have rebels for his patrons";--"adversity had not stiffened his back, but had made him pliable." Which shows how blind such minds are to real greatness. "They have nothing to draw with, and this well is deep." He sought no "patrons," now or at another time; but tools with which to work for the redemption of China; and he was prepared to find them anywhere, and take what came to hand.
His keynote was _duty._ The world went on snubbing, ignoring, insulting, traducing, and persecuting him; and he went on with the performance of his duty;--rather, with the more difficult task of searching for the duty he was to perform. This resorting to rebels, like that conversing with Nantse, shows him clearly not the formalist and slave of conventions he has been called, but a man of highest moral courage. What he stood for was not forms, conventions, reules, proprieties, or anything of the sort; but the liens of least resistance in his high endeavor to lift the world: lines of least resistance; middle lines; common sense.--As ususal, there was nothing to be done with the Duke of Ts"ae.
Wandering from state to state, he came on recluses in a field by the river, and sent Tse Lu forward to ask one of them the way to the ford. Said the hermit:--"You follow one who withdraws from court to court; it would be better to withdraw from the world altogether."--"What!" said Confucius when it was told him; "shall I not a.s.sociate with mankind? If I do not a.s.sociate with mankind, with whom shall I a.s.sociate?"
In which answer lies a great key to Confucianism; turn it once or twice, and you get to the import of his real teaching. He never would follow the individual soul into its secrecies; he was concerned with man only as a fragment of humanity. He was concerned with man _as_ humanity. All that the West calls (personal) religion he disliked intensely. Any desire or scheme to save your own soul; any right-doing for the sake of a reward, either here or hereafter, he would have bluntly called wrong- doing, anti-social and selfish. (I am quoting in substance from Dr. Lionel Giles.) He tempted no one with hopes of heaven; frightened none with threats of h.e.l.l. It seemed to him that he could make a higher and n.o.bler appeal,--could strike much more forcibly at the root of evil (which is selfishness), by saying nothing about rewards and punishments at all. The one inducement to virtue that he offered was this: By doing right, you lead the world into right-doing. He was justified in saying that Man is divine; because this divine appeal of his was effective; not like the West"s favorite appeal to fear, selfish desire, and the brutal side of our nature. "Do right to escape a whipping, or a hanging, or h.e.l.l-fire," says Christendom; and the nations reared on that doctrine have risen and fallen, risen and fallen; a mad riot of people struggling into life, and toppling back into death in a season; so that future ages and the far reaches of history will hardly remember their names, too lightly graven upon time. But China, nourished on this divine appeal, however far she may have fallen short of it, has stood, and stood, and stood.
In the last resort, it is the only inducement worth anything; the only lever that lifts.--There is that _li,_--that inevitable rightness and harmony that begins in the innermost _when there is the balance_ and duty is being done, and flows outward healing and preserving and making wholesome all the phases of being;--let that harmony of heaven play through you, and you are bringing mankind to virtue; you are pouting cleansing currents into the world. How little of the tortuosity of metaphysics is here;--but what grand efficacity of super-ethics! You remember what _Light on the Path_ says about the man who is a link between the noise of the market-place and the silence of the snow-capped Himalayas; and what it says about the danger of seeking to sow good karma for oneself,--how the man that does so will only be sowing the giant weed of selfhood. In those two pa.s.sages you find the essence of Confucianism and the wisdom and genius of Confucius.
It is as simple as A B C; and yet behind it lie all the truths of metaphysics and philosophy. He seized upon the pearl of Theosophic thought, the cream of all metaphysics, where metaphysics pa.s.ses into action,--and threw his strength into insisting on that: Pursue virtue because it is virtue, and that you may (as you will,--it is the only way you can) bring the world to virtue; or negatively, in the words of _Light on the Path:_ "Abstain (from vice) because it is right to abstain--not that yourself shall be kept clean." And now to travel back into the thought behind, that you may see if Confucius was a materialist; whether or not he believed in the Soul;--and that if he was not a great original thinker, at least he commanded the ends of all great, true and original thinking. Man, he says, is naturally good. That is, collectively. _Man_ is divine and immortal; only _men_ are mortal and erring. Were there a true brotherhood of mankind established, a proper relation of the parts to the whole and to each other,--you would have no difficulty with what is evil in yourself. The lower nature with its temptations would not appear; the world-old battle with the flesh would be won. But separate yourself in yourself,--consider yourself as a selfhood, not as a unit in society;--and you find, there where you have put yourself, evil to contend with a-plenty.
Virtue inheres in the Brotherhood of Man; vice in the separate personal and individual units. Virtue is in That which is no man"s possession, but common to all: namely, the Soul--though he does not enlarge upon it as that; perhaps never mentions it as the Soul at all;--vice is in that which each has for himself alone: the personality. Hence his hatred of religiosity, of personal soul-saving. You were to guard against evil in the simplest way: by living wholly in humanity, finding all you motives and sources of action there. If you were, in the highest sense, simply a factor in human society, you were a good man. If you lived in yourself alone,--having all evil to meet there, you were likely to succ.u.mb to it; and you were on the wrong road anyway. Come out, then; think not of your soul to be saved, nor of what may befall you after death. You, as you, are of no account; all that matters is humanity as a whole, of which you are but a tiny part.--Now, if you like, say that Confucius did not teach Theosophy, because, _so far as we know,_ he said nothing about Karma or Reincarnation. I am inclined to think him one of the two or three supreme historical Teachers of Theosophy; and to say that his message, so infinitely simple, is one of the most wonderful presentations of it ever given.
It is this entire purity from all taint of personal religion; this distaste for prayer and unrelish for soul-salvation; this sweet clean impersonality of G.o.d and man, that makes the missionary writers find him so cold and lifeless. But when you look at him, it is a marvelously warm-hearted magnetic man you see: Such a One as wins hearts to endless devotion. Many of the disciples were men who commanded very much the respect of the world. The king of Ts"u proposed to give Confucius an independent duchy: to make a sovereign prince of him, with territories absolutely his own. But one of his ministers dissuaded him thus: "Has your majesty," said he, "any diplomatist in your service like Tse Kung? Or anyone so fitted to be prime minister as Yen Huy? Or a general to compare with Tse Lu? . . .
If K"ung Ch"iu were to acquire territory, with such men as these to serve him, it would not be to the prosperity of Ts"u."--And yet those three brilliant men were content--no, proud--to follow him on his hopeless wanderings, sharing all his long sorrow; they were utterly devoted to him. Indeed, we read of none of his disciples turning against him;--which also speaks mighty well for the stuff that was to be found in Chinese humanity in those days.
Tse Kung was told that some prince or minister had said that he, Tse Kung, was a greater man than Confucius. He answered: "The wall of my house rises only to the height of a man"s shoulders; anyone can look in and see whatever excellence is within. But the Master"s wall is many fathoms in height; so that who fails to find the gateway cannot see the beauties of the temple within nor the rich apparel of the officiating priests. It may be that only a few will find the gate. Need we be surprised, then, at His Excellency"s remark?" Yen Huy said:--"The Master knows how to draw us after him by regular steps. He broadens our outlook with polite learning, and restrains our impulses by teaching us self-control."
Only once, I think, is he recorded to have spoken of prayer. He was very ill, and Tse Lu proposed to pray for his recovery. Said Confucius: "What precedent is there for that?"--There was great stuff in that Tse Lu: a bold warriorlike nature; not very pliable; not too easy to teach, I imagine, but wonderfully paying for any lesson taught and learned. He figures often as the one who clings to the letter, and misses vision of the spirit of the teaching; so now the Master plays him a little with this as to precedent,--which weighed always more strongly with Tse Lu than with Confucius.--"In the _Eulogies,"_ said Tse Lu, (it is a lost work), "it is written: "We pray to you, O Spirits of Heaven and Earth."--"Ah!" said Confucius, "my prayers began long, long ago." But he never did pray, in the Western sense. His _life_ was one great intercession and pet.i.tion for his people.
As to his love of ritual: remember that there are ceremonies and ceremonies, some with deep power and meaning. Those that Confucius upheld came down to him from Adept Teachers of old; and he had an eye to them only as outward signs of a spiritual grace, and means to it. "Ceremonies indeed!" said he once; "do you think they are a mere matter of silken robes and jade omaments? Music forsooth! Can music be a mere thing of drums and bells?"--Or of harps, lutes, dulcimers, sackbuts, psalteries, and all kinds of instruments, he might have added; all of which, together with all rites, postures, pacings, and offerings, were nothing to him unless channels through which the divine _li_ might be induced to flow. Yet on his wanderings, by the roadside, in lonely places, he would go through ceremonies with his disciples. Why?--Why is an army drilled? If you go to the root of the matter, it is to make _one_ the consciousness of the individual soldiers. So Confucius, as I take it, in his ceremonies sought to unify the consciousness of his disciples, that the _li_ might have pa.s.sage through them. I say boldly it was a proof of that deep occult knowledge of his,--which he never talked about.