Further, there was the absence of any aristocracy or privileged cla.s.s; and the fact that all offices were open to all Chinamen (actors excepted)--the sole key to open it being merit, as attested by compet.i.tive examinations.
The system is Mencian; the inspiration behind it from Confucius.
It is the former"s working out of the latter"s superb idea of the _li._
The Mencian system has broken down, and been abolished. It had grown old, outworn and corrupt. But it was established a couple of centuries before that of Augustus, and has been subject to the same stress of time and the cycles; and only broke down the other day. Time will wear out anything made by man. There is no garment, but the body will out-grow or out-wear it; no body, but the soul will outlive it and cast it away. Mencius, inspired by his Master Confucius, projected a system that time took two thousand years and more to wear out in China. It was one that did much or everything to shield the people from tyranny.
Whether a better system has been devised, I do not know; but should say not--in historical times. As to the inspiration behind it--well, lest you should doubt the value of Confucius, compare the history of Europe with that of China. We have disproportioned ideas, and do not see these things straight. The Chinese Empire was founded some two centuries before the Roman: both composed of heterogeneous elements. Both, after about four centuries, fell; but China, after about four centuries more, came together and was great again. Fifteen hundred years after Ts"in Shi Hw.a.n.gti had founded China, her manvantara then having ended, and her whole creative cycle run through, she fell to the Mongols. Fifteen hundred years after Julius Caesar had founded his empire, the last wretched remnant of it fell to the Turks.
But China first compelled her conquerors to behave like Chinamen, and then, after a century, turned them out. The Turks never became Greek or Roman, and so far have not quite been turned out.
The roman empire disappeared, and never reunited;--that is what has been the matter with Europe ever since. Europe, in her manvantara, has wasted three parts of her creative force in wars and disunion. But China, even in her pralaya, became a strong, united power again under the Mings (1368-1644)--the first of them--a native dynasty. Conquered again, now by the Manchus, she mader her conquerors behave like Chinamen,--imposed on them her culture;--and went forth under their banners to conquer. The European pralaya (630-1240) was a time barren of creation in art and literature, and in life uttterly squalid and lightless The Chinese pralaya, after the Mongol Conquest, took a very long time to sink into squalidity. The arts, which had died in Europe long before Rome fell, lived on in China, though with ever-waning energy, through the Mongol and well into the Ming time: the national stability, the force of custom, was there to carry them on. What light, what life, what vigor was there in Rome or Constantinople a century and a half after Alaric or Heraclius?
But Ming Yunglo, a century and a half after the fall of Sung, reigned in great splendor; sent his armies conquering to the Caspian, and his navies to the conquest of Ceylon, the discovery of Africa, the gathering in of the tribute of the Archipelago and the sh.o.r.es of the Indian Ocean. Until the end of the eighteenth century the minor arts and crafts--pottery and bronzes--of which there was nothing to speak of in Europe in the corresponding European age--were flourishing wonderfully; and in the seventeenth and eighteeenth centuries, under Kanghi and Kienlung, China was once more a great military power. She chased and whipped the Goorkhas down through the Himalays and into India, only twenty years before England fought difficult and doubtful campaigns with those fierce little mountaineers. You may even say she has been better off in her pralaya, in many ways, and until recently, than most of Europe has been in most of _her_ manvantara. In Kienlung"s reign, for example (1735-1795) there were higher standards of life, more security, law, and order, than in the Europe of Catherine of Russia, Frederick the Great, Louis XV and the Revolution, and the English Georges. There was far less ferment of the Spirit, true; less possibility of progress;--but that is merely to say that China was in pralaya, Europe in high manvantara. The explanation is that a stability had been imparted to that Far Eastern civilization, which Europe has lacked altogether; whose history, for all its splendid high- lights, has had thousands of hideous shadows; has not been so n.o.ble a thing as we tacitly and complacently a.s.sume; but a long record of wars, confusions, disorder, and cruelities, with only dawning now the possibility of that union which is the first condition of true progress, as distinguished from the riot of material inventions and political experiments that has gone by that name.--But now, back to Mencius again.
In all things he tried to follow Confucius; beginning early by being born in the latter"s own district of Tsow in Shantung, and having a woman in ten thousand for his mother;--she has been the model held up to all Chinese mothers since. He grew up strong in body and mind, thoughtful and fearless; a tireless student of history, poetry, national inst.i.tutions, and the lives of great men. Like Confucius, he opened a school, and gathered disciples about him: but there was never the bond of love here, that there had been between Confucius and Tse Lu, Yen Huy, and the others.
These may have heard from their Master the pure deep things of Theosophy; one would venture the statement that none of Mencius"
following heard the like from him. He saw in Confucius that which he himself was fitted to be, and set out to become. He went from court to court, and everywhere, as a great scholar, was received with honor. (You will note as one more proof of an immemorial culture, that then, as now the scholar, as such, was at the very top of the social scale. There was but one word for _scholar_ and _official._)--He proposed, like Confucius, that some king should make him his minister; and like Confucius, he was always disappointed. But in him we come on none of the soft lights and tones that endear Confucius to us; he fell far short of being Such a One. A clear, bold mind, without _atmosphere,_ with all its lines sharply defined.... he made free to lecture the great ones of the earth, and was very round with them, even ridiculing them at his pleasure. He held the field for Confucius--not the Taoist, but the Mencian Confucius--against all comers; smote Yang Chu the Egotist hip and thigh; smote gentle Mo Ti, the Altruist; preached fine and practical ethics; and had no patience with those dreamers of the House of Laotse.--A man sent from the G.o.ds, I should say, to do a great work; even though--
And then there was that dreamer of dreams, of b.u.t.terfly dreams,-- subtle mystical humorous Chw.a.n.gtse: how could it be otherwise than that clear-minded clarion-throated Philosopher Mang should afford him excellent play? Philosopher Mang (Philosopher of the Second Cla.s.s, so officially ent.i.tled), in the name of his Master K"ung Ch"iu, fell foul of Dreamer Chw.a.n.g; how could it be otherwise than that Dreamer Chw.a.n.g should aim his shafts, not a Mang merely, but (alas!) at the one whose name was always on Mang"s lips?--"Confucius says, Confucius says, Confucius says"-- cries Philosopher Mang.--"Oh hang your Confucius!" thinks Chw.a.n.g the Mystic; "let us have a little of the silence and splendor of the Within!" (Well, Confucius would have said the same thing, I think.) "Let me tell you a tale," says Chw.a.n.g; and straight goes forward with it.
"It was the time of the autumn floods. Every stream poured into the river, which swelled in its turbid course. The banks were so far apart that from one to the other you could not tell a cow from a horse.
"Then the Spirit of the River laughed for joy that all the beauty of the earth was gathered to himself. Down with the current he journeyed east, until he reached the Ocean. There looking eastward, and seeing no limit to its expanse of waves, his countenance changed. As he gazed out, he sighed, and said to the Spirit of the Ocean: "A vulgar proverb says that he who has heard but a part of the truth thinks no one equal to himself.
Such a one am I.
""When formerly I heard people detracting from the learning of Confucius, or underrating the heroism of Po I. I did not believe. But now that I have looked on your inexhaustibility-- alas for me had I not reached your abode! I should have been forever a laughing-stock to those of comprehensive enlightenment."
"To which the Spirit of the Ocean answered: "You cannot speak of ocean to a well-frog,--the creature of a narrower sphere. You cannot speak of ice to a summer insect,--the creature of a season. You cannot speak of Tao to a pedant; his scope is too restricted. But now that you have emerged from your narrow sphere, and have seen the great sea, you know your own insignificance, and I can speak of great principles.
"Have you never heard of the Frog of the Old Well? The Frog said to the Turtle of the Eastern Sea, "Happy indeed am I! I hop on the rail around the well. I rest in the hollow of some broken brick. Swimming, I gather the water under my arms and shut my mouth tight. I plunge into the mud, burying my feet and toes. Not one of the c.o.c.kles, crabs, or tadpoles I see around me is my match. Why do you not come, Sir, and pay me a visit?""
"Now the Turtle of the Eastern Sea had not got its left leg down ere its right leg had stuck fast, so it shrank back and begged to be excused. It then described the sea, saying, "A thousand leagues would not measure its breadth, nor a thousand fathoms its depth. In the days of Yu the Great there were nine years of flood out of ten; but this did not add to its contents. In the days of T"ang there were seven years of drought out of eight, but this did not narrow its span. Not to be affected by volume of water, not to be affected by duration of time--this is the happiness of the Eastern Sea." At this the Frog of the Old Well was considerably astonished, and knew not what to say next. And for one whose knowledge does not reach to the positive-negative domain the attempt to understand me is like a mosquito trying to carry a mountain, or an ant to swim the Yellow River,--they cannot succeed."
If Chw.a.n.gtse had lived before Mencius, or Mencius after Chw.a.n.gtse, Chw.a.n.gtse could have afforded to see Confucius in his true light, as Liehtse did; but the power and influence of the mind of Mencius were such that in his time there was no looking at the Master except through his gla.s.ses. We do not know what happened when Laotse and Confucius met; but I suspect it was very like what happened when Mr. Judge met Madame Blavatsky. But b.u.t.terfly Chw.a.n.g, the rascal, undertook to let us know; and wrote it out in full. He knew well enough what would happen if he met Mencius; and took that as his model. He wanted Mencius to know it too. He itched to say to him, "Put away, sir, your flashy airs," and the rest; and so made Laotse say it to Confucius. It shows how large Philosopher Mang had come to loom, that anyone could attribute "flashy airs" to that great-hearted simple Gentleman K"ung Ch"iu. One thing only I believe in about that interview: Confucius" reputed speech on coming forth from it to his disciples:--"There is the Dragon; I do not know how he mounts upon the wind and rises about the clouds. Today I have seen Laotse, and can only compare him to the Dragon." He _would have said_ that; it has definite meaning; the Dragon was the symbol of the spirit, and so universally recognised.--Confucius appears to have taken none of his disciples into the Library; and Confucianist writers have had nothing to say about the incident, except that it occurred, I believe. Chw.a.n.gtse, and all Taoist writers after him, show Confucius taking his rating very quietly;--as indeed, he would have done, had Laotse been in a mood for quizzing. For Confucius never argued or pressed his opinions; where his words were not asked for and listened to, he retired. But it is not possible the recognition should have been other than mutual: the great Laotse would have known a Man when he saw him. I like the young imperturbable K"ung Jung, precocious ten-year-old of some seven centuries later. His father took him up to the capital when the Dragon Statesman Li Ying was the height of his power; and the boy determined on gaining an interview with Li. He got admission to the latter"s house by claiming blood-relationship. Asked by the great man wherein it lay, says he very sweetly: "Your ancestor Laotse and my ancestor Confucius were friends engaged in the search for truth; may we not then be said to be of the same family?"-- "Cleverness in youth," sneered a bystander, "does not mean brilliancy in later life."--"You, Sir," says Ten-years-old, turning to him, "must have been a very remarkable boy." *
------- * Giles: _Chinese Literature._ -------
The truth is, both Mencius and Chw.a.n.gtse stood a step lower and nearer this world than had the two they followed: whose station had been on the level platform at the top of the altar. But Mencius descending had gone eastward; Chw.a.n.gtse towards the west.
He was all for getting at the Mean, the Absolute Life, beyond the pairs of opposites;--which is, indeed, the central Chinese thought, Confucian or Taoist, the _raison d"etre_ of Chinese longevity, and the saving health of China. But unfortunately he --Chw.a.n.gtse--did not see that his own opposite, Philosopher Mang, was driving him an inch or two away from the Middle Line. So, with a more brilliant mind (a cant phrase that!) he stands well below Laotse; just as Mencius stands below K"ung Ch"iu. The spiritual down-breathing had reached a lower plane: soon the manvantara was to begin, and the Crest-Wave to be among the black-haired People. For all these Teachers and Half-Teachers were but early swallows and forerunners. Laotse and Confucius had caught the wind at its rising, on the peaks where they stood very near the Spirit; Chw.a.n.gtse and Mangtse caught it in the region of the intellect: the former in his wild valley, the latter on his level prosaic plain. They are both called more daring thinkers than their predecessors; which is merely to say that in them the Spirit figured more on the intellectual, less on its own plane. They were lesser men, of course. Mencius had lost Confucius" spirituality; Chw.a.n.gtse, I think, something of the sweet sanifying influence of Laotse"s universal compa.s.sion.
Well, now: three little tales from Chw.a.n.gtse, to ill.u.s.trate his wit and daring; and after then, to the grand idea he bequeathed to China.
"Chw.a.n.gtse one day saw an empty skull, bleached, but still preserving its shape. Striking it with his riding-whip, he said: "Was thou once some ambitious citizen whose inordinate yearnings brought him to this pa.s.s?--some statesman who plunged his country in ruin, and perished in the fray?--some wretch who left behind him a legacy of shame?--some beggar who died in the pangs of hunger and cold? Or didst thou reach this state by the natural course of old age?"
"He took the skull home, and slept that night with it under his head for a pillow, and dreamed. The skull appeared to him in his dream, and said: "You speak well, Sir; but all you say has reference to the life of mortals, and to mortal troubles. In death there are none of these things. Would you like to hear about death?"
"Cw.a.n.gtse, however, was not convinced, and said: "Were I to prevail upon G.o.d to let your body be born again, and your bones and flesh be renewed, so that you could return to your parents, to your wife and to the friends of your youth--would you be willing?"
"At this the skull opened its eyes wide and knitted its brows and said: "How should I cast aside happiness greater than that of a king, and mingle once again in the toils and troubles of mortality?""
Here is the famous tale of the Grand Augur and the Pigs:--
"The Grand Augur, in his ceremonial robes, approached the shambles and thus addressed the Pigs:--
""Why," said he, "should you object to die? I shall fattan you for three months. I shall discipline myself for ten days and fast for three. I shall strew fine gra.s.s, and place you bodily upon a carved sacrificial dish. Does not this satisfy you?
""Yet perhaps after all," he continued, speaking from the pigs"
point of view, "it is better to live on bran and escape the shambles...
""No," said he; speaking from his own point of view again. "To enjoy honor when alive one would readily die on a war-shield or in the haeadsman"s basket."
"So he rejected the pigs" point of view and clung to his own. In what sense, then, was he different from the pigs?"
And here, the still more famous tale of the Sacred Tortoise:--
"Chwantse was fishing in the river P"u when the Prince of Ch"u sent two high officials to ask him to take charge of the administration.
"Chw.a.n.gtse went on fishing, and without turning his head said: "I have heard that in Ch"u there is a sacred tortoise which has been dead now some three thousand years. And that the prince keeps this tortoise carefully enclosed in a chest on the altar of his ancestral temple. Now if this tortoise had its choice, which would it prefer: to be dead, and have its remains venerated; or to be alive, and wagging its tail in the mud?"
""Sir," replied the two officials, "it would rather be alive, and wagging its tail in the mud."
""Begone!" cried Chw.a.n.gtse. "I too will wag my tail in the mud!""
Well; so much for _b.u.t.terfly;_ now for _Chw.a.n.g_--and to introduce you to some of his real thought and teaching. You will not have shot so wide of the mark as to see in his story of the skull traces of pessimism: Chwantse had none of it; he was a very happy fellow; like the policeman in the poem,
".....a merry genial wag Who loved a mad conceit."
But he was by all means and anyhow for preaching the Inner as against the outer. Yet he did not dismiss this world, either, as a vain delusion and sorrowful mockery;--the gist of his teaching is this: that men bear a false relation to the world; and he desired to teach the true relation. He loved the Universe, and had a sublime confidence in it as the embodiment and expression of Tao; and would apply this thought as a solvent to the one false thing in it: the human personality, with its heresy of separateness. Dissolve that,--and it is merely an idea; in the words of a modern philosopher, _all in the mind,_--and you have the one true elixir flowing in your veins, the universal harmony; are part of the solemn and glorious pageant of the years. The motions of the heavenly bodies, the sweetness of Spring and the wistfulness of Autumn, flaunting Summer and Winter"s beauty of snow--all are parcel of yourself, and within the circle of your consciousness. Often he rises to a high poetic note;--it is largely the supreme beauty of his style which keeps his book, so thouroughly unorthodox, still alive and wagging its tail among his countrymen. Chw.a.n.gtse will not help you through the examinations; but he is mighty good to read when your days of competing are over; as I think it is Dr. Giles who says.
Like his contemporary Diogenes, he would have his dead body cast out to the vultures; but the spirit of his wish was by no means cynical. "When Chw.a.n.gtse was about to die," he writes (antic.i.p.ating things pleasantly), "his disciples expressed a wish to give him a splendid funeral. But he said: "With heaven and earth for my coffin and sh.e.l.l, and the sun, moon, and stars for my burial regalia; with all creation to escort me to the grave-- is not my funeral already prepared?""
He speaks of the dangers of externalism, even in the pursuit of virtue; then says: "The man who has harmony within, though he sit motionless like the image of a dead man at a sacrifice, yet his Dragon Self will appear; though he be absorbed in silence, his thunder will be heard; the divine power in him will be at work, and heaven will follow it; while he abides in tranquillity and inaction, the myriads of things and beings will gather under his influence."--"Not to run counter to the natural bias of things," he says, "is to be perfect." It is by this running counter--going aginst the Law, following our personal desires and so forth,--that we create karma,--give the Universe something to readjust,--and set in motion all our troubles. "He who fully understands this, by storing it within enlarges the heart, and with this enlargement brings all creation to himself. Such a man will bury gold on the hillside, and cast pearls into the sea."-- sink a plummet into that, I beseech you; it is one of the grand utterances of wonder and wisdom.--"He will not struggle for wealth or strive for fame; rejoice over longevity, or grieve at an early death. He will get no elation from success, nor chagrin from failure; he will not account the throne his private gain, no look on the empire of the world as glory personal. His glory is to know that all thigns are one, and life and death but phases of the same existence."
Why call that about burying gold and casting pearls into the sea one of the supreme utterances?--Well; Chw.a.n.gtse has a way of putting a whole essay into a sentence; this is a case in point.
We have discussed Natural Magic together many times; we know how the ultimate beauty occurs when something human has flowed out into Nature, and left its mysterious trace there, upon the mountains, or by the river-brink,
"By paved fountain, or by rushy brook.
Or on the beached margent of the sea."
Tu Fu saw in the blues and purples of the morning-glory the colors of the silken garments of the lost poet Ssema Hsiangju, of a thousand years before--that is, of the silken garments of his rich emotion and adventures. China somehow has understood this deep connexion between man and Nature; and that it is human thought molds the beauty and richness, or hideousness and sterility of the world. Are the mountains n.o.ble? They store the grandeur and aspirations of eighteen millions of years of mankind. Are the deserts desolate and terrible? It was man made the deserts: not with his hands, but with his thought. Man is the fine workshop and careful laboratory wherein Nature prepares the most wonderful of her wonders. It is an instinct for this truth that makes Chinese poetry the marvel that it is.--So the man of Tao is enriching the natural world: filling the hills with gold, putting pearls in the sea.
I do not know where there is a more pregnant pa.s.sage than this following,--a better acid (of words) to corrode the desperate metal of selfhood; listen well, for each clause is a volume.
"Can one get Tao to possess it for one"s own?" asks Chw.a.n.gtse; and answers himself thus: "Your very body is not your own; how then should Tao be?--If my body is not my own, whose is it, pray?--It is the delegated image of G.o.d. Your posterity is not your own; it is the delegated exuviae of G.o.d. You move, but know not how; you are at rest, but know not why; you taste, but know not the cause; these are the operations of universal law.
How then should you get Tao so as to possess it for your own?"
Now then, I want to take one of those clauses, and try to see what Chw.a.n.gtse really meant by it. "Your individuality is not your own, but the delegated adaptability of G.o.d."--There is a certain position in the Scheme of Things Entire,--a point, with a relation of its own to the rest of the Scheme, to the Universe;-- as the red line has a relation of its own to the rest of the spectrum and the ray of light as a whole..... From that point, from that position, there is a work to be done, which can be done from no other. The Lonely Eternal looks out through these eyes, because it must see all things; and there are things no eyes can see but these, no other hands do. This point is an infinitesimal part of the whole; but without its full and proper functioning, the Whole falls short in that much:--because of your or my petty omissions, the Universe limps and goes lame.--Into this position, as into all others impartially, the One Life which is Tao flows, adapting itself through aeons to the relations which that point bears to the Whole: and the result and the process of this adaptation is--your individuality or mine.
_You_ are not the point, the position: because it is merely that which you hold and through which you function; it is yours, but not you. What then are _you?_ That which occupies and adapts itself to the point? But that is Tao, the Universal. You can only say it is you, if from _you_ you subtract all _you_-ness.
Your individuality, then, is a temporary aspect of Tao in a certain relation to the totality of Tao, the One Thing which is the No Thing:--or it is the "delegated adaptability of G.o.d."
How and wherein adaptable?--The Infinite, occupying this position, has formed therein all sorts of attachments and dislikes; and each one of them hinders it adaptability. Your surroundings have reflected themselves on you: and the sum of the reflexions is your personality,--the little cage of I-am-ness from which it is so hard to escape. Every reflected image engraves itself on the stuff of yourself by the sensation of attachment or repulsion which it arouses. When it says, "The One becomes the Two"--which is the way in one form or another all ancient philosophy sums up the beginning of things;--this is what is meant: the "One" is Tao; the "Two" is this conditioned world, whose nature and essence is to appear as pairs of opposites--to be attractive, or to repel. The pigs" point of view was that it was better to live on bran and escape the shambles; the Grand Augur"s, that the pomp and ceremony of the sacrifice, the public honor, ought more than to compensate them for the momentary inconvenience of being killed. Opposite ways of thinking; points of view: which cherishing, Grand Augur and pigs alike dwelt on the plane of externals; and so there was no real difference between them. When you stand for you, and I for myself, it is six of one and half a dozen of the other; but when either of us stand for That which is both of us, and all else,-- then we touch reality; then there is no longer conflict, or opposites; no longer false appearances,--but the presence and cognition of the True.