The Chinese Classics - James Legge (free novels .txt) 📗

class="calibre1">government would display itself like an easily-growing rush [1].’ The same sentiment was common from the lips of Mencius. Enforcing it one day, when conversing with one of the petty rulers of his time, he said in his peculiar style, ‘Does your Majesty understand the way of the growing grain? During the seventh and eighth months, when drought prevails, the plants become dry. Then the clouds collect densely in the heavens; they send down torrents of rain, and the grain erects itself as if by a shoot. When it does so, who can keep it back [2]?’ Such, he contended, would be the response of the mass of the people to any true ‘shepherd of men.’ It may be deemed unnecessary that I should specify this point, for it is a truth applicable to the people of all nations. Speaking generally, government is by no device or cunning craftiness; human nature demands it. But in no other family of mankind is the characteristic so largely developed as in the Chinese. The love of order and quiet, and a willingness to submit to ‘the powers that be,’ eminently distinguish them. Foreign writers have often taken notice of this, and have attributed it to the influence of Confucius’s doctrines as inculcating subordination; but it existed previous to his time. The character of the people molded his system, more than it was molded by it.

This readiness to be governed arose, according to Confucius, from ‘the duties of universal obligation, or those between sovereign and minister, between father and son, between husband and wife, between elder brother and younger, and those belonging to the intercourse of friends [3].’ Men as they are born into the world, and grow up in it, find themselves existing in those relations. They are the appointment of Heaven. And each relation has its reciprocal obligations, the recognition of which is proper to the Heaven-conferred nature. It only needs that the sacredness of the relations be maintained, and the duties belonging to them faithfully discharged, and the ‘happy tranquillity’ will prevail all under heaven. As to the institutions of government, the laws and arrangements by which, as through a thousand channels, it should go forth to carry plenty and prosperity through the length and breadth of the country, it did not belong to Confucius, ‘the throneless king,’ to set them forth minutely. And indeed they were existing in the records of ‘the ancient sovereigns.’ Nothing new was needed. It was only

1 ������, xx. 3.

2 Mencius, I. Pt. I. vi. 6.

3 ������, xx. 8.

requisite to pursue the old paths, and raise up the old standards. ‘The government of Wan and Wu,’ he said, ‘is displayed in the records,— the tablets of wood and bamboo. Let there be the men, and the government will flourish; but without the men, the government decays and ceases [1].’ To the same effect was the reply which he gave to Yen Hui when asked by him how the government of a State should be administered. It seems very wide of the mark, until we read it in the light of the sage’s veneration for ancient ordinances, and his opinion of their sufficiency. ‘Follow,’ he said, ‘the seasons of Hsia. Ride in the state carriages of Yin. Wear the ceremonial cap of Chau. Let the music be the Shao with its pantomimes. Banish the songs of Chang, and keep far from specious talkers [2].’

Confucius’s idea then of a happy, well-governed State did not go beyond the flourishing of the five relations of society which have been mentioned; and we have not any condensed exhibition from him of their nature, or of the duties belonging to the several parties in them. Of the two first he spoke frequently, but all that he has said on the others would go into small compass. Mencius has said that ‘between father and son there should be affection; between sovereign and minister righteousness; between husband and wife attention to their separate functions; between old and young, a proper order; and between friends, fidelity [3].’ Confucius, I apprehend, would hardly have accepted this account. It does not bring out sufficiently the authority which he claimed for the father and the sovereign, and the obedience which he exacted from the child and the minister. With regard to the relation of husband and wife, he was in no respect superior to the preceding sages who had enunciated their views of ‘propriety’ on the subject. We have a somewhat detailed exposition of his opinions in the ‘Narratives of the School.’— ‘Man,’ said he, ‘is the representative of Heaven, and is supreme over all things. Woman yields obedience to the instructions of man, and helps to carry out his principles [4]. On this account she can determine nothing of herself, and is subject to the rule of the three obediences. When young, she must obey her father and elder brother; when married, she must obey her husband;

1 ������, xx. 2.

2 Ana. XV. x.

3 Mencius, III. Pt. I. iv. 8.

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when her husband is dead, she must obey her son. She may not think of marrying a second time. No instructions or orders must issue from the harem. Woman’s business is simply the preparation and supplying of drink and food. Beyond the threshold of her apartments she should not be known for evil or for good. She may not cross the boundaries of the State to attend a funeral. She may take no step on her own motion, and may come to no conclusion on her own deliberation. There are five women who are not to be taken in marriage:— the daughter of a rebellious house; the daughter of a disorderly house; the daughter of a house which has produced criminals for more than one generation; the daughter of a leprous house; and the daughter who has lost her father and elder brother. A wife may be divorced for seven reasons, which, however, may be overruled by three considerations. The grounds for divorce are disobedience to her husband’s parents; not giving birth to a son; dissolute conduct; jealousy— (of her husband’s attentions, that is, to the other inmates of his harem); talkativeness; and thieving. The three considerations which may overrule these grounds are— first, if, while she was taken from a home, she has now no home to return to; second, if she have passed with her husband through the three years’ mourning for his parents; third, if the husband have become rich from being poor. All these regulations were adopted by the sages in harmony with the natures of man and woman, and to give importance to the ordinance of marriage [1].’

With these ideas of the relations of society, Confucius dwelt much on the necessity of personal correctness of character on the part of those in authority, in order to secure the right fulfillment of the duties implied in them. This is one grand peculiarity of his teaching. I have adverted to it in the review of ‘The Great Learning,’ but it deserves some further exhibition, and there are three conversations with the chief Chi K’ang in which it is very expressly set forth. ‘Chi K’ang asked about government, and Confucius replied, “To govern means to rectify. If you lead on the people with correctness, who will dare not to be correct?”’ ‘Chi K’ang, distressed about the number of thieves in the State, inquired of Confucius about how to do away with them. Confucius said, “If you, sir, were not covetous, though you should reward them to do it, they would not steal.”’ ‘Chi K’ang asked about government,

1 ������������, ���������

saying, “What do you say to killing the unprincipled for the good of the principled?” Confucius replied, “Sir, in carrying on your government, why should you use killing at all? Let your evinced desires be for what is good, and the people will be good. The relation between superiors and inferiors is like that between the wind and the grass. The grass must bend, when the wind blows across it [1].”’

Example is not so powerful as Confucius in these and many other passages represented it, but its influence is very great. Its virtue is recognised in the family, and it is demanded in the church of Christ. ‘A bishop’— and I quote the term with the simple meaning of overseer— ‘must be blameless.’ It seems to me, however, that in the progress of society in the West we have come to think less of the power of example in many departments of state than we ought to do. It is thought of too little in the army and the navy. We laugh at the ‘self-denying ordinance,’ and the ‘new model’ of 1644, but there lay beneath them the principle which Confucius so broadly propounded,— the importance of personal virtue in all who are in authority. Now that Great Britain is the governing power over the masses of India and that we are coming more and more into contact with tens of thousands of the Chinese, this maxim of our sage is deserving of serious consideration from all who bear rule, and especially from those on whom devolves the conduct of affairs. His words on the susceptibility of the people to be acted on by those above them ought not to prove as water spilt on the ground.

But to return to Confucius.— As he thus lays it down that the mainspring of the well-being of society is the personal character of the ruler, we look anxiously for what directions he has given for the cultivation of that. But here he is very defective. ‘Self-adjustment and purification,’ he said, ‘with careful regulation of his dress, and the not making a movement contrary to the rules of propriety;— this is the way for the ruler to cultivate his person [2].’ This is laying too much stress on what is external; but even to attain to this is beyond unassisted human strength. Confucius, however, never recognised a disturbance of the moral elements in the constitution of man. The people would move, according to him, to the virtue of their ruler as the grass bends to the wind, and that virtue

1 Ana. XII. xvii; xviii; xix.

2 ������, xx. 14.

would come to the ruler at his call. Many were the lamentations which he uttered over the degeneracy of his times; frequent were the confessions which he made of his own shortcomings. It seems strange that it never came distinctly before him, that there is a power of evil in the prince and the peasant, which no efforts of their own and no instructions of sages are effectual to subdue.

The government which Confucius taught was a despotism, but of a modified character. He allowed no ‘jus divinum,’ independent of personal virtue and a benevolent rule. He has not explicitly stated, indeed, wherein lies the ground of the great relation of the governor and the governed, but his views on the subject were, we may assume, in accordance with the language of the Shu-ching:— ‘Heaven and Earth are the parents of all things, and of all things men are the most intelligent. The man among them most distinguished for intelligence becomes chief ruler, and ought to prove himself the parent of the people [1].’ And again, ‘Heaven, protecting the inferior people, has constituted for them rulers and teachers, who should be able to be assisting to God, extending favour and producing tranquillity throughout all parts of the kingdom [2].’ The moment the ruler ceases to be a minister of God for good, and does not administer a government that is beneficial to the people, he forfeits the title by which he holds the throne, and perseverance in oppression will surely lead to his overthrow. Mencius inculcated this principle with a frequency and boldness which are remarkable. It was one of the things about which Confucius did not like to talk. Still he