has another weakness; my insignificance loves pleasure." and for Meng-tseu answered, with respect," Tai-wang loved pleasure; pleasure. he loved his wife dearly, so he contrived that in all his kingdom there should be no celibats."

emperor is

govern his

The following is still more pointed: it is a conversation with What an the same patient prince. "Suppose a servant of the king trusts to do who a friend with his wife and children, just as he is about to set out cannot for a journey if, on his return, he finds that his wife and chil- provinces. dren have suffered cold and hunger, what must he do?" The king: "He must break with his friend." Meng-tseu went on: "If the chief judge cannot govern the magistrates who are under him, what must be done with him ?" The king: "He must be deposed." Meng-tseu: "If the provinces situated at the extreme limits of the kingdom are not well governed, what must be done?" The king looked to the right and left, and turned the conversation. Meng-tseu said, "The great man has three The satisfactions to have his father and mother still living, without the wise any cause of dissatisfaction or dissension between the elder and man. the younger brother, is the first; to have nothing to blush for in the face of heaven or of man, is the second; to meet wise and virtuous men among those of his generation, is the third. These are the three causes of satisfaction to a wise man. To rule an empire is not included among them."

"When the prince of Lou desired that Lo-tching-tseu, a disciple of Meng-tseu, should undertake the whole administration of the kingdom, Meng-tseu said, 'Since I have heard that news, I cannot sleep for joy.' Some one asked, 'What, has he a great deal of energy? Meng-tseu said 'Not at all.' 'Has he prudence, and a mind that is apt to form great designs?' 'Not at all.' Has he studied much, and has he very extensive knowledge?' 'Not at all.' If so, why do you lie awake for joy at his promotion ? Because he is a man who loves what is good.' 'Is that enough ?' 'Yes; to love what is good is more than enough to govern the empire: how much more to govern the kingdom of Lou! If one who is proposed for the administration of a state loves what is good, the good men who inhabit within the four seas will think nothing of travelling one hundred leagues to come and give him good counsel. But if he loves not what is good, these men will say within themselves, He is a selfsatisfied man, who always answers, "I knew that a long while ago. That tone and air will drive good counsellors one hundred leagues from him. If they go, then the slanderers, the flatterers, the people whose countenances say "Yes" to every word he speaks, will arrive in crowds. In such company, if he wishes to govern well, how can he ?'"

ambition of

Hearty love good a

of

compensa

tion for the

want of gifts in a minister.

Suffering

the school in

which great men are

trained by

Heaven.

The

people of a village:

what they

are.

The following is in a yet higher strain. "Chun came to the empire from the midst of the fields; Fou-youé was raised to the rank of minister from a mason; Kiao-he was raised from a seller of fish and of salt; Kouan-i-ou became a minister from a gaoler. Thus it is when heaven wishes to confer a great office upon its chosen men, it begins always by proving their souls and their intellects by days of sorrow; their nerves and their bones are worn out by hard toil, their flesh is tormented with hunger. The results of their actions are always contrary to those which they hope to obtain. Thus their souls are stimulated, their natures hardened, their force augmented by an energy, without which they would have been unable to accomplish their high destiny. Men begin by committing faults, before they can correct themselves. They experience anguish of heart, are hindered in their projects, till at last they come forth. It is universally true that life comes through pains and trials, death through pleasures and repose."

We cannot help thinking that Khoung-feu-tseu himself comes respectable forth in a somewhat braver and fine spirit in the reports and commentaries of Meng-tseu. For instance, he quotes him as saying "that the most honest men of a neighbourhood are the pests of virtue." "Who are these men ?" asked Wen-tchang. "Those," said Mengtseu, "who take pains never to speak or act otherwise than all around them. If you wish to find them in a fault, you never know where to take them. Whatever side you attack them, you never get at them. That which dwells in their heart has a certain resemblance to rectitude and sincerity; what they practise seem like acts of temperance and of integrity. As all their neighbourhood boasts of them incessantly, they fancy themselves perfect people. Therefore Khoung-fou-tseu calls them the pests of virtue. I detest,' says Khoung-foutseu, 'that which has appearance without reality; I detest hated them. clever men, for fear that they shall confound justice; I detest an eloquent mouth, fearing lest it should confuse truth; I detest the sounds of the music Tching, because they corrupt music; I detest the colour of violet because it mimics the colour of purple; I detest the most respectable people of a neighbourhood because they mimic virtue.'"

Why Khoungfou-tseu

democratical

Meng-tseu's 13. Meng-tseu, it will be perceived, in spite of this last tendencies. extract, has a much more democratic tendency than his master. He is even reported to have said, "The people is the most noble thing in the world. The spirits of the earth and the fruits of the earth are second to them. The prince is of the least importance of all." Such a sentiment as this, found in a book which all Chinese men of education learn by heart, found

side by side with precepts which seem to represent the emperor as the source of all light and wisdom to his people, must needs give rise to great perplexities in the more thoughtful members of the Celestial Empire, especially in those who are necessarily brought into contact with the notions and history of barbarians. The effects of such teaching may be much greater than we can foresee. Certainly one cannot expect that they will be favourable to the real freedom and moral culture of this singular people. The deepest wisdom both of Khoung-fou-tseu and Meng-tsen seems to have consisted in awaking monarchs to a consciousness of their position and their duties; their greatest failures to have arisen from their inability to show what higher and more righteous power sustains them in that position, and can give them energy for the discharge of these duties. Whatever teaching can supply that defect may be the instrument of making China what God intends it to be. A subversion of its political order must be also the subversion of its ancient wisdom, without giving it any capacity for the acquisition of fresh light.

CHAPTER V.

PERSIAN PHILOSOPHY.

biography.

1. THE biography of Khoung-fou-tseu is as clear, accurate, and formal as that of a man who lived a century ago. The biography of Zerduscht, who occupies the corresponding place in zerduscht, the annals of Persian philosophy, is altogether confused and his mythical. It is hardly possible to compose any orderly history out of the wild legends of his birth, his adventures, and his reformation. The most intelligent modern critics have given up the task. They doubt whether such a man ever existed; they think that he represents an epoch, or a great struggle of opposing principles, that different persons who illustrated that epoch, or engaged in that struggle, may have been blended under one name, and that the traditionary history may have as much or as little to do with one as with another of them.

2. If we were forced to acquiesce in this conclusion, to what His age. period will this imaginary hero belong? It is difficult not to connect him with that general movement of the Asiatic mind to which we have already alluded in this sketch. The Buddhist convulsion in Hindostan, the great Chinese reformation, and the movement in Iran or Persia, of which we are now to speak, if not strictly contemporaneous events, may not have been sepa

What was common in

Oriental reformations.

rated by the distance of more than a century. That there was the different something common in them all will easily be admitted. The Indian, the Chinese, the Persian reformers, alike believed that they were bringing back some old order or principle, which had been forgotten or violated, or for which some modern practices and notions had been substituted. Neither the Buddhist nor the disciple of Zerduscht would have allowed, any more than Khoung-fou-tseu, that they were introducing innovations into the worship or polity of their country: all professed to sweep Their great innovations away. But their differences are only made the more remarkable by this coincidence, and by the power which all were able to put forth. They did leave an impress upon vast regions of the earth,-they proved that there were certain great ideas of which these nations were, and perhaps had always been, the appointed depositaries. We have tried to discover in the practical records of Chinese thought and legislation what their characteristic is; is it possible to penetrate through the vagueness of the Zendavesta, and to detect what was latent in the minds of those who composed it, or believed in it?

differences.

The

Zendavesta.

real person.

3. To give any account of this strange collection of litanies seems impossible. How it came together is a question still unsolved. The debates about the language in which it is composed are receiving so much illustration from recent inquiries, that it would be unwise to enter upon them, even if our subject required it. If we gave specimens of the style of the book, as it comes to us through the French compiler, M. Anquetil, we should perhaps rather confuse our readers respecting its object than help them to arrive at it. We shall, therefore, content ourselves with some general hints respecting the meaning and purpose of the change which has been for so many centuries connected with the name of Zoroaster,-hints not in the least novel, in accordance for the most part with the conclusions at which all students of the subject have arrived, but which may throw some light upon the question, what place Persia occupies in the history of philosophical inquiries, and how it is connected in the way, either of resemblance or opposition, with Egypt, with India, with China, with Greece.

very

The Persian 4. The difficulty of attributing a personal existence to Zororeformer a aster is much that which meets us again in the cases of Lycurgus, Odin, and many more; a difficulty, we may be permitted to remark, belonging chiefly to our own time, connected with a true feeling of the wonderful manner in which institutions, beliefs, habits, have diffused themselves through particular races, and characterised them from the very first; connected also with a vague and false feeling, that acts can some

how accomplish themselves without living agents, that great conflicts may be transacted in the clouds and the air, without human combatants or personal leaders. In each instance we have named, it is probable that we shall ultimately return to the belief of our forefathers in an actual legislator or champion, however we may confess our inability to arrive at that very definite notion of his position and acts, which they attained by supplying the chasms of fact out of the stores of their imagination, or by the opposite process of stripping legends of their poetry, of all that gives them their worth and significance,and so reducing them into facts. Of Zerduscht we must speak as an actual person; he may have had some other name,-he may have done acts of which we know nothing, and have not done any of those his biographers record; but that there was some one who maintained the conflict which produced results so striking and so lasting we may at once assume, and speak upon the assumption.

The

5. The conflict of Zerduscht was with the Magians. This His enemies we take to be the facts of his history, whatever fictions may Magians. surround it. He found a set of men doing homage, as he believed, to powers, or a power of evil. Probably they made no secret of this homage. They taught that such a power was to be worshipped; they could teach the method of the worship. They knew the secrets of the evil being; they could explain how his wrath was to be averted. Upon the belief that they possessed this knowledge their influence stood.

object of

6. This was practically the case whatever worship they might Ahriman the also pay to a beneficent Divinity. There is no reason to sup- Magian pose that the reverence for Ormuzd had ceased among them. worship. Most likely there were services which they rendered habitually and punctually to him, and called upon the people to render. But what is the worship of a good Being, when the Evil dwells professedly side by side with him? The latter becomes inevitably the God. The character of the whole service is leavened and moulded by his character. Let the theories respecting the relation of the two beings towards each other be what they may, Ormuzd becomes really the servant of Ahriman. The Magians were in truth his priests, even when they were nominally bowing to his rival.

this worship

7. The effects of such a religion manifest themselves in all Effects of directions. Zerduscht felt them in one direction especially. ⚫ on tillage. The earth in Iran was overgrown with weeds; nothing was done to till it or make it fruitful. How much is gathered up in these words! What a history of the effects of a priesthood, which looks upon its chief Divinity as the author of curses instead of blessings! Slavish dependence upon seasons, without any study