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"He who is condoling with one who has mourning rites on hand, and is not able to assist him with a gift, should put no question about his expenditure. He who is inquiring after another who is ill, and is not able to send (anything to him), should not ask what he would like. He who sees (a traveller), and is not able to lodge him, should not ask where he is stopping. He who would confer something on another should not say, 'Come and take it;' he who would give something (to a smaller man) should not ask him what he would like." 1

The first clauses require no comment, though they show that the exercise of hospitality and the interchange of friendly gifts were common; but the last sentence shows that in giving and receiving presents the selfrespect of both parties was to be protected with the utmost refinement. A poor man will not ask for what he wants, he must be entreated to accept it. No one will take a gift; it must be offered or presented to a private person just as much as to a ruler.

During a famine a gentleman had food prepared on the road to wait the approach of hungry people. A particularly famished-looking wretch came up, and he held out food and drink, saying, " Poor man! come and eat." "The man, opening his eyes with a stare and looking at him, said, 'It was because I would not eat "Poor man come here food" that I am come to this state.' Khien Ao immediately apologised for his words, but the man after all would not take the food, and died." It is not clear at once to the coarse Western mind where the wrong-doing of the story lies, but the opinion of one of Confucius' chief disciples is recorded. The gentleman in his judgment had certainly behaved amiss, but his error did not deserve the severe punishment inflicted. "When he expressed his pity as he did, the man might have gone away; when he apologised, the man might have taken the food." 2 Must we not, however, admit that European falls short of Chinese civilization, while they do and we do not feel it to be unseemly for a gentleman to bid a pauper "Come and eat," without further demonstrations of courtesy and respect?

The common people were not expected to observe all the minuter rules of ceremony. Such rules as that "In a house of mourning one should not laugh;" "When eating (with others) one should not sigh ;" "When there is a body shrouded and coffined in his village one should not sing in the lanes;" and that in "Walking with a funeral procession one should not pick his way," ,"-these might be observed by everybody; but it is only the superior man who is required to sacrifice his convenience to decorum: he, "though poor, will not sell his vessels of sacrifice; though suffering from cold, he will not wear his sacrificial robes; though he wants wood to build a house, he will not cut down the trees on his grave mounds." 3

The superior man must act consistently, at whatever cost; thus Confucius happened one day to be carried away by sympathy, so as to wail more

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bitterly than was demanded by the strict rules of propriety, at the mourning rites of an old host. On leaving the house he bade his companions unharness two of the horses from his carriage and present them as his gift. It was objected that such a gift was excessive, considering the slightness of the relationship. The master said, "I found (the mourner) so dissolved in grief that my tears flowed. I should hate it if those tears were not followed. Do it, my child."1 Friendly regard and helpful action ought to go together it is equally improper to offer help without expressing friendly feeling and to manifest friendly feeling without offering help, and having done the one the superior man will not fail to do the other in due proportion.

The same refinement of feeling is to be noted in a variety of other rules. It is not proper for a man to take office while in mourning for his parents; but if his services are needed by the State, he may give them gratuitously.2 During the same period he might speak of public affairs concerning his superiors, but not of those in which he himself had an interest.3 On the other hand, a prince may call at the house of a minister to inquire for the sick or to condole with mourners, but he must not visit there for amusement. It is not proper for men to praise their seniors or superiors; but at all times it was a point of good manners to give somebody else the credit of whatever merit one was supposed to possess. A private citizen gave the glory to his parents, a minister to his prince, and the ruler to high heaven :4 "it was thus that they showed submissive deference."

"When

Minor instructions on points of etiquette are equally rational. sitting by a person of rank, if he began to yawn and stretch himself, to turn round his tablets, to play with the head of his sword, to move his shoes about or to ask about the time of day, one might ask leave to retire." 5

2 Ib., p. 342; xxviii. 465.

3 Ib., pp. 191, 233.

1 S. B., xxvii. p. 137. 4 A famous littérateur of the Sung dynasty, Su Tung Po' (1036-1101 A.D.), enshrined this ancient doctrine in the verses celebrating his arbour, which was "named after rain, to celebrate joy," three days' heavy rain having come in time, and only just in time, to save the harvest in the district, of which he had just been appointed governor :—

"Should Heaven rain pearls, the cold cannot wear them as clothes;
Should Heaven rain jade, the hungry cannot use it as food.

It has rained without cease for three days

Whose was the influence at work?

Should you say it was that of your governor,
The governor himself refers it to the Son of Heaven.
But the Son of Heaven says, 'No; it was God,'
And God says, No; it was Nature.'

And as Nature lies beyond the ken of man,
I christen this arbour instead."

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Gems of Chinese Literature, p. 186. In Mr. Giles' Chinese-English Dictionary the meaning of the term here rendered “God”—Tsao hua—is given as “to make, to create, the Creator, God, that which is brought about by a higher power; Fortune, Luck: (the two last developments being comparatively late, like the popular English use of the word "Providence"). Chinese philosophers never seem to come nearer to Theism than the Deus sive Natura of Spinoza'; but we have here something like the Scholastic distinction between Natura naturans and Natura naturata, or, in more modern phrase, between Force and Matter. The Son of Heaven gives the praise to the Eternal Forces above, and the Eternal Forces above give the praise to Eternal Fact.

5 S.B., xxviii. pp. 72, 76, 81.

Several other passages recall fragments of the Egyptian rules of propriety -one should not speak positively if one has the slightest doubt; but if one has no doubt, one should not seem to be expressing one's own opinion only. In the presence of a superior one should not answer a question without looking round to see if any one else is going to speak. It is not stated anywhere that unpalatable advice or criticism ought not to be delivered point-blank, but should be wrapped up in the most delicately suggestive of allegories. But this sort of diplomacy came too much by nature to the Chinese official for it to need enjoining. One such example of ministerial politeness may be quoted, which serves also to illustrate the deeply rooted Chinese conviction that the art of government begins at home. Duke Wen of Chin was going to a confederacy of feudal princes to plan an attack on the State of Wei. On the journey his minister laughed. The Duke asked what amused him, and he replied, that he was laughing at the thought of a neighbour of his, who was escorting his wife. on a visit to her parents, when he espied a pretty girl picking mulberry leaves. He stopped to talk to her, and then, turning his head, he saw somebody else paying attention to his own wife. The Duke took the hint and turned back, just in time to hear that an enemy had attacked his northern frontier.1

As in Egypt, all classes anciently carried staffs, but about 500 B.C. the right to do so was restricted to men of rank, because a wheelwright was seen using his as a tool. "There was nowhere such a thing as being born noble." "3 By ancient custom a piece of jade or a number of shells were placed in the mouth of the deceased, while the tuft of hair worn by boys and the observance of the feasts of lanterns and of the moon are other traits common to both countries.

1 F. H. Balfour. Leaves from my Chinese Note Book, p. 132.
2 See Appendix M.
3 S.B., xxvii. p. 430.

CHAPTER VII.

FEUDALISM AND THE FALL OF CHOW.

THE Odes confirm the witness of the other classics upon a point as to which otherwise we might have felt some scepticism. That the extension of the royal authority, described in the Rites, was not always a fiction appears from the regrets expressed, especially in the smaller States, after the setting in of its decay. In one of the odes it is said, "The way to Chow should be level and easy." It used, according to the malcontents, "to be straight as an arrow, trodden by officers coming willingly to court.” 1 Oppressed citizens of Kwei or Tsa'ou regret the good old times "when the States had their sovereign" to defend the weak and receive their appeals ; and for centuries after there had ceased to be any real hope of a deliverer from the West, they would gaze with sad longings upon the road to Chow, and "sigh as they wake in the night to think of its capital city."

The orthodox way of maintaining the unity of the empire, notwithstanding its unwieldy growth, was for the subordinate princes to present themselves regularly at court, and for the kings to make periodical progresses throughout the States and receive appeals against evil-doers, to remove usurpers and oppressors, and encourage each court to reproduce in miniature the harmonising influence of the One Man. While this was the case all went well; but, on the other hand, "when government is not correct, the ruler's seat is insecure. When the ruler's seat is insecure, the great ministers revolt, and smaller ones begin pilfering. Punishments are made severe and manners deteriorate."

In the 9th cent. this process of deterioration had begun, but the traditions of Wen and Wu were still strong enough to enable virtuous ministers to depose a bad king without being either suspected or guilty of disloyalty to the dynasty. King Li was dethroned or compelled to fly 841 B.C., and till his death, in 827, the Government was carried on by a sort of protectorate of virtuous ministers, who reconciled their duty to both king and people by holding the Government in trust for the king's son, till his father's death. Before the king was deposed by a popular rising, he had not only been admonished in various odes, but also warned against supposing that discontent could be repressed by silencing its expression. "It may be said," observed the minister who held the reins during the subsequent interregnum, "that an emperor knows how to govern when poets

1 Legge, C. C., iv. pp. 337, 353.

2 From this date onwards all schemes of Chinese chronology agree.

are free to make verses, and the populace to act plays, historians to tell the truth, ministers to give advice, the poor to grumble in paying their taxes, the students to learn their lessons aloud, the workmen to praise their skill and seek for work, the people to speak of all it hears, and the old men to find fault with everything. Then things go on without much difficulty: the tongues of the people are like the rivers and mountains from whence the riches and necessaries of life are drawn."1 Is there any other text of the same antiquity as essentially modern in tone?

Later political odes take the form of laments or denunciations :-
:-

"Alas for the men of this time!

Why are they such cobras and efts?”

The wheels of the chariot of State drive heavily, but no one looks after the coachman nor helps the wheels out of a rut. In a word,

"The majestic honoured capital of Chow
Is being destroyed by Sze of Paou,"

the favourite concubine of the king. Another poem belonging to the reign of King Yew (780-770) denounces "women and eunuchs" as the twin sources of court disorder. "A wise man builds up the wall, but a wise woman overthrows it; she is at best an owl, a stepping-stone to disorder. Men had their lands and fields in times past, but these are now seized by the unworthy favourites. For a woman to leave her silkworms and weaving to meddle with public affairs is as unseemly as for a statesman to seek for the 300 per cent. profit of trade." The same author in the next ode speaks of the people as abandoning their homes on account of famine: "In the settled regions and on the borders all is desolation," and the kingdom, instead of increasing its boundaries as heretofore, is diminishing daily.2

Among the provincial poems, two of the odes of Wei apostrophize the swarms of corrupt or oppressive officials in terms that would admit of tolerably world-wide application. The woodman's axe rings upon the trees, he hews the wood for wheels and spokes, by the banks of the rippling stream: but as for these ministers--you sow not nor reap :

"How do you get the produce of these 300 farms?
You sow not nor reap-

How do you get your three million of sheaves?

How do you get the paddy for your 300 round binns?
You do not follow the chase-

How do we see the badgers, the three-year-olds and the quails
Hanging up in your court yards? " 3

Another poem has the significant refrain, "Large rats, large rats, do not eat our millet, our wheat!" 4

The abuses complained of in the middle State spread to the feudatories, though from time to time ambitious princes sought popularity by displaying an ostentatious regard for the welfare of the multitudes. Such loyalty as

1 De Mailla, ii. p. 25.

3 lb., pt. i. pp. 170–1.

2 C. C., iv. ii. p. 564.
4 iv. p. 564.

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