CHAPTER VIII. THE PHILOSOPHERS OF THE HUNDRED SCHOOLS. "THERE are 20,000 Ralph Waldo Emersons in China," said Mr. Burlingame, the United States Consul, to Mr. Motley, the historian, who records with mild surprise, the "great admiration of the pigtails" expressed by all who have become intimately acquainted with them in their own land.1 If we had to describe what is at once best and most characteristic in Chinese thought in terms of Western literature, we might say that the Chinese philosopher was a compound of Goethe, Emerson, and Madame de Genlis. He has something of the calm, cool, rational humanity of the author of Faust, and a great deal of the same faith, in the efficacy of social, literary, and dramatic discipline, as a moral force, displayed by the author of Wilhelm Meister. For the rest, his affinities with Goethe are included in his affinities with Emerson, whose obligations to the great German are not so easily defined. Like Emerson, the Chinese sage has broad, vague sympathies. and intuitions of a righteous kind, and a strong, though hazy, apprehension of the analogies and sequences in the world of nature and man. Like Goethe, he has the courage of his discernment, and asserts the moral and. political importance of social minutiæ; but he dwells on them with an affectionate diffuseness which suggests the court or the schoolroom rather than the study. Confucius himself is credited with the observation that the failing which may arise in connection with the practice of rites and ceremonies is "fussiness," while the corresponding virtue is a modest, courteous, and respectful gravity. But there is nothing in the standard. classic texts to oblige the intelligent Chinese to exaggerate the importance of forms. Confucius is quoted for the sentiment: Exceeding reverence with deficient rites is better than an excess of rites with but little reverence; 3 and enlightened conservatism can hardly go beyond a saying in one of the most esteemed books of the Li Ki: "Rules of ceremony are the embodied expression of what is right. If an observance stand the test of being judged by what is right, although it may not have been among the usages of the ancient kings, it may be adopted on the ground of its being right." A 1 Correspondence of John Lothrop Motley, 1889, vol. ii. p. 211. "It is strange what stories they all bring back from the Celestials,-Richard Dana, Burlingame, Sir F. Bruce. We have everything to learn from them in the way of courtesy. They are an honester people than Europeans. Bayard Taylor's stories about their vices do them great injustice. They are from hasty impressions got in seaport towns.' 4 lb., xxvii. p. 395. 2 S.B., xxviii. p. 254. 3 lb., xxvii. p. 141. sentence or two further on this is explained: "Humanity is the root of right, and the embodying of deferential consideration." The effect of such consideration in mitigating the defects to which different classes are chiefly prone is acutely recognised. Propriety is the application of humanity to all the circumstances of life. "When the rich and noble know to love propriety, they do not become proud or dissolute. When the poor and mean know to love propriety, their minds do not become cowardly." The small man, when poor, may be tempted to steal, and when rich, may proceed to deeds of disorder; the rules of propriety serve as dykes to keep these opposite tendencies within bounds. Confucius was, perhaps, the most acute of Chinese psychologists; but his popularity is a sign that his talent in this direction was appreciated. Western moralists perplex themselves to find one formula for all right doing, though it is known that the motives and propensities of individuals vary. Confucius recognises three virtues-wisdom, magnanimity, and fortitude; but observes that "Some are born with the knowledge of these (duties), some know them by study, and some as the result of painful experience. Some practise them with the ease of nature, some for the sake of their advantage, and some by dint of strong effort;" but if the knowledge and exercise of virtue are attained at last, "it comes to one and the same thing" 2-to society as a whole, which enjoys the fruit of all objective good behaviour. Mencius occupies a place midway between Confucius and the various phases of heterodox mysticism. But there is nothing in the Analects to be compared to the fine, disinterested and generous morality of a few passages in the later writer. Mencius protests again and again against being consulted by princes as to what will "profit" their kingdoms. He is willing to speak of benevolence and righteousness, but not of profit; for if that inducement is once recognised, "ministers will serve their sovereigns for the profit of which they cherish the thought; sons will serve their fathers, and younger brothers will serve their elder brothers, from the same consideration; and the issue will be that, abandoning benevolence and righteousness, sovereign and minister, father and son, younger brother and elder, will carry on all their intercourse with this thought of profit cherished in their hearts. But never has there been such a state without ruin being the result of it."3 He held that feelings of benevolence and the love of righteousness were natural to mankind, and that it was the business of education and philosophy to disentangle and reinforce the proper nature of the mind. The case for disinterested morality can hardly be put more compendiously than in the following passage, which is one of those that earn for the author the name of a Chinese Socrates: Mencius said, "I like fish and I also like bear's paws. If I cannot have the two together, I will let the fish go and 1 S. B., xxvii. p. 65, xxviii. p. 284. take the bear's paws. So I like life, and I also like righteousness. If I cannot keep the two together, I will let life go and choose righteousness. I like life indeed, but there is that which I like more than life, and therefore I will not seek to possess it by any improper ways. I dislike death indeed, but there is that which I dislike more than death, and therefore there are occasions when I will not avoid danger. If, among the things which man likes, there were nothing which he liked more than life, why should he not use every means by which he could preserve it? If, among the things which man dislikes, there were nothing that he disliked more than death, why should he not do everything by which he could avoid danger? There are cases when by a certain course men might preserve life and they do not follow it; when by certain things they might avoid danger and they will not do them. Therefore men have that which they like more than life, and that which they dislike more than death. They are not men of distinguished talents and virtue only, who have this mental nature. All men have it; what belongs to such men simply is that they do not lose it."1 And he goes on to contrast the proper pride of a starving beggar, who will not accept food that is offered to him with contumely, with the unreasonableness of one not in urgent want who will accept large gifts stained with impropriety and wrong. The age of the Sophists in China may be said to extend from the 7th century, when Lao-tze, the founder of Taoism-or the Doctrine of the Way -was born, to the fall of Chow, or more accurately the rise of T'sin in the middle of the 3rd century B.C. Confucius was born 551 B.C.,2 and is said to have once seen Lao-tze, while later writers are fond of inventing conversations between the two, in which the honours of debate are awarded as their own personal sympathies prompt. Mencius was born 371 B.C.3 Mih Teih, the founder of one of the rival schools, flourished between the two, and Yang Choo, another leader, was nearly or quite contemporary with Mencius. Chuang-tze, the Chinese Hegel, flourished about half a century later, but must have reached manhood before Mencius' decease; Hui-tze, the most sophistical of all the philosophers of the period, was contemporary with him. During all this period teachers and disciples occupied themselves with discussions concerning the practice of charity and duty to one's neighbour, the identification of like and unlike, the separation of hardness and whiteness, and about making the not-so so, and the impossible possible; they examined into the distinction of like and unlike, the changes of motion and rest, the canons of giving and receiving, the emotions of love and hate, and the restraints of joy and anger, 4-till the philosophers themselves grew weary and practical politicians became indifferent and exasperated. It may be doubted whether any substantial addition has been made since this period to the range of speculative thought in China; the doctrines and in most cases the works of these writers are still familiar to the learned; 1 Works, vi. i. x. 2 Died 478 B. C. and even those which are not officially recognised as books to be "taken up" at the Government examinations, have a more than merely literary interest, because they show how comparatively slight are the widest differences which spontaneously divide the beliefs and opinions of the black-haired people. The teaching of Confucius himself may be summed up as inculcating imperial democracy, filial piety, and the rules of propriety. The conception of the duty of rulers and the duty of sons met with in his written sayings did not originate with him, and rites and ceremonies undoubtedly were observed long before his time; but it seems probable that he brought into prominence the idea to which China owes, perhaps, most of her merits and defects, that, namely, of turning every moral precept into a rule of propriety; so that every point of conduct from least to greatest may be embraced under the same set of regulations, while every virtue for which occasion can be foreseen may be enforced as "proper," and vice discountenanced as unfashionable. Confucius appeals to the reason and self-respect of individuals, while inviting them to reform themselves, or to adhere spontaneously to the rules of propriety; the ruling classes of his day declined to accept the invitation, and to such a flat rejection he had no answer ready. Active resistance or vehement denunciation are courses for which no rules can be given, since they imply the want of mutual respect and consideration upon which the rules of propriety are based. The revolt of disinterested energy against oppression finds no prompting in his works; but Mencius, though not himself a revolutionist, might have inspired revolutionaries, and perhaps did so in Persia centuries later.1 Potentially there was more difference between Mencius and the master he acknowledged than between either of them and Mih or Chuang-tze, but Mencius did not point to any practical. outlet for the feelings he may have stirred; and public opinion in China, as soon as it felt the need for an official philosophy, pronounced itself unequivocally in favour of the tamer and less militant teaching of Confucius. Disinterested logic-chopping, about the hard and white (to which a philosopher of the Chao State devoted a separate treatise), the like and the unlike and the identity of opposites, leads to no practical result, moral or material. The Chinese comment on Hui-tze and his congeners is: "Of what use was he to the world? Alas for his talents. He is extravagantly energetic and yet has no success. He investigates all creation, but does not conclude in Tao. He makes a noise to drown an echo. He is like a man running a race with his own shadow. Alas!" 2 All that portion of Western metaphysics-and it is surely not small-which might be described in these terms, as the endeavours of a man to race with his own shadow, was thus rejected in advance, after a brief trial, as of no value to the Middle Kingdom. The chief object of the typical sophist is "to contradict others and gain fame by defeating all comers." But this is "a dark and narrow way;" Confucianists and Taoists agree in desiring a 1 See post, p. 128. Chuang-tzu, p. 454. doctrine which shall unite and harmonise instead of provoking controversy, and they agree also in desiring to embrace ethics and physics alike in their theory of the universe. Yang and Mih, the founders of two opposite schools, which Mencius regarded it as his mission to confute, had a narrower ambition, and their leading principles applied only to human conduct. Yang's doctrine, as stated by Mencius, is "Each one for himself," 1 and the reports of his sayings (none of his writings exist) represent him as a despondent Hedonist and Egoist. According to him the pains of life outweigh its pleasures, and the imagined compensations of posthumous renown are a delusion. Death comes soon or late to all, and the infamous tyrant who is cut short in his sins may have got more enjoyment out of his life than the ruler who has spent his days in hardship, toiling for the service of his people. "The virtuous and the sage die; the ruffian and the fool also die. Alive they were Yao and Shun; dead they are so much rotten bone. Alive they were Keeh and Chow; dead they were so much rotten bone. Who could know any difference between their rotten bones? While alive, therefore, let us hasten to make the best of life; what leisure have we to be thinking of anything after death?"2 It is sometimes argued at the present day, in the West, that this doctrine, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die," must prevail both logically and in practice, wherever the human taste for pleasure is not controlled by revealed religion. Confucius himself, as Dr. Legge observes, though not irreligious, is emphatically un-religious, and the same remark applies to the mind of the people of whom Confucius is the chosen teacher; yet so far from the crude Epicureanism of Yang Choo having proved dangerously attractive, he alone has found no champions in posterity, and has added nothing to the common stock of Chinese ideas, except so far as the Taoists have borrowed from him some phrases in -disparagement of laboured virtue. The leading doctrine of Mih seems so entirely edifying that the general reader will doubtless share the surprise expressed by Dr. Legge and the Prince of Literature, Han-wen-kung, at the zeal with which he is denounced by Mencius, and the habit, which seems to have been common, of bracketing Yang and Mih together, as the authors of disturbing speculations. Mih's principle, according to Mencius, is: To love all equally, and he objects to this as ignoring and denying the special regard due to a father or a sovereign. But from the summary of his views given by a disciple, it seems more as if it were the universality and reciprocity of such affection than its equality which is meant to be insisted on. Mih does not wish people to love their fathers less, but to love everybody else as well.3 In this he seems to go somewhat beyond Confucius, who explains “reciprocity," the one word upon which a rule of practice might be based, by 1 Works, iii. ii. ix. § 9, vii. i. xxvi. § 1. Life and Works of Mencius, by Dr. Legge (1875), p. 93. 3 Works, iii. ii. ix. § 9. |