Part 6 (2/2)

It is impossible to tell how much Confucius did for these old books.

Some hold that he did not change them much, nor put into them much of his own, and that, in fact, he was himself indebted to these books for all he is reported to have taught. On the other hand, it is declared that he made the ancient books teach his own doctrine, and left out all that did not suit him; and, in confirmation of this view, the fact is pointed out that while these books as we have them teach pure Confucianism, another religion of a different spirit was growing up in China in Confucius's own day, which must have had some support in the old system. It may be that Confucius did not care to report to us all the features of the old religion, but only those of which he approved. But the information given us about that old religion is admittedly correct so far as it goes; and there is little doubt that what Confucius thought best in it, and what pa.s.sed through him into the subsequent religion of China, was its most characteristic and most important part.

II.--The Cla.s.sics of the second order comprise four books:--

1. The _Lun Yu_, or Digested Conversations of the Master; or, as Dr.

Legge calls it, _The Confucian a.n.a.lects_. It is from this book that we derive our information about the sage; it was compiled probably by the disciples of his disciples.

2. The _Ta-Heo_, or Great Learning, and

3. The _Chung Yung_, or Doctrine of the Mean, are smaller works, giving a more literary form to the doctrine of the sage.

4. The _Mang-tsze_ contains the teachings of Mencius.

The State Religion of Ancient China.--Confucius never imagined himself to be a reformer of the religion of his country. The religion of China is in the main the same to this day[1] as it was before he appeared, and what is called Confucianism is simply that old system.

That the wors.h.i.+p of Confucius himself has been added to it does not involve any change of its structure. It is already well developed when we first see it, and what is very peculiar, it has already parted with all savage and irrational elements. There is no mythology; the universal legend of the marriage of heaven and earth is dimly recognisable, but there is no set of primitive stories about the G.o.ds. Of human sacrifice there is only one ancient instance; there are no rites with anything savage or cruel about them.

Everything is proper, dignified, and well arranged. The deities are beings worthy to be wors.h.i.+pped, and they exact no meaningless services. There is nothing in any part of the religion to disturb the propriety of the wors.h.i.+pper or to suggest any doubts to his mind. In no other religion of the world do we find everything in such excellent order.

[Footnote 1: The working religion of the present day is fully described by Prof. de Groot in De la Saussaye, _Lehrbuch_, Third edition.]

On the other hand, it is not a highly-developed religion. Its beliefs are those of extremely early times, and represent a stage of thought at which no other national religion stood still. The organisation common to developed systems is entirely wanting; there is no idol, no priestly cla.s.s, no Bible, no theology; the most important doctrines are left so vague and undetermined that scholars interpret them in opposite ways. It is a religion in which, just as in the primitive stage, outward acts are everything, the doctrine nothing, and which is not regulated by an organised code but by custom and precedent.

All these marks point to a formation in very early times, and to a very early arrest of growth, before the ordinary developments of mythology and doctrine, priesthood, ritual, and sacred literature had time to take place. They also point to the operation of some powerful cause, which, when the religion had developed its main features, was able to suppress older beliefs and practices, and lead the nation to devote itself altogether to the newer faith. How this took place we can only conjecture, but certainly it could never have been done unless the new faith and the national character had fitted each other perfectly. The cla.s.sical religion may, as Prof. de Groot says, have come into existence along with the cla.s.sical const.i.tution set up by the Han dynasty 2000 years ago. But it must have been ready to enter into this position.

The objects of wors.h.i.+p in the Chinese religion arrange themselves in three cla.s.ses. The Chinaman of old wors.h.i.+pped and his descendant of to-day wors.h.i.+ps still--

1. Heaven.

2. Spirits of various kinds, other than human.

3. The spirits of dead ancestors.

1. Heaven (Thian) is the princ.i.p.al Chinese deity; in strictness we must say the sole deity, for there is no family of upper G.o.ds; heaven receives all the wors.h.i.+p that is directed aloft. It is the clear vault, the friendly ever-present and all-seeing blue that is meant, not the windy nor the rainy sky, but that which is above all agitations, and which all beings of the air or of the earth look up to and serve. It is conceived as living. It is not a separable spirit, not a power behind, that is wors.h.i.+pped, but heaven itself,--the living heaven of that early thought, which has not yet come to distinguish between matter and spirit,--the living heaven which is over all, knows all, orders and governs all.

To this heaven other names are given, even in the oldest writings--Ti, Ruler; or Shang-ti, Supreme Ruler. Did the Chinese conceive this ruler as identical with heaven, or as a personality dwelling in it or above it? It has been held that the two beliefs are not the same; that the Chinese of the earliest times wors.h.i.+pped the Supreme Ruler, _i.e._ the one G.o.d, Ti, and afterwards fell away from that position of pure monotheism and declined to the wors.h.i.+p of the material object, heaven. The early Catholic missionaries argued that the Chinese Shang-ti was equivalent to the Christian ”G.o.d,” and signified a being other than the sky, the Supreme Power of the universe. The Chinese, however, generally denied that they made any such distinction,[2] and even declared that they could not understand it. The names Heaven and Supreme Ruler are used by them indiscriminately: one notices that Confucius does not use the personal form, but only speaks of heaven; ”heaven,” he says, when feeling distressed, ”is destroying me.” We have here, therefore, an early form of nature-wors.h.i.+p.

[Footnote 2: Dr. Legge, while admitting that the Chinese originally wors.h.i.+pped the vault of heaven itself, maintains that they got past the early mode of thought which considers every natural object as animated, before the dawn of history, and became pure theists, believers in a supreme spiritual being. Confucius he considers to have held a lower religious position than his countrymen had already attained to. He also regards the wors.h.i.+p of spirits and of ancestors as a later perversion and degradation of the original religion of one G.o.d. In these positions he is followed by Professor Giles, _Oxford Proceedings_, vol. i. p. 105, _sqq._]

The Supreme Power directs all things, and is an ever-present governor both in the natural and in the moral sphere. These two spheres indeed are not regarded as distinct. Nature reveals in all its changes the mind of its ruler, and human conduct is regarded as an outward thing, as a phenomenon on the same plane with the movements of nature; the two are supposed to be part of one system and to act directly on each other. As Heaven both governs the weather and looks after men's actions, for ”every day heaven witnesses our actions and is present in the places where we are,” these two aspects of providence are closely blended and are in fact the same. Heaven makes its will known in a natural way. It is one of the most peculiar features of Chinese religion that it knows no revelation, no miracles, no divine interferences. It has a belief in destiny, Ming; every one has his Ming, but it is only known when it is accomplished. ”Does Heaven plainly declare its Ming?” Confucius is asked; and he replies, ”No, heaven speaks not; by the order of events its will is known, not otherwise.” Man learns by the external occurrences how Heaven is disposed towards him. When there is excessive rain or long drought, this shows that the harmony between Heaven and the earth is disturbed. It belongs to the emperor to put this right. He alone is ent.i.tled to offer sacrifice to Heaven; he stands in the closest relation to Heaven, who is the ancestor of his house; and when Heaven is seen to be displeased, the emperor must restore the harmony by governing his subjects better or by sacrifices. In an extreme case, when the emperor is seen to have fallen under the displeasure of Heaven, the conclusion is drawn that he must no longer be emperor.

The people then are ent.i.tled to depose him and to set up a new ruler, through whom the necessary transactions with Heaven can be carried on. The belief has always been held in China, at least theoretically, and is operative to this day, that it can be known when Heaven has rejected a ruler, and that it belongs to the people to carry out that sentence.

2. The Spirits.--The wors.h.i.+p ”of the spirits” is a primary religious duty for the Chinaman. The spirits, however, are an ill-defined set of beings; they are generally spoken of in the plural number, and sacrifice was offered to them as a body, no particular spirits being named. The spirits are connected with natural objects, every part of nature has its spirit. The sun, the moon, the five planets, clouds, rain, wind, the five great mountains, but also every smaller mountain, the rivers, each district, and a thousand other things, all have their spirits.[3] The spirits are not flitting about capriciously, but have been collected together and organised in a hierarchy, and this has loosened their connection with natural objects. They are spoken of as a set of beings who may be addressed as a body. A prince alone may sacrifice to the spirit of the earth, and to those of the mountains and rivers of his territory. But to the spirits in general all may and should pray; they a.s.sist those who pay them reverence and sacrifice to them. It will be seen that the wors.h.i.+p of heaven and that of the spirits are kept separate. The former is the imperial wors.h.i.+p; the emperor alone is competent to attend to it. The latter is the official wors.h.i.+p of minor states. Nor are the two sets of deities wrought into a h.o.m.ogeneous system; we hear that the spirits, while subordinate to Shang-ti, are not his messengers. The surmise is not to be avoided that these two wors.h.i.+ps came originally from different circles of ideas, and have not been perfectly blended. The wors.h.i.+p of heaven belongs to the higher nature-wors.h.i.+p, that of the spirits to the lower; the latter is animistic, it is a wors.h.i.+p of detached spirits, while the former is a wors.h.i.+p of the natural object itself. The spirits are all good; there are scarcely any bad spirits in Chinese belief.

[Footnote 3: The j.a.panese official religion, ”s.h.i.+n-to” (=way of the G.o.ds, as distinguished from Butsudo, way of Buddha, _i.e._ j.a.panese Buddhism), an easy wors.h.i.+p of numberless spirits, without sacrifices and without any moral doctrine, is allied to this branch of the religion of China; as also is the religion of Corea. s.h.i.+n-to is not ancestral wors.h.i.+p, and recognises no life after death.]

3. Ancestors.--The wors.h.i.+p of ancestors is that which is a.s.signed to the private individual. He does not approach Shang-ti any more than he would address the emperor on earth; his working religion is directed to his ancestors. The Chinese believed in the continuance of the soul after death, and addressed solemn invitations to it to return to the body it had forsaken. Their belief can scarcely be described as that in personal immortality; it is the continuance of the family rather than of the person that is thought of. The individual does not look forward to his own future life or allow that to influence him; there is little trace of any belief in future rewards and punishments. China has no heaven and no h.e.l.l. It is the past, not the future, that influences the present; the departed members of the family are believed to be still attached to it, and to have become its tutelary spirits. In every house there is a hall of ancestors, where wors.h.i.+p and sacrifice is offered to them, and many even of the details of this wors.h.i.+p remind us strongly of the way in which the Romans served their family heroes. Tablets belonging to the ancestors are placed in this hall; and to these they are supposed to come when properly invoked, so as to be present with the family. At every important family event they are summoned to attend. This wors.h.i.+p has to be rendered by husband and wife jointly, so that marriage is necessary for its performance, and an early marriage is a religious duty.

<script>