Ancient China Simplified

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We now come to strictly historical times, and we shall have no
difficulty in showing that even then--h _fortiori_ in times
not strictly historical--the various Tartar tribes were still in
practical possession of the whole north bank of the Yellow River,
all the way from the Desert to the sea. In fact, in 494 B.C., when
the King of Wu sent a giant's bone to Lu for further explanation,
Confucius said that the "Long Tartars" (who had frequent fights
with Lu in the seventh century B.C.) used to extend south-east
into (modern) Kiang Su, almost as far as the mouth of the Yang-tsz
River: he also says that, had it not been for the energy of the
First Protector and his statesman adviser, the philosopher Kwan-
tsz of Ts'i, orthodox China would certainly have become
Tartarized. It was Confucius also whose learning enabled him to
recognize a (Manchu) arrow found in the body of a migrating goose.
In the eighth and seventh centuries B.C. the Tartars made repeated
and obstinate attacks upon Yen (Peking plain), Ts'i (coast Chih Li
and north Shan Tung), Wei (south Chih Li and north Ho Nan), Sung
(extreme east Ho Nan), Ts'ao (central Ho Nan), and the Emperor's
territory (west Ho Nan). This situation explains to us why the
Protector system arose in China, in competition with the waning
imperial power. Ts'in and Tsin, being already half Tartar
themselves, were always well able to cope with and even to annex
the Tartar tribes in their immediate vicinity; but orthodox China
was ever a prey to the more easterly Tartar attacks; and thus the
Emperors, threatened by Ts'u to their south, and in a measure also
by Ts'in and Tsin to their north and west, not only could not any
longer protect their orthodox vassals lying towards the east from
Tartar attacks, but could not even protect themselves.

It was Ts'i that drove back the Mongol-Manchu tribes and rescued
Yen in 662; it was the Ts'i ruler who led a coalition of princes
against other groups of Tartars and placed back on his ancestral
throne the ruler of Wei, who had been driven from his country by
Tartars in 658; it was the First Protector, ruler of Ts'i, who
managed to pacify the more westerly Tartars we find persistently
menacing the Emperor in 648; to whose rescue the Tartars came in
642, when a coalition of orthodox Chinese princes shamelessly took
advantage of the First Protector's death to attack Ts'i during the
mourning period. Now it was that the Second Protector, still a
refugee among his Tartar relatives, started for Ts'i, his original
idea being to replace the philosopher Kwan-tsz as adviser to the
First Protector; but, shortly after he reached Ts'i, the First
Protector died, and it was only by stratagem that his friends
succeeded in rescuing the future Second Protector from the arms of
his Ts'i Delilah and his _d'elices de_ Capue. His chief adviser,
and at the same time his brother-in-law from a Tartar point of view,
was the lineal descendant of the Chao man who had saved the
Emperor in 800 B.C. He set out, _via_ the orthodox states,
for his own country. These petty orthodox states, such as Wei,
Cheng, and Ts'ao, which did not then see their way to profit
politically by the Pretender's visit, paid the penalty of their
meanness and their rudeness to him later on. Sung was polite, as
at that time Sung and Ts'u were both aiming at the Protectorship.
Ts'u's hospitality was bluff and good-natured, the King being too
strong to fear, and too unsophisticated to intrigue after Chinese
fashion. Just then news coming from Ts'in that the Pretender's
brothers had all resigned or died, and that his chance had now
come, the Pretender hurried to Tsin, regained his throne, and was
acclaimed Protector of China exactly at the critical moment when a
strong hand was urgently required to check the particular
ambitions of Ts'in, Ts'i, and Ts'u. Ts'u was too barbarous; Sung
was too pedantic; Tsin alone had unrivalled experience both of
Tartars and Eastern barbarians, and also of Southern barbarians
(Ts'u). Probably it was only the fact of the Tsin ruling family
bearing the same clan-name as the Emperor that had decided Tsin
throughout to be orthodox Chinese instead of Tartar. The Tartar
family into which the Second Protector had married as a
comparatively young man was, however, also of the imperial clan-
name, i.e. it was of orthodox Chinese origin, but (even like the
Chou imperial family at one time) it had adopted Tartar customs. A
large number of the one thousand or more petty Chinese principalities,
attached not directly to the Emperor, but to the greater vassals
as mesne lords, were in the same predicament; that is to say,
they were of Chinese origin, but they had found that it paid them
best to adopt barbarian ways. It was exactly as though Scipio
should settle in Carthage, and become a Carthaginian: C'sar
in Gaul, and adopt Gallic customs; and so on with other Roman
adventurers who should find a comfortable _gite_ in Persia,
Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, or even in Britain and Germany.

The main point upon which to fix the attention is this. The
Chinese nucleus was very small, and only by rudely thrusting aside
incompetent emperors and fussy ritual did it succeed in
emancipating itself from Tartar bondage. That this is not an
exaggerated view is additionally plain from the fact that Tartars
have, even since Confucian times, ruled more and longer than have
Chinese over North China; the Mongols (1260-1368) were the first
Tartars to rule over all China, and nominally over all West Asia;
the Manchus (1643-1908) are the first Tartars to rule all China,
all Manchuria, and all Mongolia, at all effectively; and they have
even added parts of Turkestan, with Tibet, Nepaul, and other
countries over which the Peking imperial Mongol influence was
always very shadowy.

CHAPTER XLII

MUSIC

In these pictures of ancient Chinese life which we are
endeavouring to present, the idea is to repeat from every point of
view the main characteristics of that life, so that a strange and
unfamiliar subject, very loosely depicted in the straggling annals
of antiquity, may receive fresh rays of light from every possible
quarter, and thus stand out clearer as a connected whole.

Take, for instance, the subject of music, which always played in
Chinese ceremonial a prominent part not easy for us now to
understand. One of the chief sights of the modern Confucian
residence is the music-room, containing specimens of all the
ancient musical instruments, which, on occasion, are still played
upon in chorus; a picture of them has been published by Father
Tschepe. (See page 128.) According to the description given by
this European visitor, the music is of a most discordant and ear-
splitting description: but that does not necessarily dispose of
the question; for even parts of Wagner's Ring are a meaningless
clang to those who hear the music for the first time, and who are
unable to read the score or to follow out the "classical" style.
As we have said before, the ancient emperors, at their banquets
given to vassals and others, always had musical accompaniment.

In 626 B.C., when the ruler of Ts'in received a mission from "the
Tartar king" (probably a local king or chief), he was much struck
with the sagacity of the envoy sent to him. This envoy still spoke
the Tsin language or dialect; but his parents, who were of Tsin
origin, had adopted Tartar manners. The envoy was also an author,
and his work, in two sections, had survived at least up to the
second century B.C.: he is classed amongst the "Miscellaneous
Writers." The subject of the conversation was the superiority of
simple Tartar administration as compared with the intricate ritual
of the Odes, the Book, the Rites, and the "Music" of orthodox
China. The beginnings of Lao-tsz's Taoism seem to peep out from
this Tartar's words, just as they do with other "Miscellaneous"
authors. The wily Ts'in ruler, in order to secure this clever
envoy for his own service, sent two bands of female musicians as a
present to the Tartar king, so as to make him less virile; 140
years later the cunning ruler of Ts'i did much the same thing in
order to prevent the Duke of Lu from growing too strong; and the
immediate consequence was that Confucius left his fickle master in
disgust. Ki-chah, Prince of Wu, was entertained whilst at Lu with
specimens of music from the different states. When he came to the
Ts'in music, he said: "Ha! ha! the words are Chinese! When Ts'in
becomes quite Chinese, it will have a great future." This remark
suggests a Ts'in language or dialect different from that of Tsin,
and also from that of more orthodox China. In 546 B.C., when a
mission from Ts 'u to Tsin was accompanied by a high officer from
the disputed orthodox state of Ts'ai lying between those two great
powers, the theory of music as an adjunct to government was
discussed. Confucius' view a century later was that music best
reflected a nation's manners, and that in good old times authority
was manifested quite as much in rites and ceremonies as in laws
and pronouncements. Previous to that, in 582, it had been
discovered that Ts'u had a musical style of her own; and in 579,
when the Tsin envoy was received there in state, among other
instruments of music observed there were suspended bells.

Thus both Ts'in and Ts'u at this date were still in the learning
stage. Before ridiculing the idea that music could in any way
serve as a substitute for preaching or commanding, we must reflect
upon the awe-inspiring contribution of music to our own religious
services, not to mention the "speaking" effect of our Western
nocturnes, symphonies, and operatic music generally.

In 562 B.C., when a statesman of Tsin (whose fame in this
connection endures to our own days) succeeded in establishing a
permanent understanding with the Tartars, based upon joint trading
rights and reasonable mutual concessions, the principle of
interesting the Tartars in cultivation, industry, and so on; as a
reward for his distinguished services, he was presented with
certain music, which meant that he had the political right to have
certain musical airs performed in his presence. This concession
ceases to seem ridiculous or even strange to us if we reflect what
an honour it would have been to, say, the Duke of Wellington, or
to Nelson, had the right to play "God Save the King" at dinner
been granted to his family band of musicians. Four centuries
before this, when the Emperor Muh made his tour amongst the
Tartars, he always commanded that one particular musical air
(named) should be struck up by his musicians on certain occasions
(always stated in the narrative). In Tsin, and probably elsewhere,
music-masters seem to have combined soothsaying and philosophy
with their functions; thus, in 558 the music-master of that state
was questioned on the arts of good government, to which he
replied: "Goodness and justice"--two special antipathies, by the
way, of Lao-tsz the Taoist, who lived about this time as an
archive-keeper at the metropolis. In the year 555, either this
same man or another musical prophet in Tsin reassured his fellow-
countrymen who were dreading a Ts'u invasion with the following
words: "I have just been conducting a song consisting of north and
south airs, and the latter sound as though the south would be
defeated." But music also had its lighter uses, for we have seen
in Chapter VI. how in 549 two Tsin generals took their ease in a
comfortable cart, playing the banjo, whilst passing through Cheng
to attack Ts'u. Music was used at worship as well as at court; in
527 the ruler of Lu, as a mark of respect for one of his deceased
ministers, abandoned the playing of music, which otherwise would
have been a constituent part of the sacrifice or worship he had in
hand at the moment. Even in modern China, music is prohibited
during solemn periods of mourning, and officials are often
degraded for attending theatrical performances on solemn fasts. In
212 B.C., when the First August Emperor was, like Saul or
Belshazzar, beginning to grow sad at the contemplation of his
lonely and unloved greatness, he was suddenly startled at the fall
of a meteoric stone, bearing upon it what looked like a warning
inscription. He at once ordered his learned men to compose some
music treating of "true men" and immortals, in order to exorcise
the evil omen; it may be mentioned that this emperor's Taoist
proclivities have apparently had the indirect result that the word
"true man" has come century by century down to us, with the
meaning of "Taoist priest," or "Taoist inspired person."

CHAPTER XLIII

WEALTH, SPORTS, ETC.

A traveller in modern China may still wonder at the utter absence
of any sign of wealth or luxury except in the very largest towns.
Fine clothes, jewels, concubines, rich food, aphrodisiacs, opium,
land, cattle--these represent "wealth" as conceived by the Chinese
rich man's mind. In 655 Ts'in is said to have paid five ram-skins
to Ts'u in order to secure the services of a coveted adviser. Not
many years after that, when the future Second Protector was making
his terms with the King of Ts'u, he remarked: "What can I do for
you in return? You already possess all the slaves, musicians,
treasures, silks, feathers, ivory, and leather you can want." In
606 a magnificent turtle was sent as a new year's dinner present
from Ts'u to Cheng; in modern China this form of politeness would
never do at all, as the turtle has acquired an evil reputation as
a term of abuse, akin to the Spanish use or abuse of the word
"garlic": however, I myself once experienced, when inland, far
away from the sea, a curious compliment in the shape of a live
crab two inches long (sent to me as a great honour) in a small
jar. Of course chairs were unknown, and even the highest sat or
squatted on mats; not necessarily on the ground, but spread on
couches. Hence the word survives the object, just as with us
("covers" at dinner are "provided" but never seen; thus in China a
host is "east mat" and a guest "west mat.") In 626, when the ruler
of Ts'in was talking politics with the Tartar envoy just mentioned
above, he allowed him, as a special favour, to sit alongside of
his own mat (on the couch). These couches probably resembled the
modern settee, sofa, _k'ang,_ or divan, such as all visitors
to China have seen and sat on. Tea was quite unknown in those
days, and is not mentioned before the seventh century A.D.; but
possibly wine may have been served, as tea is now, on a low table
between the two seats. "Tartar couches" (possibly Turkish divans)
are frequently mentioned, even in the field of battle, and in
comparatively modern times. In 300 B.C. Ts'u made a present to a
distinguished renegade prince of the Ts'i house of an "elephant
couch," by which is probably meant a couch inlaid with ivory, in
the present well-known Annamese style.

In 589 B.C., when Tsin troops reached the Ts'i capital and the sea
(as already related in Chapters VI. and XXXIX. under the heads of
Armies and Geographical Knowledge), T'si endeavoured to purchase
peace by offering to the victor the state treasure in the shape of
precious utensils. In 551 a rich man of Ts'u was considered
insolently showy because he possessed forty horses. In 545 the
envoy from Cheng, acting under the Peace Conference agreement so
often previously described and alluded to, brings presents of furs
and silks to Ts'u; and in 537 Tsin speaks of such articles as
often being presented to Ts'u. In 494, when the King of Yiieh
received his great defeat at the hands of the King of Wu, his
first desperate idea was to kill his wives and children, burn his
valuables, and seek death at the head of his troops; but the
inevitable wily Chinese adviser was at hand, and the King ended by
taking his mentor's advice and successfully bribing the Wu general
(a Ts'u renegade) with presents of women and valuables. When this
shrewd Chinese adviser of the Yueh king had, by his sagacious
counsels, at last secured the final defeat of Wu, he packed up his
portable valuables, pearls, and jades, collected his family and
clients, and went away by sea, never to come back. As a matter of
fact, he settled in Ts'i, where he made an enormous fortune in the
fish trade, and ultimately became the traditional Croesus of
China, his name being quite as well known to modern Chinese
through the Confucian historians, as the name of Croesus is to
modern Europeans through Herodotus. He had, between the two
defeats of Yiieh by Wu and Wu by Yiieh, served for several years
as a spy in Wu, and the fact of his reaching Shan Tung by sea
confirms in principle the story of the family of his contemporary,
the King of Wu, having similarly escaped to Japan. The place where
he landed was probably the same as where the celebrated pilgrim
Fah Hien landed, after his Indian pilgrimage, in 415 A.D., i.e.,
at the German port of Ts'ing-tao.

We do not hear much of gold in the earlier times, but in 237 B.C.,
when Ts'in was straining every nerve to conquer China, the
(future) First August Emperor was advised that "it would not cost
more than 300,000 pounds weight in gold to bribe the ministers of
all the states in league against Ts'in." Yet in 643 B.C., on the
death of the First Protector, the orthodox state of Cheng (lying
between Ts'i and Tsin to the north and Ts'u to the south), was
bribed with "metal" of some sort--probably gold or silver--to
abandon Ts'i. In 538 the celebrated Cheng statesman Tsz-ch'an
informs his Ts'u colleagues that the Tsin officers "think of
nothing but money." What kind of money this was is doubtful, but
it will be remembered that about this time the "powerful family"
of Lu had succeeded in bribing the Tsin ministers, or the "six
great families" then managing Tsin, to deny justice to the
fugitive Lu duke. In 513 B.C. the powerful Wu king who made
(modern) Soochow his capital is said to have possessed both iron
and gold mines, and it is stated that not even China proper could
turn out better weapons. Large "cash" are said to have been coined
by the Emperor who reigned from 540 to 520 B.C.; and in 450 B.C.
the King of Ts'u is reported to have "closed his _depot_ of
the three moneys." As only copper was coined, it is not easy to
say now what the other two "moneys" were. In 318 B.C. a bribe of
"one hundred golds" was given by Yen to one of the well-known
political diplomats or intriguers then forming leagues with or
against Ts'in; it is not known for certain how much this was at
that particular time and place; but a century or two later it
meant, under the Ts'in dynasty, twenty-four ounces; during the Han
dynasty, conquerors of the Ts'in dynasty, it was only about half
that. Cooks seem to have held official positions of considerable
dignity. "Meat-eaters" in Confucian times was a term for
"officials" or "the rich." Thus when the haughty King of Wu was
suddenly recalled home, from his high-handed durbar with Tsin, Lu,
and other orthodox states, to go and deal with his formidable
enemy of Yueh, he turned quite pale. By dint of bold "bluff" he
managed after all to gain most of his political points, and to
retire from an awkward corner with honour; but Chinese spies had
their eyes on him none the less, and reported to the watchful
enemy that "meat-eaters are not usually blackfaced"--meaning that
the King of Wu evidently had some very recent bad news on his
mind, for "the well-fed do not usually look care-worn."

Silk was universally known. When the Second Protector (to be) was
dallying with his lady-love in Ts'i, the maid of his mistress
happened to overhear important conversations from her post in a
mulberry tree; the presumption is that she was collecting leaves
for the silkworms. Again in 519, a century later, there was a
dispute on the Ts'u-Wu frontier (North An Hwei province), about
the possession of certain mulberry trees. Cotton (_Gossypium_)
was unknown in China, and the poorer classes wore garments of
hempen materials; the cotton tree (_Bombyx_) was known in
the south, but then (as now) the catkins could not be woven
into cloth. It was never the custom of officers in China to wear
swords, until in 409 B.C. Ts'in introduced the practice; but it
probably never extended to orthodox China, so far, at least, as
civilians' were concerned. The three dynasties of Hia, Shang, and
Chou had all made use of jade or malachite rings, tablets,
sceptres, and so on, as marks of official rank.

As to sports, hunting, and especially fowling, seem to have been
the most popular pastimes. In 660 a prince of Wei (orthodox) is
said to have had a passion for egret fights. In 539 four-horsed
chariots are mentioned as being used in a great Ts'u hunt south of
the modern Teh-an in northern Hu Peh province, then mostly jungle:
these hunts were used as a sort of training for war as well as for
sport. The celebrated "stone drums" discovered in the seventh
century A.D. near the old Chou capital describe the war-hunts of
the active emperor mentioned in Chapter XLI. As might be expected,
Yen (Peking plain) would be well off for horses-to this day
brought by the Mongols in droves to Peking: in 539 it is said of
Yen: "She was never a strong power, in spite of her numerous
horses." In 534 a great hunt in Lu is described with much detail;
here also chariots were used, and their shafts were reared in
opposite rows with their tips meeting above, so as to form a
"shaft gate," on which, besides, a flag was kept flying. The
entrance to Chinese official _yamens_ is still called "the
shaft gate";-in fact, the _ya_ was orginally a flag, and "_yamen_"
simply means "flag gate." In the Middle Ages the Turkish Khans'
encampments were always spoken of as their ya--thus: "from
hence 1500 miles north-west to the Khan's _ya_." Cockfighting
was a common sport in Ts'i and Lu. In 517 B.C. two prominent
Lu functionaries had a quarrel because one had put metal
spurs on his bird, whilst the other had scattered mustard in the
feathers of his fighting cock: owing to the ambiguity or double
meaning of one of the pictographs employed, it is not quite
certain that "mustard in the wings" may not mean "a metal helmet
on the head." Lifting weights was (as now) a favourite exercise;
in 307 a Ts'in prince died from the effects of a strain produced
in trying to lift a heavy metal tripod. In Ts'i games at ball,
including a kind of football, were played. As a rule, however, it
is to be feared that the wealthy Chinese classes in ancient (as in
modern) times found their chief recreation in feasting, literary
bouts, and female society. Curiously enough, nothing is said of
gambling. Women are depicted at their looms, or engaged upon the
silk industry; but it is singular how very little is said of home
life, of how the houses were constructed, of how the hours of
leisure were passed. In modern China the bulk of the male rural
population rises with or before the dawn, and is engaged upon
field or garden work until the shades of evening fall in; there is
no artificial light adequate for purposes of needlework or private
study; even the consolations of tobacco and tea--not to say opium,
and now newspapers--were unknown in Confucian days. It is
presumed, therefore, that life was even more humdrum than it is
now, except that women at least had feet to walk upon. We gain
some glimpses of excessive taxation and popular misery, forced
labour and the press-gang; of callous luxury on the part of the
rich, from the pages of Lao-tsz and Mencius; the Book of Odes also
tells us much about the pathetic sadness of the people under their
taskmasters' hands. In all countries popular habits change slowly;
in none more so than in China. We are driven, therefore, by
comparison with the life of to-day to conclude that life in those
times was sufficiently wretched, and it is therefore not to be
wondered at that the miserable people readily sold their services
to the first ambitious adventurer who could protect them, and feed
them from day to day.

CHAPTER XLIV

CONFUCIUS

Confucius has hitherto appeared to many of us Westerners as a
stiff, incomprehensible individual, resting his claim to
immortality upon sententious nothingnesses directed to no obvious
practical purpose; but, from the slight sketches of the manners of
the times in which he lived given above, it will be apparent that
he was a practical man with a definite object in view, and that
both his barebones history and his jerky moral teachings were the
best he could do with sorry material, and in the face of
inveterate corruption and tyranny. It has been explained how the
Warrior King who conquered China for the Chou family in 1122,
about a dozen years later enfeoffed the elder brother of the last
Shang dynasty emperor in the country of Sung, where he ruled the
greater part of what was left of the late dynasty's immediate
_entourage_, and kept up the sacrifices. This is what Confucius
meant when he said: "There remain not in K'i sufficient indications
of what the institutions of the Hia dynasty were; but I have studied
in Sung what survives of the Shang dynasty institutions. In practice
I follow the Chou dynasty institutions, as I have studied them at
home in Lu." K'i was a very petty state of marquess rank situated
near Lu, to which, indeed, it was subordinate; but just as Sung had,
as representatives of the Shang dynasty, the privilege of carrying out
certain imperial sacrifices, so had K'i, as representatives of the Hia
dynasty (enfeoffed by Chou in 1122), an equal right to distinction.
Confucius' ancestors were natives of Sung and scions of the ducal
family reigning there; in fact, in 893 his ancestor ought to have
succeeded to the Sung throne: in 710 B.C. the last of these
ancestors to hold high official rank in Sung was killed, together
with his princely master; and several generations after that the
great-grandfather of Confucius, in order to avoid the secular
spite of the powerful family who had so killed his ancestor,
decided to migrate to Lu. In other words, he just crossed the
modern Grand Canal (then the river Sz, which rose in Lu), and
moved a few days' journey north-east to the nearest civilized
state of any standing. Confucius' father is no mythical personage,
but a stout, common soldier, whose doughty deeds under three
successive dukes are mentioned in the Lu history quite in a casual
and regular way. When still quite a child, Confucius disclosed a
curious fancy for playing with sacrificial objects and practising
ceremonies, just as English children in the nursery sometimes play
at "being parson and sexton," and at "having feasts." When he grew
up to manhood, a high officer of Lu foretold his future greatness,
not only on account of his precociously grave demeanour, but also
because he was in direct descent from the Shang dynasty, and
because the intrigues that had taken place in Sung had deprived
him of his succession rights there also. This high officer's two
sons, both frequently mentioned by various contemporary authors,
and one of whom subsequently went with Confucius to visit Lao-tsz
at the imperial court, thereupon studied the rites under the man
of whom their father had spoken so well. The only official
appointment in Lu that Confucius was able to obtain at this period
was that of steward to one of the "powerful families" then engaged
in the task, so congenial in those times all over China, of
undermining the ducal authority; this appointment was a kind of
stewardship, in which his duties consisted in tallying the
measures of grain and checking the heads of cattle. One of the two
sons of the above-mentioned statesman who had foreseen Confucius'
distinction, some time after this submitted a request to the ruler
of Lu that he might proceed in company with Confucius to visit the
imperial capital; and it is supposed by Sz-ma Ts'ien, the
historian of 100 B.C., that this was the occasion on which took
place the philosopher's famous interview with Lao-tsz. In this
connection there are two or three remarks to make. In the first
place, it is recorded of nearly all the vassal states that they
either did pay visits to, or wished to visit, the metropolis; and
that royal dukes and royal historians, either at vassal request or
under imperial instruction, took part in advising vassal states.
In the second place, as Confucius then held no high office, his
visit, being a private affair, would not be considered worth
mentioning in the Lu annals, and it would therefore almost follow
as a matter of course that the young man who accompanied him,
being of official status by birth, would count as the chief
personage. In the third place, there is no instance in the
Confucian histories of a mere archive-keeper or a mere philosopher
being mentioned on account of his importance in that capacity.
Such men as Tsz-ch'an, Shuh Hiang, Ki-chah, and the other
distinguished "ritualists" of the time, are not mentioned so much
on account of their abstract teachings as they are on account of
their being able statesmen, competent to stave off the rising tide
of revolutionary opinions. Even Confucius himself only appears in
contemporary annals as an able administrator and diplomat; there
is no particular mention of his "school," and, _a fortiori,_
he himself does not mention Lao-tsz's "school," even if Lao-tsz
had one; for he disapproved of Lao-tsz's republican and democratic
way of construing the ancient _tao._ Finally, neither Confucius
nor Lao-tsz, however great their local reputations, were
yet universally "great"; they were consequently as little the
objects of hero-worship as was Shakespeare when he was at the
height of his activity; and of the living Shakespeare we know next
to nothing. At this time Lu was in a quandary, surrounded by the
rival great powers of Tsin, Ts'i, and Ts'u, all three of which
absolutely ignored the Emperor, except so far as they might
succeed in using him and his ritualistic prestige as a cat's-paw
in their own selfish interests. When Confucius was thirty years of
age (522 B.C.) the ruler of Ts'i, accompanied by his minister the
philosopher Yen-tsz, paid a visit to Lu, and had a discussion with
Confucius upon the question: "How did Ts'in, from beginnings so
small and obscure, reach her present commanding position?" Besides
this, the Ts'i ruler and his henchman Yen-tsz both took the
opportunity to study the rites at Lu. This fact seems to support
the (later) statement that Confucius had himself been to study the
rites at the metropolis, and also to explain Confucius' own
confession that he did not understand much about the Hia dynasty
institutions that used to exist in K'i,--a state lying eastward of
Ts'i. In 520 the last envoy ever sent from Lu to the Chou
metropolis reported on his return that the imperial family was in
a state of feud and anarchy: if, as it is stated, this was really
the last envoy from Lu, then Confucius and his friend must have
visited Lao-tsz before the former reached the age of thirty. Tsin
and Lu were both now in a revolutionary condition, and a struggle
with the "powerful families" was going on in each case; it was
also beginning in Ts'i, and in principle seems to have been
exactly akin to our English struggle between King John and his
barons (as champions of popular rights) against the greed of the
tax-collector. To avoid home troubles, Confucius at the age of
thirty-five went to Ts'i, in order, if possible, to serve his
friend the Marquess, who had a few years before consulted him
about the rise of Ts'in. There perhaps it was that he found an
opportunity to study the music of the Hia dynasty at the petty
state of K'i, only one day's journey east of the Ts'i capital, on
the north-east frontier of Lu; and then it must have been that he
formed his opinion about the surviving Hia rites. His advice to
the reigning prince of Ts'i was so highly appreciated that it was
proposed to confer an estate upon him. It is interesting to note
that the jealous Yen-tsz (who was much admired as a companionable
man by Confucius) protested against this grant, on the ground that
"men of his views are sophistical rhetoricians, intoxicated with
the exuberance of their own verbosity; incompetent to administer
the people; wasting time and money upon expensive funerals. Life
is too short to waste in trying to get to the bottom of these
inane studies." From this it will be seen that Lao-tsz was by no
means alone in despising Confucius' conservative and ritualistic
views, though it is quite possible that Yen-tsz may still have
respected him as a man and a politician. Finally, Confucius,
finding that the Ts'i ministers were all arrayed against him, and
that the Marquess fain confessed himself too old to fight his
battles for him, quitted the country and returned home. His own
duke died in exile in 510 B.C., power remaining in the intriguing
hands of an influential private family; and for at least ten years
Confucius held no office in his native land, but spent his time in
editing the Odes, the Book, the Chou Rites, and the Music; by some
it is even thought that he not only edited but composed the Book
(of History), or put together afresh such parts of the old Book as
suited his didactic purposes. Meanwhile the private family
intrigues went on more actively than ever; until at last, in 501,
when Confucius was fifty years of age, the most formidable
agitator of them all, finding his position untenable, escaped to
Ts'i; it even seems that Confucius placed, or thought of placing,
his services at the disposal of one of these rebel subjects.
Possibly it was in view of such contingencies that the reigning
duke at last gave Confucius a post as governor of a town, where
his administration was so admirable that he soon passed through
higher posts to that of Chief Justice, or Minister of Justice.
Confucius' views on law are well known. He totally disapproved of
Tsz-ch'an's publication of the law in the orthodox state of Cheng,
as explained in Chapter XX., holding that the judge should always
"declare" the law, and make the punishment fit the crime, instead
of giving the people opportunities to test how far they could
strain the literal terms of the law. He also said: "I am like
others in administering the law; I apply it to each case; it is
necessary to slay one in order not to have to slay more. The
ancients understood prevention better than we do now; at present
all we can hope to do is to avoid punishing unjustly. The ancients
strove to save a prisoner's life; now we can only do our best to
prove his guilt. However, better let a guilty man go free than
slay an innocent one."

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