Ten Great Religions by James Freeman Clarke

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One of these is called the "Immutable Mean," and its object is to show
that virtue consists in avoiding extremes. Another--the Lun-Yu, or
Analects--contains the conversation or table-talk of Confucius, and
somewhat resembles the Memorabilia of Xenophon and Boswell's Life of
Johnson.[12]

The life of Confucius was thus devoted to communicating to the Chinese
nation a few great moral and religious principles, which he believed would
insure the happiness of the people. His devotion to this aim appears in
his writings. Thus he says:--

"At fifteen years I longed for wisdom. At thirty my mind was fixed in the
pursuit of it. At forty I saw clearly certain principles. At fifty I
understood the rule given by heaven. At sixty everything I heard I easily
understood. At seventy the desires of my heart no longer transgressed the
law."

"If in the morning I hear about the right way, and in the evening I die, I
can be happy."

He says of himself: "He is a man who through his earnestness in seeking
knowledge forgets his food, and in his joy for having found it loses all
sense of his toil, and thus occupied is unconscious that he has almost
reached old age."

Again: "Coarse rice for food, water to drink, the bended arm for a
pillow,--happiness may be enjoyed even with these; but without virtue both
riches and honor seem to me like the passing cloud."

"Grieve not that men know not you; grieve that you know not men."

"To rule with equity is like the North Star, which is fixed, and all the
rest go round it."

"The essence of knowledge is, having it, to apply it; not having it, to
confess your ignorance."

"Worship as though the Deity were present."

"If my mind is not engaged in my worship, it is as though I worshipped
not."

"Formerly, in hearing men, I heard their words, and gave them credit for
their conduct; now I hear their words, and observe their conduct."

"A man's life depends on virtue; if a bad man lives, it is only by good
fortune."

"Some proceed blindly to action, without knowledge; I hear much, and
select the best course."

He was once found fault with, when in office, for not opposing the
marriage of a ruler with a distant relation, which was an offence against
Chinese propriety. He said: "I am a happy man; if I have a fault, men
observe it."

Confucius was humble. He said: "I cannot bear to hear myself called equal
to the sages and the good. All that can be said of me is, that I study
with delight the conduct of the sages, and instruct men without weariness
therein."

"The good man is serene," said he, "the bad always in fear."

"A good man regards the ROOT; he fixes the root, and all else flows out of
it. The root is filial piety; the fruit brotherly love."

"There may be fair words and an humble countenance when there is little
real virtue."

"I daily examine myself in a threefold manner: in my transactions with
men, if I am upright; in my intercourse with friends, if I am faithful;
and whether I illustrate the teachings of my master in my conduct."

"Faithfulness and sincerity are the highest things."

"When you transgress, do not fear to return."

"Learn the past and you will know the future."

The great principles which he taught were chiefly based on family
affection and duty. He taught kings that they were to treat their
subjects as children, subjects to respect the kings as parents; and these
ideas so penetrated the national mind, that emperors are obliged to seem
to govern thus, even if they do not desire it. Confucius was a teacher of
reverence,--reverence for God, respect for parents, respect and reverence
for the past and its legacies, for the great men and great ideas of former
times. He taught men also to regard each other as brethren, and even the
golden rule, in its negative if not its positive form, is to be found in
his writings.

Curiously enough, this teacher of reverence was distinguished by a
remarkable lump on the top of his head, where the phrenologists have
placed the organ of veneration.[13] Rooted in his organization, and
strengthened by all his convictions, this element of adoration seemed to
him the crown of the whole moral nature of man. But, while full of
veneration, he seems to have been deficient in the sense of spiritual
things. A personal God was unknown to him; so that his worship was
directed, not to God, but to antiquity, to ancestors, to propriety and
usage, to the state as father and mother of its subjects, to the ruler as
in the place of authority. Perfectly sincere, deeply and absolutely
assured of all that he knew, he said nothing he did not believe. His power
came not only from the depth and clearness of his convictions, but from
the absolute honesty of his soul.

Lao-tse, for twenty-eight years his contemporary, founder of one of the
three existing religions of China,--Tao-ism,--was a man of perhaps equal
intelligence. But he was chiefly a thinker; he made no attempt to elevate
the people; his purpose was to repress the passions, and to preserve the
soul in a perfect equanimity. He was the Zeno of the East, founder of a
Chinese stoicism. With him virtue is sure of its reward; everything is
arranged by a fixed law. His disciples afterwards added to his system a
thaumaturgic element and an invocation of departed spirits, so that now it
resembles our modern Spiritism; but the original doctrine of Lao-tse was
rationalism in philosophy and stoicism in morals. Confucius is said, in a
Chinese work, to have visited him, and to have frankly confessed his
inability to understand him. "I know how birds fly, how fishes swim, how
animals run. The bird may be shot, the fish hooked, and the beast snared.
But there is the dragon. I cannot tell how he mounts in the air, and soars
to heaven. To-day I have seen the dragon."

But the modest man, who lived for others, has far surpassed in his
influence this dragon of intelligence. It certainly increases our hope for
man, when we see how these qualities of perfect honesty, good sense,
generous devotion to the public good, and fidelity to the last in
adherence to his work, have made Confucius during twenty-three centuries
the daily teacher and guide of a third of the human race.

Confucius was eminently distinguished by energy and persistency. He did
not stop working till he died. His life was of one piece, beautiful,
noble. "The general of a large army," said he, "may be defeated, but you
cannot defeat the determined mind of a peasant." He acted conformably to
this thought, and to another of his sayings. "If I am building a mountain,
and stop before the last basketful of earth is placed on the summit, I
have failed of my work. But if I have placed but one basketful on the
plain, and go on, I am really building a mountain."

Many beautiful and noble things are related concerning the character of
Confucius,--of his courage in the midst of danger, of his humility in the
highest position of honor. His writings and life have given the law to
Chinese thought. He is the patron saint of that great empire. His doctrine
is the state religion of the nation, sustained by the whole power of the
emperor and the literary body. His books are published every year by
societies formed for that purpose, who distribute them gratuitously. His
descendants enjoy the highest consideration. The number of temples erected
to his memory is sixteen hundred and sixty. One of them occupies ten acres
of land. On the two festivals in the year sacred to his memory there are
sacrificed some seventy thousand animals of different kinds, and
twenty-seven thousand pieces of silk are burned on his altars. Yet his is
a religion without priests, liturgy, or public worship, except on these
two occasions.

Sec. 4. Philosophy and subsequent Development of Confucianism.

According to Mr. Meadows, the philosophy of China, in its origin and
present aspect, may be thus briefly described.[14] Setting aside the
Buddhist system and that of Tao-ism, which supply to the Chinese the
element of religious worship and the doctrine of a supernatural world,
wanting in the system of Confucius, we find the latter as the established
religion of the state, merely tolerating the others as suited to persons
of weak minds. The Confucian system, constantly taught by the competitive
examinations, rules the thought of China. Its first development was from
the birth of Confucius to the death of Mencias (or from 551 B.C. to 313
B.C.). Its second period was from the time of Chow-tsze (A.D. 1034) to
that of Choo-tsze (A.D. 1200). The last of these is the real fashioner of
Chinese philosophy, and one of the truly great men of the human race. His
works are chiefly Commentaries on the Kings and the Four Books. They are
committed to memory by millions of Chinese who aspire to pass the
public-service examinations. The Chinese philosophy, thus established by
Choo-tsze, is as follows.[15]

There is one highest, ultimate principle of all existence,--the Tae-keih,
or Grand Extreme. This is absolutely immaterial, and the basis of the
order of the universe. From this ultimate principle, operating from all
eternity, come all animate and inanimate nature. It operates in a twofold
way, by expansion and contraction, or by ceaseless active and passive
pulsations. The active expansive pulsation is called Yang, the passive
intensive pulsation is Yin, and the two may be called the Positive and
Negative Essences of all things. When the active expansive phase of the
process has reached its extreme limit, the operation becomes passive and
intensive; and from these vibrations originate all material and mortal
existences. Creation is therefore a perpetual process,--matter and spirit
are opposite results of the same force. The one tends to variety, the
other to unity; and variety in unity is a permanent and universal law of
being. Man results from the utmost development of this pulsatory action
and passion; and man's nature, as the highest result, is perfectly good,
consisting of five elements, namely, charity, righteousness, propriety,
wisdom, and sincerity. These constitute the inmost, essential nature of
man; but as man comes in contact with the outward world evil arises by the
conflict. When man follows the dictates of his nature his actions are
good, and harmony results. When he is unduly influenced by the outward
world his actions are evil, and discord intervenes. The holy man is one
who has an instinctive, inward sight of the ultimate principle in its
twofold operation (or what we should call the sight of God, the beatific
vision), and who therefore spontaneously and easily obeys his nature.
Hence all his thoughts are perfectly wise, his actions perfectly good, and
his words perfectly true. Confucius was the last of these holy men. The
infallible authority of the Sacred Books results from the fact that their
writers, being holy men, had an instinctive perception of the working of
the ultimate principle.

All Confucian philosophy is pervaded by these principles: first, that
example is omnipotent; secondly, that to secure the safety of the empire,
you must secure the happiness of the people; thirdly, that by solitary
persistent thought one may penetrate at last to a knowledge of the essence
of things; fourthly, that the object of all government is to make the
people virtuous and contented.

Sec. 5. Lao-tse and Tao-ism.

One of the three religious systems of China is that of the Tao, the other
two being that of Confucius, and that of Buddhism in its Chinese form. The
difficulty in understanding Tao-ism comes from its appearing under three
entirely distinct forms: (1) as a philosophy of the absolute or
unconditioned, in the great work of the Tse-Lao, or old teacher;[16] (2)
as a system of morality of the utilitarian school,[17] which resolves duty
into prudence; and (3) as a system of magic, connected with the belief in
spirits. In the Tao-te-king we have the ideas of Lao himself, which we
will endeavor to state; premising that they are considered very obscure
and difficult even by the Chinese commentators.

The TAO (Sec. 1) is the unnamable, and is the origin of heaven and earth. As
that which can be named, it is the mother of all things. These two are
essentially one. Being and not-being are born from each other (Sec. 2). The
Tao is empty but inexhaustible (Sec. 4), is pure, is profound, and was before
the Gods. It is invisible, not the object of perception, it returns into
not-being (Sec.Sec. 14, 40). It is vague, confused, and obscure (Sec. 25, 21). It
is little and strong, universally present, and all beings return into it
(Sec. 32). It is without desires, great (Sec. 34). All things are born of being,
being is born of not-being (Sec. 40).

From these and similar statements it would appear that the philosophy of
the Tao-te-king is that of absolute being, or the identity of being and
not-being. In this point it anticipated Hegel by twenty-three
centuries.[18] It teaches that the absolute is the source of being and of
not-being. Being is essence, not-being is existence. The first is the
noumenal, the last the phenomenal.'

As being is the source of not-being (Sec. 40), by identifying one's self with
being one attains to all that is not-being, i.e. to all that exists.
Instead, therefore, of aiming at acquiring knowledge, the wise man avoids
it: instead of acting, he refuses to act. He "feeds his mind with a wise
passiveness." (Sec. 16.) "_Not to act_ is the source of all power," is a
thesis continually present to the mind of Lao (Sec.Sec. 3, 23, 38,43,48, 63).
The wise man is like water (Sec.Sec. 8, 78), which seems weak and is strong;
which yields, seeks the lowest place, which seems the softest thing and
breaks the hardest thing. To be wise one must renounce wisdom, to be good
one must renounce justice and humanity, to be learned one must renounce
knowledge (Sec.Sec. 19, 20, 45), and must have no desires (Sec.Sec. 8, 22), must
detach one's self from all things (Sec. 20) and be like a new-born babe. From
everything proceeds its opposite, the easy from the difficult, the
difficult from the easy, the long from the short, the high from the low,
ignorance from knowledge, knowledge from ignorance, the first from the
last, the last from the first. These antagonisms are mutually related by
the hidden principle of the Tao (Sec.Sec. 2, 27). Nothing is independent or
capable of existing save through its opposite. The good man and bad man
are equally necessary to each other (Sec. 27). To desire aright is not to
desire (Sec. 64). The saint can do great things because he does not attempt
to do them (Sec. 63). The unwarlike man conquers.[19] He who submits to
others controls them. By this negation of all things we come into
possession of all things (Sec. 68). _Not to act_ is, therefore, the secret of
all power (Sec.Sec. 3, 23, 38, 43, 48, 63).

We find here the same doctrine of opposites which appears in the Phaedo,
and which has come up again and again in philosophy. We shall find
something like it in the Sankhya-karika of the Hindoos. The Duad, with the
Monad brooding behind it, is the fundamental principle of the Avesta.

The result, thus far, is to an active passivity. Lao teaches that not to
act involves the highest energy of being, and leads to the greatest
results. By not acting one identifies himself with the Tao, and receives
all its power. And here we cannot doubt that the Chinese philosopher was
pursuing the same course with Sakya-Muni. The Tao of the one is the
Nirvana of the other. The different motive in each mind constitutes the
difference of their career. Sakya-Muni sought Nirvana, or the absolute,
the pure knowledge, in order to escape from evil and to conquer it. Lao
sought it, as his book shows, to attain power. At this point the two
systems diverge. Buddhism is generous, benevolent, humane; it seeks to
help others. Tao-ism seeks its own. Hence the selfish morality which
pervades the Book of Rewards and Punishments. Every good action has its
reward attached to it. Hence also the degradation of the system into pure
magic and spiritism. Buddhism, though its course runs so nearly parallel,
always retains in its scheme of merits a touch of generosity.

We find thus, in the Tao-te-king, the element afterwards expanded into the
system of utilitarian and eudaemonic ethics in the Book of Rewards and
Punishments. We also can trace in it the source of the magical tendency in
Tao-ism. The principle, that by putting one's self into an entirely
passive condition one can enter into communion with the unnamed Tao, and
so acquire power over nature, naturally tends to magic. Precisely the same
course of thought led to similar results in the case of Neo-Platonism. The
ecstatic union with the divine element in all nature, which Plotinus
attained four times in his life, resulted from an immediate sight of God.
In this sight is all truth given to the soul. The unity, says Plotinus,
which produces all things, is an essence behind both substance and form.
Through this essential being all souls commune and interact, and magic is
this interaction of soul upon soul through the soul of souls, with which
one becomes identified in the ecstatic union. A man therefore can act on
demons and control spirits by theurgic rites. Julian, that ardent
Neo-Platonician, was surrounded by diviners, hierophants, and
aruspices.[20]

In the Tao-te-king (Sec.Sec. 50, 55, 56, etc.) it is said that he who knows the
Tao need not fear the bite of serpents nor the jaws of wild beasts, nor
the claws of birds of prey. He is inaccessible to good and to evil. He
need fear neither rhinoceros nor tiger. In battle he needs neither cuirass
nor sword. The tiger cannot tear him, the soldier cannot wound him. He is
invulnerable and safe from death.[21]

If Neo-Platonism had not had for its antagonist the vital force of
Christianity, it might have established itself as a permanent form of
religion in the Roman Empire, as Tao-ism has in China. I have tried to
show how the later form of this Chinese system has come naturally from its
principles, and how a philosophy of the absolute may have degenerated into
a system of necromancy.

Sec. 6. Religious Character of the "Kings."

We have seen that, in the philosophy of the Confucians, the ultimate
principle is not necessarily identical with a living, intelligent, and
personal God. Nor did Confucius, when he speaks of Teen, or Heaven,
express any faith in such a being. He neither asserted nor denied a
Supreme God. His worship and prayer did not necessarily imply such a
faith. It was the prayer of reverence addressed to some sacred,
mysterious, unknown power, above and behind all visible things. What that
power was, he, with his supreme candor, did not venture to intimate. But
in the She-King a personal God is addressed. The oldest books recognize a
Divine person. They teach that there is one Supreme Being, who is
omnipresent, who sees all things, and has an intelligence which nothing
can escape,--that he wishes men to live together in peace and brotherhood.
He commands not only right actions, but pure desires and thoughts, that we
should watch all our behavior, and maintain a grave and majestic demeanor,
"which is like a palace in which virtue resides"; but especially that we
should guard the tongue. "For a blemish may be taken out of a diamond by
carefully polishing it; but, if your words have the least blemish, there
is no way to efface that." "Humility is the solid foundation of all the
virtues." "To acknowledge one's incapacity is the way to be soon prepared
to teach others; for from the moment that a man is no longer full of
himself, nor puffed up with empty pride, whatever good he learns in the
morning he practices before night." "Heaven penetrates to the bottom of
our hearts, like light into a dark chamber. We must conform ourselves to
it, till we are like two instruments of music tamed to the same pitch. We
must join ourselves with it, like two tablets which appear but one. We
must receive its gifts the very moment its hand is open to bestow. Our
irregular passions shut up the door of our souls against God."

Such are the teachings of these Kings, which are unquestionably among the
oldest existing productions of the human mind. In the days of Confucius
they seem to have been nearly forgotten, and their precepts wholly
neglected. Confucius revised them, added his own explanations and
comments, and, as one of the last acts of his life, called his disciples
around him and made a solemn dedication of these books to Heaven. He
erected an altar on which he placed them, adored God, and returned thanks
upon his knees in a humble manner for having had life and health granted
him to finish this undertaking.

Sec. 7. Confucius and Christianity. Character of the Chinese.

It were easy to find defects in the doctrine of Confucius. It has little
to teach of God or immortality. But if the law of Moses, which taught
nothing of a future life, was a preparation for Christianity; if, as the
early Christian Fathers asserted, Greek philosophy was also schoolmaster
to bring men to Christ; who can doubt that the truth and purity in the
teachings of Confucius were providentially intended to lead this great
nation in the right direction? Confucius is a Star in the East, to lead
his people to Christ. One of the most authentic of his sayings is this,
that "in the West the true Saint must be looked for and found." He has a
perception, such as truly great men have often had, of some one higher
than himself, who was to come after him. We cannot doubt, therefore, that
God, who forgets none of his children, has given this teacher to the
swarming millions of China to lead them on till they are ready for a
higher light. And certainly the temporal prosperity and external virtues
of this nation, and their long-continued stability amid the universal
changes of the world, are owing in no small decree to the lessons of
reverence for the past, of respect for knowledge, of peace and order, and
especially of filial piety, which he inculcated. In their case, if in no
other, has been fulfilled the promise of the divine commandment, "Honor
thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land which the
Lord thy God giveth thee."

In comparing the system of Confucius with Christianity, it appears at once
that Christianity differs from this system, as from most others, in its
greater completeness. Jesus says to the Chinese philosopher, as he said to
the Jewish law, "I have not come to destroy, but to fulfil." He fulfils
the Confucian reverence for the past by adding hope for the future; he
fulfils its stability by progress, its faith in man with faith in God, its
interest in this world with the expectation of another, its sense of time
with that of eternity. Confucius aims at peace, order, outward prosperity,
virtue, and good morals. All this belongs also to Christianity, but
Christianity adds a moral enthusiasm, a faith in the spiritual world, a
hope of immortal life, a sense of the Fatherly presence of God. So that
here, as before, we find that Christianity does not exclude other
religions, but includes them, and is distinguished by being deeper,
higher, broader, and more far-reaching than they.

A people with such institutions and such a social life as we have
described cannot be despised, and to call them uncivilized is as absurd in
us as it is in them to call Europeans barbarians. They are a good,
intelligent, and happy people. Lieutenant Forbes, who spent five years in
China,--from 1842 to 1847,--says: "I found myself in the midst of as
amiable, kind, and hospitable a population as any on the face of the
earth, as far ahead of us in some things as behind us in others." As to
the charge of dishonesty brought against them by those who judge the whole
nation by the degraded population of the suburbs of Canton, Forbes says,
"My own property suffered more in landing in England and passing the
British frontier than in my whole sojourn in China."

"There is no nation," says the Jesuit Du Halde, "more laborious and
temperate than this. They are inured to hardships from their infancy,
which greatly contributes to preserve the innocence of their manners....
They are of a mild, tractable, and humane disposition." He thinks them
exceedingly modest, and regards the love of gain as their chief vice.
"Interest," says he, "is the spring of all their actions; for, when the
least profit offers, they despise all difficulties and undertake the most
painful journeys to procure it" This may be true; but if a Chinese
traveller in America should give the same account of us, would it not be
quite as true? One of the latest writers--the author of "The Middle
Kingdom"--accuses the Chinese of gross sensuality, mendacity, and
dishonesty. No doubt these are besetting sins with them, as with all
nations who are educated under a system which makes submission to
authority the chief virtue. But then this writer lived only at Canton and
Macao, and saw personally only the refuse of the people. He admits that
"they have attained, by the observance of peace and good order, to a high
security of life and property; that the various classes are linked
together in a remarkably homogeneous manner by the diffusion of education;
and that property and industry receive their just reward of food, raiment,
and shelter." He also reminds us that the religion of China differs from
all Pagan religions in this, that it encourages neither cruelty nor
sensuality. No human victims have ever been offered on its altars, and
those licentious rites which have appeared in so many religions have never
disgraced its pure worship.