The Life, Labours and Doctrines of Confucius - Edward Harper Parker

       Table of Contents

      IN order to obtain a clear notion of our subject, it is desirable to explain who Confucius was, and the condition of the social life amid which he lived.

      If the reader will look at the map, he will be surprised to see that the China of those days was practically confined to the valley of the Hwang Ho, (which means “Yellow-River “), taken in its broadest sense. I mean that the river which is commonly spoken of as ” China’s Sorrow/’ has at different periods entered the sea through channels both north and south of its present course ; has, in fact, taken temporary possession of other river valleys and channels. The China of Confucius’ time was, then, confined to the tract of country east of the Great Bend, where the river leaves Tartary for good ; and was enclosed or bounded north and south by the most outerly of those streams which have at any time been connected with the Yellow River system.

      We know very little of China previous to Confucius’ time (sixth century before Christ), but what little we do know was sifted for us and transmitted by Confucius. We may sum it up in a few words. The written character in an antique form had certainly existed for several thousand years, but it is quite uncertain how many : the best authorities say 3,000, that is 5,000 from now. Very recent discoveries in Babylonia have revealed to us original Sumerian cuneiform records on a wholesale scale, written in clay, and dating at least 5,000 years back ; but there are no such original ancient records in China, nor is there any trace of the Chinese ever having written in clay, still less of there being any connection between Chinese and those western hieroglyphs which preceded cuneiform. Several dynasties had existed, and the rulers of these had shifted their capitals from time to time according to the vagaries of the Yellow River. One of their chief cares was to deal with the havoc wrought or threatened by the floods which resulted from these fluvial irregularities. But although the earliest Chinese literature reaches -back 4,000 years, the older records are so brief and laconic that we derive no satisfactory mental picture from them.

      In the time of Confucius the imperial power had dwindled down almost to nothing, and the appanage States of the vassal princes, most of which had been conferred originally upon kinsmen of the King (for the more modern title of hwang-ti or ” Emperor,” which in those days applied to the Supreme God, and thence only by extension to past Emperors, had not yet assumed its present definite form), were almost independent. The condition of China was, in fact, almost exactly like that of France before Louis the Eleventh broke the power of the vassal dukes and counts ; and the position of the Chinese King, as a moral head over all men, was not unlike the present position of the Pope as the moral head of Christendom: he was towards the end as much a prisoner as a monarch ; his temporal sway was almost reduced to his immediate surroundings, and the whims of feudatories, coupled with the infiltration of barbarian customs, were gradually corrupting the old polity. Not only were the vassal principalities, dukedoms, and counties insubordinate in relation to the King, but their own counts, barons, and squires were equally presumptuous towards themselves ; and it was into this chaotic condition of society and policy, where each clever man was fighting for his own hand alone, that Confucius was ushered at his birth.

      The ancestors of Confucius could, at the time of his birth in the year 551 before Christ, be traced back in a way for over two thousand years; but, as we know next to nothing of practical history previous to his time, it is futile to pursue enquiry into remote family matters. Where nothing is known of an extinct genus^ it is vain to enquire into its species. The royal dynasty nominally ruling in Confucius’ time began 671 years before his birth, and one of Confucius’ ancestors, who was a half-brother of the last monarch of the dethroned dynasty, was enfeoffed in a State called Sung, the capital of which I mark in the map with, a cross. About 250 years before Confucius’ birth, the reigning duke of this state resigned his rights of succession to a younger brother. The elder brother and his heirs were thus for ever cut off from the ducal succession, and the customary law of China then was that, after five generations, a branch of the reigning family must found a new gens or clan of his own. So, then, it came to pass that K’ung-fu-kia, fifth in descent from the abdicating duke, gave the first syllable of his name as a clan name to his heirs. The great-grandson of the man who thus founded in its strict or narrower sense the family of K’ung was the great-grandfather of the philosopher. In Chinese the word fu-tsz has very much the same meaning, by extension, as the Latin word prudens ; and the responsa prudentum, or “legal dicta” of such Roman teachers as Paul, Papinian, Ulpian, and others, were very like the wise sayings of such fu-tsz as Confucius and Mencius. K’ung-fu-tsz, or ” the learned K’ung,” was too difficult a polysyllable for the Portuguese Jesuits who first came to China to pronounce accurately, and accordingly they latinised it into Confucius, or, as most Europeans would still pronounce it, Confutsitis.

      K’ung means a ” hole, and, by extension, ” a peacock,” apparently because that bird has a number of eyes or holes in its tail. Fu means vir y i.e. a man or husband ; and tsz, meaning ” a child,” is simply a diminutive, just as homunculus is the diminutive of homo, u a human being,” in Latin ; or as Mdnnchen is a diminutive of Mann^ ” a man or husband,” in German. Peacocks were most probably unknown in North China when Confucius lived, hence his name must be translated ” Mr. Hole,” and not ” Mr. Peacock ” ; and Confucius was the seventh of the Hole family counting from the time when that name was assumed ; or the twelfth of the family counting from the time when the reigning duke resigned his rights to a younger brother.

      The great-grandfather of Confucius was obliged to fly from the duchy on account of some political trouble, and he became a citizen of a neighbouring state called Lu. His grandson, the father of Confucius, became an officer of state, and distinguished himself by proficiency in the warlike arts. He was ten feet in height ; but the learned are still disputing the question of ancient feet : probably a foot was then 8 inches, as now measured, and Confucius’ father would thus be six feet eight inches in height, by no means a very rare thing even with modern Chinamen of the north. This promising soldier had nine daughters borne to him in succession by his wife. In China there can, except under very special circumstances, only be one strictly legal wife, but should this wife fail to present her lord with