sovereigns regarded with alarm the progress of his bold reforms. No doubt they
talked about communistic and socialistic doctrines, and the advancing flood of
democracy, as timid people do in our own day. At all events they contrived to
put such a pressure upon the King of Loo that he was compelled to part with his
great minister, who fled from his enemies northward, and found refuge in the
kingdom of Tsi, on the Gulf of Petchali. For twelve, or, as some say, fourteen
years he wandered from place to place, adding to the number of his proselytes;
until spent with fatigue, and bowed down with years, he retired with a few
favourite disciples to a quiet valley in his native land, and devoted the remainder
of his life to the task of revising and improving the famous writings which for so
many centuries have been consecrated by the devout acceptance of the Chinese.
He died at the age of seventy-three, in 477 B.C.,[30] “on the eighteenth day of the
second moon,” after a seven days’ illness. Like many other great reformers,
though but indifferently treated in his lifetime, he became after death the object
of universal admiration, and to this day the Chinese pay homage to the memory
of the “Great Master,” the “Chief Doctor,” the “Wise King of Literature,” the
“Saint,” the “Instructor of Emperors and Kings.” His descendants have been
loaded with honours and privileges, and now constitute the only hereditary
nobility in the Chinese empire. Like the princes of the blood, they are exempt
from taxation. And in every city of the first, second, and third rank, stands at
least one temple dedicated to Confucius, where the emperor himself and the
mandarins are bound to worship, with offerings of wine, fruit, and flowers,—
with burning of fragrant gums, frankincense, and tapers of sandal wood,—and
with singing of appropriate hymns. The eighteenth day of the second moon is
kept sacred by the Chinese as the anniversary of his death.
We have already said that the system of Confucius was ethical rather than
religious. It is absolutely free from any theological strain, and, indeed, makes no
mention of a Creator. “How should I know God,” he would say, “when as yet I
know not man?” “His system was essentially conservative; he aimed at the
correction of new vices which had crept into the body politic by endeavouring to
restore the old customs of the country; and hence the high favour in which his
system has ever been held by the rulers and magnates of the empire. It inculcated
the most perfect subordination, the most servile obedience, and the most
scrupulous adherence to ancient usage; every social, civil, and political duty is
set forth in it with the greatest precision; but inasmuch as all the parts of the