CHAPTER VI.

IN CHINA:—CONFUCIANISM, TAOUISM,

AND BUDDHISM.

THE creeds in vogue amongst the Chinese may be regarded as three:

—Confucianism, the religion of the state; Taouism, the religion of the
philosophers; and Buddhism, the religion of the people.

It has been justly said that a religion which, like Confucianism, has exercised for
twenty-four centuries a potent influence over the Chinese mind, though owing its
name and origin to a simple citizen, must possess in it something well worthy of
consideration. There must be in it a spell which strongly attracts the popular
sympathies. This spell is said to be, though possibly we ought to search deeper
and farther for it, the purely practical character of its tenets, and the harmony
which exists between those tenets and the patriarchal character of the
government and the institutions of the country. And in fact it is not so much a
religion as an ethical system,—something such as Christianity would be, if we
took out of it JESUS CHRIST. Or we may distinguish it as “a system of ceremonies
on a moral basis,” and, as such, admirably adapted to the tastes and needs of so
ceremonial-loving a people as the Chinese. To this day the Ly-pou watch with
jealous vigilance the maintenance of all the old traditional rites, and rigidly
enforce the observance of the traditional details in the construction of the
temples. Moreover such particulars as the six kinds of sceptres, the five kinds of
mats, and the five kinds of stools are strictly insisted upon; and it is known that
the innumerable prescribed sacrifices offered to the various gods of the heaven
and the earth, to a man’s forefathers, to the hills and the rivers, the sea and the
central mount, the god of the south pole and the god of thunder, are the same
now as they have been for upwards of 2,000 years.

The founder of Confucianism, Kong-foo-tse, or Confucius, (as the Jesuits
latinised the name,) was born about 550 B.C. in the state Loo, within the district