The Life of Confucius
Confucius, as a sage and religious teacher, is regarded by his countrymen as the greatest man China has produced. He was unquestionably an extraordinary man, remarkable in the influence he…
From: 551 B.C.E. To: 479 B.C.E.
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From Confucius and the Chinese Classics by A. W. Loomis, 1867.
Confucius, as a sage and religious teacher, is regarded by his countrymen as the greatest man China has produced. He was unquestionably an extraordinary man, remarkable in the influence he exercised over his countrymen when alive, and the still greater influence he has ever since exercised by his writings.
Confucius was born about five hundred and forty-nine years before Christ, in the Kingdom of Loo, a portion of northeastern China, nearly corresponding with the modem province of Shan-tung. At that time China was divided into nine independent States, and it was not till three centuries later that it was united into one kingdom.
From his earliest years, Confucius was distinguished by an eager pursuit of knowledge. From his father, who was prime minister of the State in which he lived, he inherited a taste for political studies; but being left an orphan when still but a child, he was educated for the most part in retirement by his mother Ching and his grandfather Coum-tse. The anecdotes which are related of his boyhood tend to show that he was distinguished by those qualities most highly esteemed by his countrymen, and afterwards most strictly enforced by himself—a profound reverence for his parents and ancestors, and for the teaching of the ancient sages.
"Coum-tse, his grandfather,” says one of his biographers, “was one day sitting absorbed in a melancholy reverie, in the course of which he fetched several deep sighs. The child observing him, after some time approached, and with many bows and formal reverences, spoke thus:
'If I may presume, without violating the respect I owe you, sir, to inquire into the cause of your grief, I would gladly do so. Perhaps you fear that I who am descended from you may reflect discredit on your memory by failing to imitate your virtues.' His grandfather, surprised, asked him where he had learned to speak so wisely. ‘From yourself, sir,' he replied; ‘I listen attentively to your words, and I have often heard you say that a son who does not imitate the virtues of his ancestors deserves not to bear their name.'"
The position which his father had held in the State seems to have inspired Confucius at an early age with a desire to distinguish himself in moral and political studies, and prompted him to investigate the early history of his country. He labored zealously to fit himself for filling offices of high political trust; and in his endeavors to master the learning of the early sages he was ably assisted by his grandfather.
He married at nineteen years of age, and is said to have divorced his wife a few years afterwards, when she had given birth to a son, that he might devote himself without interruption to study; but owing to the general contempt of women in the East, the subject is only slightly alluded to by his biographers.
He entered upon political employment at twenty years of age, as "superintendent of cattle," an office probably established that the revenue might not be defrauded, and necessary where much of it was paid in kind. In this situation, his reverence for antiquity and the ancients did not prevent Confucius from attempting reforms and checking long-established abuses.
Under his administration men who were dishonest were dismissed, and a general inquiry was set on foot with a view to the reformation of all that was unworthy or pernicious. The activity of Confucius brought him into favor with his sovereign, and he was promoted to the "distribution of grain," an office of which it is not easy to discover the nature. Whatever were his duties, however, the energy that Confucius displayed was extremely distasteful to his colleagues. He was now in the vigorous manhood of thirty-five, and the eyes of the nation were turned to him as their future prime minister, when a revolution occurred in the State, which drove him from power.
Deprived of his office, he wandered for eight years through the various provinces of China, teaching as he went, but without as yet making any great impression upon the mass of the people. He returned to Loo in his forty-third year. His enemies, during those eight years, had gradually lost their authority; and he was again employed in political offices of trust and responsibility. Immorality prevailed at this time to a frightful extent Confucius set himself up fearlessly as a teacher of virtue.
His admonitions were not thrown away; and having gained the approbation of the king a few years after his return from exile, he was appointed prime minister with almost absolute authority. The enemies of order and virtue excited troubles on his elevation; but Confucius sternly repressed the symptoms of dissatisfaction, and though of compassionate disposition, he did not hesitate to resort to capital punishment when necessary to rid himself of his enemies.
Reformation made rapid strides in the territories of Loo; the nobles became more just and equitable; the poor were not oppressed as before; roads, bridges, and canals were formed “The food of the people," says his biographer, "was the first care; it was not until that had been secured in abundance that the revenues of the State were directed to the advancement of commerce, the improvement of the bridges and highways, the impartial administration of justice, and the repression of the bands of robbers that infested the mountains."
For four years he steadily persevered in his endeavors, until Loo began to be regarded as a model State by the surrounding kingdoms. It was not the interest of the neighboring princes to permit this state of things to continue. One of them, more crazy than the others, knowing the weakness of the sovereign of Loo, trained some fascinating courtezans after his own views, and sent them as a present to the voluptuous prince.
They were greedily received, for the king had long tired of Confucius and his stern morality. The courtezans roused him and his nobility to action. A strong party rose against the sage; and at the age of fifty-seven, he was driven once more from his native State to wander as a teacher through the different provinces of China.
On leaving Loo, Confucius first bent his steps westward to the State of Wei, situate about where the present provinces of Chih-le and Ho-nan adjoin. He was now in his fifty-sixth year, and felt depressed and melancholy. As he went along, he gave expression to his feelings in verse:
"Fain would I still look towards Loo, But this Kwei hill cuts off my view. With an axe, I’d hew these thickets through:—Vain thought! 'gainst the hill I naught can do.”
And again:
“Through the valley howls the blasts Drizzling rain falls thick and fast Homeward goes the youthful bride O’er the wild, crowds by her side. How is it, O azure Heaven, From my home I thus am driven, Through the land my way to trace, With no certain dwelling place? Dark, dark, the minds of men! Worth in vain comes to their ken. Hasten on, my term of years: Old age, desolate, disappears.”
It was only by concealment and disguise that the life of the exiled prime minister was preserved. For twelve years he wandered from province to province, at first harassed, persecuted, hunted, but after a while allowed to travel unmolested. A faithful little band of disciples collected around him in his wanderings, and their numbers, as time advanced, might soon be counted by thousands. Seventy-two of these, we are told, were particularly attached to him, but only ten of them were "truly wise." With these ten he finally retired, at the age of sixty-nine, to a peaceful valley in his native province, where, in the midst of his disciples, he passed a happy literary period of five years, in collating and annotating the works of the ancients.
These sacred books have been for twenty-three centuries the fountains of wisdom and goodness to all the educated of China. They are the works in which every student must be a proficient ere he can hope to advance in the political arena, and for twenty-three centuries have had an incalculable influence on a third of the human race.
His life was peacefully concluded in the midst of his friends at the age of seventy-three, in the valley to which he had retired five years previously.
A few days before his death he tottered about the house sighing out:
Tai shan, kí tu hu!
Liang muh, kí kwai hu!
Chí jin kí wei hu!
The great mountain is broken! The strong beam is thrown down! The wise man has decayed!
He died soon after, leaving a single descendant, his grandson Tsz'sz', through whom the succession has been transmitted to the present day. During his life, the return of the Jews from Babylon, the invasion of Greece by Xerxes, and conquest of Egypt by the Persians, took place.
Posthumous honors in great variety, amounting to idolatrous worship, have been conferred upon him. His title is the most Holy Ancient Teacher Kung-tsz', and the Holy Duke. In the reign of Kanghí, 2150 years after his death, there were eleven thousand males alive bearing his name, and most of them of the seventy-fourth generation^ being undoubtedly one of the oldest families in the world. In the Sacrificial Ritual a short account of his life is given, which closes with the following pæan:
Confucius! Confucius! How great is Confucius! Before Confucius there never was a Confucius! Since Confucius there never has been a Confucius! Confucius! Confucius! How great is Confucius!
That peaceful valley in which he died has been for all succeeding ages a sacred spot—a place of pilgrimage for the learned and the superstitious; and the Chinese of 1867, amid conflicting Buddhism, Tauism, and Roman Catholicism, still point with reverence to the tomb of their great sage in the province of Shan-tung.
In his manner of teaching, Confucius was strikingly contrasted with the other great religious teachers of Asia—Gotama, Buddha, Zoroaster, and Mohammed. He made no pretensions to universal knowledge or external inspiration.
"I was not born," said he to his disciples, "endowed with all knowledge. I am merely a man who loves the ancients, and who do all I can to arrive at truth." On particular points of religious and other knowledge he was equally frank in his confessions of ignorance. Having been asked, for instance, by his disciples, how superior spirits might be acceptably worshiped, he candidly answered that he did not know. On another occasion, when asked what death was, he gave the memorable answer: "When I know not the nature of life, how shall I inform you what death is?"
In his precepts, as his disciples have handed them down to us, there is nothing austere or repulsive; no attempt whatever made to bind down the minds of his followers to any rigidly ascetic rule of his own. On the contrary, he desired them to be open to every enlivening and ennobling idea, to practice singing and music, to cultivate and reverence the sublime, to open their hearts to the influence of joy—in short, by every means consistent with virtue, to render their existence happy.
Simple and natural as he was, however, in his manner of life and method of teaching, he himself informs us, in a saying recorded by one of his disciples, that he was not understood by his age.
The leading features of the philosophy of Confucius are, subordination to superiors, and kind, upright dealing with our fellow men; destitute of all reference to an unseen power to whom all men are accountable, they look only to this world for their sanctions, and make the monarch himself only partially amenable to a higher tribunal.
From the duty, honor and obedience owed by a child to his parents, he proceeds to inculcate the obligations of wives to their husbands, subjects to their prince, and ministers to their king, together with all the obligations arising from the various social relations. Political morality must be founded on private rectitude, and the banning of all real advance, in his opinion, was comprised in nosce teipsum.
It cannot be denied that among much that is commendable, there are a few exceptionable dogmas among his tenets; but compared with the precepts of Grecian and Roman sages, the general tendency of his writings is good, while in their general adaptation to the society in which he lived, and their eminently practical character, they exceed those of Western philosophers. He did not deal much in sublime and unattainable descriptions of virtue, but rather taught how the common intercourse of life was to be maintained, how children should conduct themselves towards their parents, when a man should enter an office, when to marry, etc., which, although they may seem somewhat trifling to us, were probably well calculated for the times and people among whom he lived.
The variety and minuteness of his instructions for the nurture and education of children, the stress he lays upon filial duty, the detail of etiquette and conduct he gives for the intercourse of all classes and ranks in society, characterize his writings from those of all philosophers in other countries; who, comparatively speaking, gave small thought to the education of the young.
Loomis, A. W. Confucius and the Chinese Classics. A. Roman & Company, 1867.
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