Our Oriental Heritage

by Will Durant

  Good manners, too, must be a care of the government, for when manners decay the nation decays with them. Imperceptibly the rules of propriety form at least the outward character,141 and add to the sage the graciousness of the gentleman; we become what we do. Politically “the usages of propriety serve as dykes for the people against evil excesses”; and “he who thinks the old embankments useless, and destroys them, is sure to suffer from the desolation caused by overflowing water”:142 one almost hears the stern voice of the angry Master echoing those words today from that Hall of the Classics where once all his words were engraved in stone, and which revolution has left desecrated and forlorn.

  And yet Confucius too had his Utopias and dreams, and might have sympathized at times with men who, convinced that the dynasty had lost “the great decree” or “mandate of Heaven,” dragged down one system of order in the hope of rearing a better one on the ruins. In the end he became a socialist, and gave his fancy rein:

  When the Great Principle (of the Great Similarity) prevails, the whole world becomes a republic; they elect men of talents, virtue and ability; they talk about sincere agreement, and cultivate universal peace. Thus men do not regard as their parents only their own parents, nor treat as their children only their own children. A competent provision is secured for the aged till their death, employment for the middle-aged, and the means of growing up for the young. The widowers, widows, orphans, childless men, and those who are disabled by disease, are all sufficiently maintained. Each man has his rights, and each woman her individuality safeguarded. They produce wealth, disliking that it should be thrown away upon the ground, but not wishing to keep it for their own gratification. Disliking idleness they labor, but not alone with a view to their own advantage. In this way selfish schemings are repressed and find no way to arise. Robbers, filchers and rebellious traitors do not exist. Hence the outer doors remain open, and are not shut. This is the state of what I call the Great Similarity.143

  6. The Influence of Confucius

  The Confucian scholars—Their victory over the Legalists—Defects of Confucianism—The contemporaneity of Confucius

  The success of Confucius was posthumous, but complete. His philosophy had struck a practical and political note that endeared it to the Chinese after death had removed the possibility of his insisting upon its realization. Since men of letters never quite reconcile themselves to being men of letters, the literati of the centuries after Confucius attached themselves sedulously to his doctrine as a road to influence and public employment, and created a class of Confucian scholars destined to become the most powerful group in the empire. Schools sprang up here and there for the teaching of the Master’s philosophy as handed down by his disciples, developed by Mencius, and emended by a thousand pundits in the course of time; and these schools, as the intellectual centers of China, kept civilization alive during centuries of political collapse, much as the monks preserved some measure of ancient culture, and some degree of social order, during the Dark Ages that followed the fall of Rome.

  A rival school, the “Legalists,” disputed for a while this leadership of Confucian thought in the political world, and occasionally moulded the policy of the state. To make government depend upon the good example of the governors and the inherent goodness of the governed, said the Legalists, was to take a considerable risk; history had offered no superabundance of precedents for the successful operation of these idealistic principles. Not men but laws should rule, they argued; and laws must be enforced until, becoming a second nature to a society, they are obeyed without force. The people are not intelligent enough to rule themselves well; they prosper best under an aristocracy. Even tradesmen are not too intelligent, but pursue their interests very often to the detriment of the state; perhaps, said some of the Legalists, it would be wiser for the state to socialize capital, monopolize trade, and prevent the manipulation of prices and the concentration of wealth.144 These were ideas that were destined to appear again and again in the history of Chinese government.

  In the long run the philosophy of Confucius triumphed. We shall see later how the mighty Shih Huang-ti, with a Legalist for his prime minister, sought to end the influence of Confucius by ordering that all existing Confucian literature should be burned. But the power of the word proved stronger than that of the sword; the books which the “First Emperor” sought to destroy became holy and precious through his enmity, and men died as martyrs in the effort to preserve them. When Shih Huang-ti and his brief dynasty had passed away, a wiser emperor, Wu Ti, brought the Confucian literature out of hiding, gave office to its students, and strengthened the Han Dynasty by introducing the ideas and methods of Confucius into the education of Chinese youth and statesmanship. Sacrifices were decreed in honor of Confucius; the texts of the Classics were by imperial command engraved on stone, and became the official religion of the state. Rivaled at times by the influence of Taoism, and eclipsed for a while by Buddhism, Confucianism was restored and exalted by the T’ang Dynasty, and the great T’ai Tsung ordered that a temple should be erected to Confucius, and sacrifices offered in it by scholars and officials, in every town and village of the empire. During the Sung Dynasty a virile school of “Neo-Confucians” arose, whose innumerable commentaries on the Classics spread the philosophy of the Master, in varied dilutions, throughout the Far East, and stimulated a philosophical development in Japan. From the rise of the Han Dynasty to the fall of the Manchus—i.e., for two thousand years—the doctrine of Confucius moulded and dominated the Chinese mind.

  The history of China might be written in terms of that influence. For generation after generation the writings of the Master were the texts of the official schools, and nearly every lad who came through those schools had learned those texts by heart. The stoic conservatism of the ancient sage sank almost into the blood of the people, and gave to the nation, and to its individuals, a dignity and profundity unequaled elsewhere in the world or in history. With the help of this philosophy China developed a harmonious community life, a zealous admiration for learning and wisdom, and a quiet and stable culture which made Chinese civilization strong enough to survive every invasion, and to remould every invader in its own image. Only in Christianity and in Buddhism can we find again so heroic an effort to transmute into decency the natural brutality of men. And today, as then, no better medicine could be prescribed for any people suffering from the disorder generated by an intellectualist education, a decadent moral code, and a weakened fibre of individual and national character, than the absorption of the Confucian philosophy by the nation’s youth.

  But that philosophy could not be a complete nourishment in itself. It was well fitted to a nation struggling out of chaos and weakness into order and strength, but it would prove a shackle upon a country compelled by international competition to change and grow. The rules of propriety, destined to form character and social order, became a strait-jacket forcing almost every vital action into a prescribed and unaltered mould. There was something prim and Puritan about Confucianism which checked too thoroughly the natural and vigorous impulses of mankind; its virtue was so complete as to bring sterility. No room was left in it for pleasure and adventure, and little for friendship and love. It helped to keep woman in supine debasement,145 and its cold perfection froze the nation into a conservatism as hostile to progress as it was favorable to peace.

  We must not blame all this upon Confucius; one cannot be expected to do the thinking of twenty centuries. We ask of a thinker only that, as the result of a lifetime of thought, he shall in some way illuminate our path to understanding. Few men have done this more certainly than Confucius. As we read him, and perceive how little of him must be erased today because of the growth of knowledge and the change of circumstance, how soundly he offers us guidance even in our contemporary world, we forget his platitudes and his unbearable perfection, and join his pious grandson, K’ung Chi in that superlative eulogy which began the deification of Confucius:

  Chung-ni (Confucius) handed down the
doctrines of Yao and Shun as if they had been his ancestors, and elegantly displayed the regulations of Wen and Wu, taking them as his model. Above he harmonized with the times of heaven, and below he was conformed to the water and land.

  He may be compared to heaven and earth in their supporting and containing, their overshadowing and curtaining, all things. He may be compared to the four seasons in their alternating progress, and to the sun and moon in their successive shining. . . .

  All-embracing and vast, he is like heaven. Deep and active as a fountain, he is like the abyss. He is seen, and the people all reverence him; he speaks, and the people all believe him; he acts, and the people are all pleased with him.

  Therefore his fame overspreads the Middle Kingdom, and extends to all barbarous tribes. Wherever ships and carriages reach, wherever the strength of man penetrates, wherever the heavens overshadow and the earth sustains, wherever the sun and moon shine, wherever frosts and dews fall—all who have blood and breath unfeignedly honor and love him. Hence it is said: “He is the equal of Heaven.”146

  III. SOCIALISTS AND ANARCHISTS

  The two hundred years that followed upon Confucius were centuries of lively controversy and raging heresy. Having discovered the pleasures of philosophy, some men, like Hui Sze and Kung Sun Lung, played with logic, and invented paradoxes of reasoning as varied and subtle as Zeno’s.147 Philosophers flocked to the city of Lo-yang as, in the same centuries, they were flocking to Benares and Athens; and they enjoyed in the Chinese capital all that freedom of speech and thought which made Athens the intellectual center of the Mediterranean world. Sophists called Tsung-heng-kia, or “Crisscross Philosophers,” crowded the capital to teach all and sundry the art of persuading any man to anything.148 To Lo-yang came Mencius, inheritor of the mantle of Confucius, Chuang-tze, greatest of Lao-tze’s followers, Hsün-tze, the apostle of original evil, and Mo Ti, the prophet of universal love.

  1. Mo Ti, Altruist

  An early logician—Christian—and pacifist

  “Mo Ti,” said his enemy, Mencius, “loved all men, and would gladly wear out his whole being from head to heel for the benefit of mankind.149

  He was a native of Lu, like Confucius, and flourished shortly after the passing of the sage. He condemned the impracticality of Confucius’ thought, and offered to replace it by exhorting all men to love one another. He was among the earliest of Chinese logicians, and the worst of Chinese reasoners. He stated the problem of logic with great simplicity:

  These are what I call the Three Laws of Reasoning:

  1. Where to find the foundation. Find it in the study of the experiences of the wisest men of the past.

  2. How to take a general survey of it? Examine the facts of the actual experience of the people.

  3. How to apply it? Put it into law and governmental policy, and see whether or not it is conducive to the welfare of the state and the people.150

  On this basis Mo Ti proceeded to prove that ghosts and spirits are real, for many people have seen them. He objected strongly to Confucius’ coldly impersonal view of heaven, and argued for the personality of God. Like Pascal, he thought religion a good wager: if the ancestors to whom we sacrifice hear us, we have made a good bargain; if they are quite dead, and unconscious of our offerings, the sacrifice gives us an opportunity to “gather our relatives and neighbors and participate in the enjoyment of the sacrificial victuals and drinks.”151

  In the same manner, reasons Mo Ti, universal love is the only solution of the social problem; for if it were applied there is no doubt that it would bring Utopia. “Men in general loving one another, the strong would not make prey of the weak, the many would not plunder the few, the rich would not insult the poor, the noble would not be insolent to the mean, and the deceitful would not impose upon the simple.”152 Selfishness is the source of all evil, from the acquisitiveness of the child to the conquest of an empire. Mo Ti marvels that a man who steals a pig is universally condemned and generally punished, while a man who invades and appropriates a kingdom is a hero to his people and a model to posterity.153 From this pacifism Mo Ti advanced to such vigorous criticism of the state that his doctrine verged on anarchism, and frightened the authorities.154 Once, his biographers assure us, when the State Engineer of the Kingdom of Chu was about to invade the state of Sung in order to test a new siege ladder which he had invented, Mo Ti dissuaded him by preaching to him his doctrine of universal love and peace. “Before I met you,” said the Engineer, “I had wanted to conquer the state of Sung. But since I have seen you I would not have it even if it were given to me without resistance but with no just cause.” “If so,” replied Mo Ti, “it is as if I had already given you the state of Sung. Do persist in your righteous course, and I will give you the whole world.”155

  The Confucian scholars, as well as the politicians of Lo-yang, met these amiable proposals with laughter.156 Nevertheless Mo Ti had his followers, and for two centuries his views became the religion of a pacifistic sect. Two of his disciples, Sung Ping and Kung Sun Lung, waged active campaigns for disarmament.157 Han Fei, the greatest critic of his age, attacked the movement from what we might call a Nietzchean standpoint, arguing that until men had actually sprouted the wings of universal love, war would continue to be the arbiter of nations. When Shih Huang-ti ordered his famous “burning of the books,” the literature of Mohism was cast into the flames along with the volumes of Confucius; and unlike the writings and doctrines of the Master, the new religion did not survive the conflagration.158

  2. Yang Chu, Egoist

  An epicurean determinist—The case for wickedness

  Meanwhile a precisely opposite doctrine had found vigorous expression among the Chinese. Yang Chu, of whom we know nothing except through the mouths of his enemies,159 announced paradoxically that life is full of suffering, and that its chief purpose is pleasure. There is no god, said Yang, and no after-life; men are the helpless puppets of the blind natural forces that made them, and that gave them their unchosen ancestry and their inalienable character.160 The wise man will accept this fate without complaint, but will not be fooled by all the nonsense of Confucius and Mo Ti about inherent virtue, universal love, and a good name: morality is a deception practised upon the simple by the clever; universal love is the delusion of children who do not know the universal enmity that forms the law of life; and a good name is a posthumous bauble which the fools who paid so dearly for it cannot enjoy. In life the good suffer like the bad, and the wicked seem to enjoy themselves more keenly than the good.161 The wisest men of antiquity were not moralists and rulers, as Confucius supposed, but sensible sensualists who had the good fortune to antedate the legislators and the philosophers, and who enjoyed the pleasures of every impulse. It is true that the wicked sometimes leave a bad name behind them, but this is a matter that does not disturb their bones. Consider, says Yang Chu, the fate of the good and the evil:

  All agree in considering Shun, Yü, Chou-kung and Confucius to have been the most admirable of men, and Chieh and Chou the most wicked.*

  Now Shun had to plough the ground on the south of the Ho, and to play the potter by the Lei lake. His four limbs had not even a temporary rest; for his mouth and belly he could not even find pleasant food and warm clothing. No love of his parents rested upon him; no affection of his brothers and sisters. . . . When Yao at length resigned to him the throne, he was advanced in age; his wisdom was decayed; his son Shang-chun proved without ability; and he had finally to resign the throne to Yü. Sorrowfully came he to his death. Of all mortals never was one whose life was so worn out and empoisoned as his. . . .

  All the energies of Yü were spent on his labors with the land; a child was born to him, but he could not foster it; he passed his door without entering; his body became bent and withered; the skin of his hands and feet became thick and callous. When at length Shun resigned to him the throne, he lived in a low mean house, though his sacrificial apron and cap were elegant. Sorrowfully came he to his death. Of all mortals never was one
whose life was so saddened and embittered as his. . . .

  Confucius understood the ways of the ancient sovereigns and kings. He responded to the invitations of the princes of his time. The tree was cut down over him in Sung; the traces of his footsteps were removed in Wei; he was reduced to extremity in Shang and Chou; he was surrounded in Ch’an and Ts’i; . . . he was disgraced by Yang Hu. Sorrowfully came he to his death. Of all mortals never was one whose life was so agitated and hurried as his.

  These four sages, during their lives, had not a single day’s joy. Since their death they have had a fame that will last through myriads of ages. But that fame is what no one who cares for what is real would chose. Celebrate them—they do not know it. Reward them—they do not know it. Their fame is no more to them than to the trunk of a tree, or a clod of earth.