constantly losing the opportunity of being so?' Confucius again said, 'No.' The other added, The days and months are passing away; the years do not wait for us.' Confucius said, 'Right; I will go into office."" Chinese writers are eloquent in their praise of the sage for the combination of propriety, complaisance, and firmness, which they see in his behaviour in this matter. To myself there seems nothing remarkable in it but a somewhat questionable dexterity. But it was well for the fame of Confucius that his time was not occupied during those years with official services. He turned them to better account, prosecuting his researches into the poetry, history, ceremonies, and music of the empire. Many disciples continued to resort to him, and the legendary writers tell us how he employed their services in digesting the results of his studies. I must repeat, however, that several of them, whose names are most famous, such as Tsăng Sin, were as yet children, and Min Sun was not born till B.c. 500. To this period we must refer the almost single instance which we have of the manner of Confucius' intercourse with his son Le. "Have'y heard any lessons from your you father different from what we have all heard?" asked one of the disciples once of Le. "No," said Le. was standing alone once, when I was passing through the court below with hasty steps, and said to me, ‘Have you read the Odes?' On my replying, 'Not yet,' he added, 'If you do not learn the Odes, you will not be fit to converse with.' Another day, in the same place and the same way, he said to me, 'Have you read the rules of Propriety? On my replying, 'Not yet,' he added, ‘If you do not learn the rules of Propriety, your character cannot be established.' I have heard only these two things from him." The disciple was delighted, and observed, "I asked one thing, and I have got three things. I have heard about the Odes; I have heard about the rules of Propriety. I have also heard that the superior man maintains a distant reserve towards his son."!

"He

I can easily believe that this distant reserve was the rule which Confucius followed generally in his treatment of his son. A stern dignity is the quality which a father

1 Ana. XVI. xiii.

has to maintain upon his system. It is not to be without the element of kindness, but that must never go beyond the line of propriety. There is too little room left for the play and development of natural affection.

The divorce of his wife must also have taken place during these years, if it ever took place at all, which is disputed point. The curious reader will find the question discussed in the notes on the second Book of the Le Ke. The evidence inclines, I think, against the supposition that Confucius did put his wife away. When she died, at a period subsequent to the present, Le kept on weeping aloud for her after the period for such a demonstration of grief had expired, when Confucius sent a message to him that his sorrow must be subdued, and the obedient son dried his tears. We are glad to know that on one occasion—the death of his favourite disciple, Yen Hwuy-the tears of Confucius himself would flow over and above the measure of propriety.2

1

He holds office. B.C. 500-496.

7. We come to the short period of Confucius' official life. In the year B.C. 501, things had come to a head between the chiefs of the three Families and their ministers, and had resulted in the defeat of the latter. In B.c. 500, the resources of Yang Hoo were exhausted, and he fled into Ts'e, so that the State was delivered from its greatest troubler, and the way was made more clear for Confucius to go into office, should an opportunity occur. It soon presented itself. Towards the end of that year he was made chief magistrate of the town of Chung-too. 3

Just before he received this appointment, a circumstance occurred of which we do not well know what to make. When Yang-hoo fled into Ts'e, Kung-shan Fuhjaou, who had been confederate with him, continued to maintain an attitude of rebellion, and held the city of Pe against the Ke family. Thence he sent a message to Confucius inviting him to join him, and the sage seemed

See the Le Ke, II. Pt. I. i. 27.

2 Ana. XI. ix.

3 Amiot says this was "la ville meme ou le Souverain tenoit sa Cour" (Vie de Confucius, p. 147). He is followed of course by Thornton and Pauthier. My reading has not shown me that such was the case. In the notes to K'ang-he's edition of the "Five King," Le Ke, II. Pt. I. iii. 4, it is simply said "Chung-too,-the name of a town of Loo. It afterwards belonged to Ts'e, when it was called P'ing-luh."

so inclined to go that his disciple Tsze-loo remonstrated with him, saying, "Indeed you cannot go! why must you think of going to see Kung-shan?" Confucius replied, "Can it be without some reason that he has invited me ? If any one employ me, may I not make an eastern Chow?" The upshot, however, was that he did not go, and I cannot suppose that he had ever any serious intention of doing So. Amid the general gravity of his intercourse with his followers, there gleam out a few instances of quiet pleasantry, when he amused himself by playing with their notions about him. This was probably one of them.

As magistrate of Chung-too he produced a marvellous reformation of the manners of the people in a short time. According to the "Family Sayings," he enacted rules for the nourishing of the living, and all observances to the dead. Different food was assigned to the old and the young, and different burdens to the strong and the weak. Males and females were kept apart from each other in the streets. A thing dropt on the road was not picked up. There was no fraudulent carving of vessels. Inner coffins were made four inches thick, and the outer ones five. Graves were made on the high grounds, no mounds being raised over them, and no trees planted about them. Within twelve months, the princes of the States all about wished to imitate his style of administration.

The Duke Ting, surprised at what he saw, asked whether his rules could be employed to govern a whole State, and Confucius told him that they might be applied to the whole empire. On this the duke appointed him assistant-superintendent of Works, in which capacity he surveyed the lands of the State, and made many improvements in agriculture. From this he was quickly made minister of Crime, and the appointment was enough to put an end to crime. There was no necessity to put the penal laws in execution. No offenders showed themselves.

These indiscriminating eulogies are of little value. One incident, related in the annotations of Tso-k'ew on the Ts'un Ts'ew, commends itself at once to our belief, as in

1 Ana. XVII. v.

2 This office, however, was held by the chief of the Măng family. We must understand that Confucius was only an assistant to him, or perhaps acted for him.

harmony with Confucius' character. The chief of the Ke, pursuing with his enmity the Duke Chaou, even after his death, had placed his grave apart from the graves of his predecessors; and Confucius surrounded the ducal cemetery with a ditch so as to include the solitary resting-place, boldly telling the chief that he did it to hide his disloyalty. But he signalized himself most of all, in B.c. 499, by his behaviour at an interview between the dukes of Loo and Ts'e, at a place called Shih-k'e, and Këǎ-kuh, in the present district of Lae-woo, in the department of T'aegan. Confucius was present as master of ceremonies on the part of Loo, and the meeting was professedly pacific. The two princes were to form a covenant of alliance. The principal officer on the part of Ts'e, however, despising Confucius as "a man of ceremonies, without courage,' had advised his sovereign to make the duke of Loo a prisoner, and for this purpose a band of the half-savage original inhabitants of the place advanced with weapons to the stage where the two dukes were met. Confucius understood the scheme, and said to the opposite party, "Our two princes are met for a pacific object. For you to bring a band of savage vassals to disturb the meeting with their weapons, is not the way in which Ts'e can expect to give law to the princes of the empire.__These barbarians have nothing to do with our Great Flowery land. Such vassals may not interfere with our covenant. Weapons are out of place at such a meeting. As before the spirits, such conduct is unpropitious. In point of virtue, it is contrary to right. As between man and man, it is not polite." The duke of Ts'e ordered the disturbers off, but Confucius withdrew, carrying the duke of Loo with him. The business proceeded, notwithstanding, and when the words of the alliance were being read on the part of Ts'e," So be it to Loo, if it contribute not 300 chariots of war to the help of Ts'e, when its army goes across its borders," a messenger from Confucius added,— "And so it be to us, if we obey your orders, unless you return to us the fields on the south of the Wăn." At the conclusion of the ceremonies, the prince of Ts'e wanted to give a grand entertainment, but Confucius demonstrated that such a thing would be contrary to the established rules of propriety, his real object being to keep his sove

reign out of danger. In this way the two parties separated, they of Ts'e filled with shame at being foiled and disgraced by "the man of ceremonies," and the result was that the lands of Loo which had been appropriated by Ts'e were restored.1

There

For two years more Confucius held the office of minister of Crime. Some have supposed that he was further raised to the dignity of chief minister of State, but that was not the case. One instance of the manner in which he executed his functions is worth recording. When any matter came before him, he took the opinion of different individuals upon it, and in giving judgment would say, "I decide according to the view of so and so." was an approach to our jury system in the plan, Confucius' object being to enlist general sympathy, and carry the public judgment with him in his administration of justice. A father having brought some charge against his son, Confucius kept them both in prison for three months, without making any difference in favour of the father, and then wished to dismiss them both. The head of the Ke was dissatisfied, and said, "You are "You are playing with me, Sir minister of Crime. Formerly you told me that in a State or a family filial duty was the first thing to be insisted on. What hinders you now from putting to death this unfilial son as an example to all the people?" Confucius with a sigh replied, "When superiors fail in their duty, and yet go to put their inferiors to death, it is not right. This father has not taught his son to be filial;-to listen to his charge would be to slay the guiltless. The manners of the age have been long in a sad condition; we cannot expect the people not to be transgressing the laws."

At this time two of his disciples, Tsze-loo and Tsze-yew, entered the employment of the Ke family, and lent their influence, the former especially, to forward the plans of their master. One great cause of disorder in the State was the fortified cities held by the three chiefs, in which they could defy the supreme authority, and were in turn defied themselves by their officers. Those cities were like the castles of the barons of England in the time of the

1 This meeting at Këă-kuh is related in Sze-ma Ts'een, the Family Sayings, and Kuh-leang, with many exaggerations.