and triviality that to the modern man is so amusing but to Francis Bacon was so exasperating. The Renaissance in the West was in its inception a revolt against the shackles of ecclesiasticism and a return to the sources of the Western intellectual tradition, of which the European mind had for centuries been disinherited. The Western renascence, while not literally a rebirth, was yet a return to a free spirit of an earlier time, and a fresh start in the career of reason that was to lead eventually to science and democracy and a radical transformation in man's whole view of life. The spirit of the Renaissance was no new thing. It was the recovery of a dormant impulse which had existed in the West before and which existed nowhere else in the world at the time. A similar radical transformation affecting the foundations of Chinese society, it may be remarked, is taking place at this moment in a country which ten centuries ago was the most civilized nation on earth. This is a truly amazing phenomenon for the student of society. It has often been compared in its main features to the emergence from mediævalism in the West. Strictly speaking, however, the analogy is far from complete. It loses much of its force when we recall that the renascence of China, unlike the so-called renascence of the West, is not a re-awakening so much as an awakening, not the recovery of what we have been pleased to call the Socratic impulse so much as a reaction for the first time against the dogmatic slumbers into which the nation sank more than two thousand years ago as the result of its slavish idealization of the past. The present marks, then, for the first time in centuries a significant change in the history of ideas in China, and therefore the beginning of a change in its mentality; and philosophy in the Western sense of the word, at last becomes possible—that

is, as an enterprise of free intelligence rather than the quest for a "way of life," or a scholastic commentary on the works of a master.

From the foregoing discussion it must be clear that it would be rash to venture any but the most general predictions as to the ultimate result of this contact between the East and the West. One thing, however, is certain. A remarkable situation has come about, the like of which the world has perhaps never before witnessed. What will be the effect of Western or Westernized Christianity, Western science and industry, Western ideals of liberty and government, upon a people whose cultural tradition differs so radically from that of the West? This is a question to be wondered at and speculated upon. The answer must be awaited with patience and tolerance. Whatever the outcome may be, when a genuine synthesis does take place, we may expect it to be something quite new and unduplicated. To this general statement, it is only necessary to add that the spirit and method of Western science and philosophy, having released this new thing, may with profit seek to guide it in fruitful directions.

In conclusion it may be repeated that the SocratesConfucius contrast that has been sketched in broad outline has been attempted because it has seemed to us to be a faithful transcript of the more general contrast between the mentality of the West and the mentality of China. If we were to seek a verbal formula by which to characterize the opposition further, it would have to be something like the habitual appeal to the principle of authority versus the habitual appeal to the principle of reason, or traditionalism versus progressivism. Traditionalism or the appeal to the principle of authority must breed a retrospective rather than

a prospective attitude of mind; conservatism as the idealization of the past and a timid shrinking from the future rather than a welcoming of novelty and change in order that novelty and change may be controlled and made to contribute to progress; dogmatism and self-complacency rather than openmindedness and a discontent that may be diabolic as well as divine; a spirit of dependence rather than one of initiative and buoyant self-reliance such are some of the qualities that constitute the mentality of Confucian China.

CHAPTER III

THE CONFUCIAN ETHICAL IDEAL

Confucianism is usually described as a politico-ethical system. For the Confucian, ethics and politics are as inseparably conjoined as they were for the Greek. Aristotle, while recognizing their intimate connection, was the first to make them separate subjects of study and thereby give us an independent Science of Politics. However, his master, Plato, did not so separate them, and the Republic is accordingly a treatise on both Ethics and Politics. The Chinese classics, as is indicated by the selections in the text, reveal this same dual aspect. But it may facilitate understanding if for the moment we consider the ethical side of Confucianism by delineating the Confucian ethical ideal, and follow this with a separate chapter devoted to a discussion of the Confucian political ideal.

In describing the civilization of the Chinese, Taylor has

said very justly: "Their marked superiority over Babylon ||

and Egypt was the faculty of ethical formulation. They related rules of conduct to fundamental principle, constructed a system of Ethics and set before themselves an ideal of. character expressing itself in conduct. Under the inspiration of this ideal the history of China was written; for it formed a standard of remembrance by which certain aspects of fact and story should be preserved, others forgotten; and it was this same ideal which Confucius and his school, who stand for China's very self, formally systematized." 1 1 Ancient Ideals, p. 45.

If this has been the importance of the Confucian ideal, it may prove profitable to examine into it a little further in order to see just how rules of conduct have been "related to fundamental principle"; to exhibit its psychological implications; to contrast these with assumptions concerning human nature prevailing in the Occident, and in general to orient the Western reader in a view of life and society quite incompatible with his traditional temper and quite foreign to his Western mentality.

Confucianism has been commonly characterized as an elaborate system of ceremony. It has been called the "soulless system of intellectual aristocrats"; it has been dubbed the doctrine of the Superior or the Princely Man. (The latter would be a more literal translation of the term Kyuin-ts which appears so constantly in the sayings of Confucius.) It has been considered as the apotheosis of ancestor worship. Now, Confucianism is all of these and something more.

We shall not enter into a detailed discussion of these phases of Confucianism, for there is ample literature dealing with them. It would seem, however, that the ceremonial aspect of Confucianism is that which most frequently arrests the attention of the Westerner, and we may therefore employ a consideration of it as a point of departure for ensuing observations.

The Occidental, with his bluntness and his brusqueness, is prone to identify Chinese morals with Chinese manners, in fact to reduce the former to the latter, and to think that Chinese morality is entirely a matter of observing the minutiae of etiquette. He may be charmed with the Oriental politeness, if he has had the fortune to have travelled or

lived in the East. He may be fascinated by its quaintly ex