ISSUED under THE GENERAL EDITORSHIP OF LINDSAY ROGErs, COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 07-15-49 47 To the Memory of My Mother who possessed the highest virtues of East and West, and of whom this comparative Study is far from worthy. JA EDITORIAL FOREWORD It is fitting that a series of Political Science Classics should be inaugurated with a volume on Chinese political philosophy. The oriental sages, as the present essay makes abundantly clear, never produced an ordered system of thought. There was not the continuity, nor the logic, nor the criticism which are inseparable from philosophical categories; "political philosophy," indeed, is perhaps too concrete a term to be applied to their speculations. But in point of time the maxims of the Orient antedated the political theories of the Western world and, although Hellenic political philosophy was the first ordered system of thought, the oriental world was at least familiar with ordered political life. As has been the case with so many modern philosophers, it was the observation of the deficiencies and the injustices of the contemporary rulers that in part led Confucius to state his principles for the betterment of the relations between state and individual. His philosophy was simple but at the same time it was complex. Ruler and subject, husband and wife, father and son, older brothers and younger-rule by the first and submission by the latter: this was his injunction. Governance should be in righteousness and benevolence; submission in righteousness and sincerity; the promotion of virtue should be the aim of friends. The disregard of these principles caused the anarchy in which the state found itself. The |