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$Title{History Of Religions
Chapter II}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Foot Moore, George}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{confucius
heaven
nature
mencius
religion
chu
philosophy
state
death
life}
$Date{1913}
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Title:       History Of Religions
Book:        Religions Of China
Author:      Foot Moore, George
Date:        1913

Chapter II

Moral And Political Philosophy

     Confucius - His Career - Attitude Toward Religion - Gods and Spirits -
Heaven - Ethics - Conflicting Doctrines - Yang Chu and Moh Tih - Mencius -
Political Theory - Wang Ch'ung - Neoconfucianism: Chou Tun-i and Chu Hi -
Religious Aspects of the Sung Philosophy.

     The orthodox religion of China, the religion of the state with all its
officials and of the whole literate class, is by Western scholars commonly
called Confucianism. ^1 The name must not, however, be understood to import
that Confucius stands to this religion in the same relation in which Buddha
stands to Buddhism or Mohammed to Mohammedanism.  Confucius was not the
founder of a religion, nor even a reformer in the ordinary sense of the word.
In no sphere is his own estimate of himself, "a transmitter, not a maker,
believing in and loving the ancients," truer than in that of religion; and
nothing could have seemed to him, with his exaggerated veneration of
antiquity, more irreligious than any innovations in the ceremonies that were
instituted in the most remote times by the model sovereigns, Yao and Shun, and
had been piously observed by all their worthy successors.  His utmost thought
was to revive customs that had fallen into desuetude and to conform everything
to the ancient pattern.  This was part of his general plan for the restoration
of the good old times; but it does not appear that he had much opportunity to
achieve practical results in this direction, nor were his efforts to inspire
in his stiff-necked generation the reverence for Heaven and its decrees, which
was the inwardness of the old religion, much more fruitful.  The religion
which has left its monuments in the oldest hymns of the Shi-king as well as in
the documents of the Shu-king, as it has been described above, is
substantially the religion of Confucius and of modern official China.

[Footnote 1: The Chinese name is Ju-kiau, "School of the Learned."]

     In another sense, however, it is not improper that it should bear his
name.  For Confucius has been through more than twenty centuries in China the
great authority in religion as well as in ethics and politics; the entire body
of canonical and classical literature is attributed to him as editor or
author; the whole education of China has been in this literature, and almost
bounded by it and works based upon it.  Furthermore, Confucius unquestionably
impressed on his disciples the non-committal, and in some respects agnostic,
disposition toward theological questions which was characteristic of his own
temper; and in the later Confucian schools, especially in the renaissance of
philosophy under the Sung dynasty, this tendency is still more strongly
marked.  On the other hand, though Confucius was no more original in the field
of ethics than of religion, he and his successors, the authors of the Great
Learning, the Doctrine of Mean, the Book of Filial Piety, and above all
Mencius, gave to Chinese ethics classical form and authoritative finality.

     Confucius was born in 551 B. C., in the little state of Lu, within the
bounds of the present province of Shan-tung.  Of his early life almost nothing
is known; but he had at least such opportunities of education that at
twenty-two he began to teach.  It may be assumed that in the following years,
while giving instruction to the pupils who in increasing numbers resorted to
him, he continued his own studies of history, literature, and ancient customs
(especially ritual, in which he early acquired the reputation of an expert),
and at thirty, he tells us, he "stood firm," that is, had settled opinions.

     An incident of considerable importance in his life was a visit, in 517 B.
C., to Loh-yang, the capital of the empire, where he had a long-desired
opportunity to see the places where the great sacrifices to Heaven and Earth
were offered, and to inspect all the arrangements of the ancestral temple of
the reigning dynasty of Chou and of the imperial court, and perhaps to pursue
researches in the archives.  The following years were a period of great
disorder in the state of Lu.  At the beginning of it, in 517, Confucius
followed his exiled sovereign to the neighbouring state of Ts'i; but, finding
the then ruling duke little disposed to profit by his counsels, soon returned
to his native country, where he kept steadfastly aloof from the strife of
factions, declining public employment.  In this period, probably, fall the
collecting and editing of the ancient literature with which his name is
inseparably connected.  In the year 501, however, he was appointed chief
magistrate of a city named Chung-tu, and put his theories of administration
into practice with such effect, we are told, that in a twelvemonth Chung-tu
was a model town.  This transformation was noted with surprise by the duke,
who asked Confucius whether the same principles could be applied to the
government of a state, and being assured that they could, he made Confucius
assistant superintendent of public works, and shortly after minister of
justice; whereupon, according to his eulogistic biographers, laws against
crime fell into disuse, because there were no criminals.

     He strengthened the ducal house and weakened the private families.  He
exalted the sovereign and depressed the ministers; a transforming government
went abroad.  Dishonesty and dissoluteness were ashamed, and hid their heads.
Loyalty and good faith became the characteristics of the men, and chastity and
docility of the women.  Strangers came in crowds from other states.  Confucius
became the idol of the people, and flew in songs through their mouths.

     But this Utopian Lu excited the jealous apprehensions of its neighbours,
and by liberal presents of horses and dancing-girls they distracted the
ruler's mind from the counsels of the sage, who, finding himself disprized,
surrendered his office, and sadly - and slowly, hoping that the duke might at
last repent - shook the dust of the ungrateful state from his feet.  Thus
ended Confucius' one brief experience as a practical statesman.  For thirteen
years, accompanied by a band of disciples, he wandered from court to court,
offering his counsel and exhortations to princes and ministers; sometimes
consulted by them, but not establishing any permanent influence; yet never
losing confidence that if one of them would but employ him, "I would effect
something considerable in the course of twelve months, and in three years the
government would be perfected." In 483 he was recalled to Lu, where he spent
the last years of his life in labours upon the ancient literature,
particularly the Shiking, in finishing the Ch'un-ts'iu, and in the study of
Yih-king, of which he is reported to have said, "If some years were added to
my life, I would give fifty to the Yih, and then I might come to be without
grave faults." He died in 478 B.C., at the age of seventy-three years.

     In all the externals of religion Confucius was extremely punctilious. As
a child, we are told, his favourite play was arranging sacrificial vessels and
practising postures of ceremony; and as a man he showed the same predilections
by antiquarian researches into the ritual of former dynasties.  The apparatus
of worship at the capital drew from him the exclamation, "Now I know the
wisdom of the Duke of Chou, and how the house of Chou attained to the imperial
sway." The ancient music of Shun, the tradition of which was preserved in
Ts'i, so ravished him that for the three months he did not know the taste of
flesh: "I did not know," he said, "that music could be made so excellent as
this." He believed that the virtue of the people and the welfare of the state
depended upon the reverent observance of the sacrifices to the gods and the
spirits of the ancestors.  He himself "sacrificed to the dead as if they were
present; he sacrificed to the spirits as if the spirits were present"; and the
crowning proof to him that the Duke of Lu was incorrigible was the indecorous
haste with which he despatched the solemn sacrifice to Heaven in order to
hurry back to his dissolute pleasures.

     Confucius, who was never weary of discussing the minutest points of
ritual, had very little to say about more vital religious matters.  Too much
stress has perhaps been laid by Legge and others upon particular utterances,
such as his reply to a disciple who asked him about serving the spirits of the
dead: "While you are not able to serve men, how can you serve the spirits." "I
venture to ask about death," the inquirer continued: "So long as you do not
know life, how can you know about death?" To another, who asked what wisdom
is, he answered: "To give one's self earnestly to the duties due to men, and,
while respecting spiritual beings, to keep aloof from them." It is not so much
single sayings of this kind as the absence of any teaching about the nature of
these "spiritual beings" and their relations to men that is significant.

     The belief that the destiny of states and individuals is ordained by
Heaven was accepted by Confucius without question.  Faith in his own mission
sustained him in critical moments of his life.  When his life was threatened
in K'uang, he said: "After the death of King Wen, was not the cause of truth
lodged here in me?  If Heaven had wished this cause of truth to perish, then
I, a feeble mortal, should not have got into such a relation to that cause.
While Heaven does not let the cause of truth perish, what can the people of
K'uang do to me?" Yet one of the subjects on which he seldom spoke was the
appointments of Heaven.  He scarcely ever uses the name Shang-ti, Supreme
Lord, and it has been surmised that he consciously avoided it because it more
distinctly implied the personality of God, preferring the impersonal, or at
least ambiguous, T'ien, Heaven. Here, again, the inference is uncertain.
T'ien occurs with increasing relative frequency in the later hymns of the
Shi-king and the later documents of the Shu-king; and Confucius may well have
employed it in conformity with the prevalent usage of his times, rather than
from any prejudice of his own.

     Confucius was not a speculative thinker; the problems of the origin of
the universe, the nature of being, the one and the many, which exercised the
early philosophers of Greece and India, lay beyond the horizon of his mind.
His common-sense philosophy dealt exclusively with the practical questions of
ethics and politics.  To him, as to other thinkers of this type, God was
essentially the moral order of the world, an order energising in the phenomena
of nature as well as in the course of history and the destiny of individual
lives.  The more uniform, that is, the more unvaryingly moral, this order is,
in the interest of ethics, conceived to be, the more impersonal the conception
becomes - the something, not ourselves, that makes for righteousness.  If in
the unvarying moral order the destiny of men is determined in strict
accordance with their conduct, it is obviously futile to importune Heaven to
change it: "He who offends against Heaven has none to whom he can pray." Once
when Confucius was ill his disciple, Tsze-lu, asked leave to pray for him.  He
said, "Is that proper?" Tsze-lu replied: "Yes.  In the Prayers it is said,
'Prayers has been made to the spirits of the upper and lower worlds.'" The
Master said, "It must be a long time since I prayed."

     Expressions which imply a more personal thought of God are, however, not
lacking in the sayings of Confucius.  "Heaven produced the virtue that is in
me.  Huan T'ui - what can he do to me?" "The Master said, 'Alas! there is no
one that knows me.' Tsze-kung said, 'What do you mean by thus saying that no
one knows you?' The Master replied, 'I do not murmur against Heaven.  I do not
grumble against men.  My studies lie low, and my penetration rises high.  But
there is Heaven; that knows me.'" Such language shows that Confucius' ethical
rationalism was not incompatible with a real religious faith.

     In the ethics of Confucius filial piety is, as it has been in China in
all ages, the cardinal virtue.  The son who loves, respects, and obeys his
father, anticipating his wishes while he lives and regarding them when he is
dead, will make a kind brother, a sincere friend, and a loyal subject; men who
are filial and fraternal seldom offend against their superiors. Beyond the
"five relations" of the family and the state are the relations of men to their
fellows in society, and these are to be ruled by the same principle.  Filial
piety and fraternal love are the root of benevolence, which Confucius defined
as love to all men.

     The one word "reciprocity" may serve as a rule of practice for a man's
whole life: "What you do not want done to yourself do not do to others."
Benevolence must not, however, transgress the limits of equity. When asked
what he would say about the principle enounced by his older contemporary,
Lao-tse, that injury should be requited with kindness, Confucius'
characteristics answer was: "With what, then, will you requite kindness?
Requite injury with justice, and kindness with kindness." Men should deal with
one another as Heaven deals with men, according to their deserts.  If the duty
of blood vengeance for the murder of a father or mother devolve upon a son, he
should sleep on straw, with his shield for a pillow and his weapon at hand,
"he must be determined not to live with the slayer under the same heaven."

     A fundamental doctrine of the Confucian ethics is that the nature of man
is good.  In the Shu-king, T'ang says: "The Most High Lord has conferred even
on the inferior people a moral sense, by obeying which they obtain a nature
constantly right." "Heaven, in giving birth to the multitudes of the people,
annexed to every faculty and relationship its law.  The people possess this
normal nature, and they consequently love its normal virtue." In this respect
all men are similarly endowed.  Hence if men do wrong, they cannot lay the
responsibility on the nature which Heaven has given them.

     But though all are good at the beginning, few prove themselves to be so
at the end.  Through parental neglect to inculcate filial piety, through
faulty education and bad example, the most deteriorate, and by habit
unrighteousness becomes second nature.  The good nature bestowed by Heaven
must be developed into a stable good character by man's own effort.  To
achieve this it is necessary to have not only the steadfast will but the true
ideal.  It is the end of education to set forth this ideal and inspire men to
strive after it.  Accordingly, the burden of Confucius' teaching is the
character of the "superior man" - the man who in every situation knows the
right thing and does it, a man not only of faultless virtues, but of faultless
propriety.

     The age of Confucius and the two following centuries were a time of great
intellectual activity in China; conflicting theories of ethics were enunciated
and controversy was rife.  Yang Chu, who lived about the middle of the fourth
century, was a pessimist.  Life is short and full of trouble; death is the end
of all.  The only profit in this evil world is to enjoy the pleasures of sense
while we can, without sacrificing a hair to the interests of mankind or the
welfare of the state, and regardless of the praise or blame of men.  None is
more famous than Shun and Yu, Chou-kung and Confucius.  Those heroes of virtue
never had a day's enjoyment in their lives; and though their fame endure ten
thousand generations, what is that to them?  The dead know nothing of the
praises bestowed upon them; they are no better than a stock or a lump of clay.
None is more infamous than Kieh and Chou; yet those tyrants in their lifetime
enjoyed to the full riches, power, and honour, and what do they care now for
the curses of posterity? The ancients knew this, and followed their natural
inclinations; they did not make a virtue of denying themselves the pleasures
that came in their way, nor let themselves be urged by ambition for fame to
put constraint on their natures.

     At the opposite extreme from this cynical egoism is the radical altruism
of Moh Tih.  One who inquires into the cause of the ills of society and the
state as a physician inquires into the cause of a disease will find that all
those ills have one origin: men of every class and condition love themselves
and do not love their fellows; hence they wrong others for their own
advantage.  There is therefore but one remedy - mutual love.  For if men loved
one another as every man loves himself, there would be no more crime.  If each
regarded his neighbour's house as his own, who would then steal?  If each
regarded his neighbour's person as his own, who, then, would rob?  If princes
regarded foreign states as their own, where would there be occasion for wars?
All the misery in the world - the overpowering of the weak by the strong, the
oppression of the minority by the majority, the defrauding of the simple by
the shrewd, the haughtiness of the eminent toward the insignificant - is due
to the making of distinctions between men, whereas universal love embraces
them all, without making such differences.  If it is asked how this millennium
is to be brought about, Moh Tih answers, with characteristic Chinese faith in
the influence of the ruler, that if princes would only show that they
delighted in the love of all for all, the people infallibly would cultivate
it.

     The teachings of both Yang Chu and Moh Tih are vigorously combated by
Mencius.  The individualism of the former - "every man for himself" - is
anarchism; the altruism of the latter - "love all men equally" - is unfilial:
both strike at the roots of human society.  If they should prevail, they would
reduce men to the state of the beasts, who acknowledge neither king nor
father; benevolence and righteousness would cease, and men would devour one
another.  If this is to be averted, these false doctrines must be stopped, and
the sound principles of Confucius reaffirmed.

     The Confucian doctrine of the inborn goodness of human nature was
impugned by more than one philosopher.  One affirmed that the nature of man is
morally indifferent; it is like water, which will run in whatever direction a
channel is opened for it.  Others maintained that it can be made good or bad
by influences from without, as in the times of the good kings Wen and Wu the
people loved goodness, and under the cruel kings Yu and Li they loved cruelty.
Others, again, that the nature of some is good, and of others bad; a virtuous
father may have a wicked son, or the converse.  Against all these Mencius
argues.  From the sentiments which are proper to human nature it is evident
that it is constituted for the practice of what is good; this is what is meant
by saying that man's nature is good.  Such feelings, common to all men, are
sympathy and pity, shame and abhorrence, respect and reverence, approbation
and disapprobation. From these spring benevolence, righteousness, propriety,
and knowledge, which are therefore not implanted but innate; only we do not
think of them. Hence it is said: "Strive for them, and you will attain them;
neglect them, and you will lose them."

     The controversy continued.  Siun K'uang, a younger contemporary of
Mencius, maintained in opposition to him that man's nature is evil.  His
spontaneous impulses are all selfish: the hungry man is prompted by nature
simply to satisfy his appetite; if out of consideration for the rights and
interests of others he resists this impulse, it is by a conscious effort and
because he has been taught that he ought to do so - not therefore by nature,
but against natural impulses.  Uncontrolled by education and moral discipline
or by the law and its penalties, there would be a state of universal strife -
every man's hand would be against his neighbour.  That man has to strive to
become good is proof that his nature is evil.  A later philosopher, Yang Hiung
(53 B. C. - 18 A.D.), took an intermediate position: human nature is a mixture
of good and evil; he who cultivates the good side of his nature becomes a good
man, and he who cultivates the evil a bad man.  In the end, however, chiefly
through the influence of Mencius, the native goodness of man became the
orthodox dogma, which is to-day laid down as a fundamental proposition in
every elementary text-book of moral instruction.

     To the exposition and defence of Confucianism against opposing doctrines
no one contributed so much as Mencius, who thus earned the place he has long
held next in honour to the Master.  Mencius was born in 372 B.C., and died in
289.  He seems never to have held office, and, unlike Confucius, it does not
appear that he sought to do so.  Like many others in his day, he passed from
city to city, teaching the disciples who followed him in his migrations or who
in any place resorted to him, expounding to rulers, as occasion offered, the
enlightened principles of government on which the prosperity of states
depends, and giving sound advice on the ethics of private life and the conduct
of affairs, as a kind of consulting philosopher to princes, after the manner
of the wandering sophists among the Greeks.  His works, consisting largely of
such discussions, surpass the Confucian Analects in logical acumen and in
orderly presentation.  He employs the form of dialogue with much skill to
refute an opponent or to constrain assent to his own proposition by
superiority in dialectic in a fashion which at times reminds us of Socrates.

     A Chinese scholar, comparing Mencius with Confucius, said: "Confucius
spoke only of benevolence, but as soon as Mencius opens his mouth we hear of
benevolence and righteousness.  Confucius spoke of the will or mind, but
Mencius enlarged also on the nourishment of the passion-nature" - the
cultivation of the emotions. ^1 In the conversation with Hui of Liang, with
which the book begins, the prince salutes the philosopher:

[Footnote 1: See Mencius, II, 1, 2, 9 ff.]

     "Venerable sir, since you have not counted it far to come here, a
distance of a thousand li, may I presume that you are likewise provided with
counsels to profit my kingdom?" Mencius replied: "Why must your majesty speak
of profit?  There are benevolence and righteousness, and these should suffice.
If your majesty say, 'What can I do to profit my kingdom?' the great officers
will say, 'What can we do to profit our families?' and the inferior officers
and the common people will say, 'What can we do to profit ourselves?'
Superiors and inferiors will try to snatch this profit the one from the other,
and the state will be endangered. . . . There never has been a man trained to
benevolence who neglected his parents; there never has been a man trained to
righteousness who made his sovereign an after consideration.  Let your majesty
say: 'Benevolence and righteousness, and these only.' Why must you use that
word 'profit'?" ^1

[Footnote 1: Mencius, I, cf. VI, 2, 4.]

     The state exists for the people, and its stability depends on the welfare
of the people.  The conditions of public welfare are ultimately economic.  The
government must preserve peace abroad and order at home; it must not burden
the people with forced labour on public works by which they are withdrawn from
their fields, nor harass them with a complicated system of taxes and imposts;
it must instruct, encourage, and, if necessary, assist the tillers of the
soil, for on agriculture the prosperity of all depends.  To reduce the people
to starvation by misgovernment or neglect is sheer murder.

     "If the people have not a certain livelihood, they will not have a fixed
heart.  And if they have not a fixed heart, there is nothing which they will
not do in the way of self-abandonment, of moral deflection, of depravity, and
of wild license.  When they thus have been involved in crime, to follow them
up and punish them - this is to entrap the people. Therefore an intelligent
ruler will regulate the livelihood of the people, so as to make sure that,
above, they have sufficient wherewith to serve their parents, and, below,
sufficient wherewith to support their wives and children; that in good years
they shall always be abundantly satisfied, and that in bad years they shall
escape the danger of perishing.  After this he may urge them,and they will
proceed to what is good, for in this case the people will follow after that
with ease."

     In the contrary case, "in good years their lives are continually
embittered, and in bad years they do not escape perishing.  In such
circumstances they only try to save themselves from death, and are afraid they
will not succeed.  What leisure have they to cultivate propriety and
righteousness?" ^2

[Footnote 2: Mencius, I, 1, 7, 20.]

     This insistence on the economic conditions not only of prosperity, but,
consequently, of righteousness and good order, is characteristic of Mencius;
and he discusses at large the practical measures by which the end is to be
achieved.

     Vox populi, vox dei - "Heaven sees as my people sees; Heaven hears as my
people hears." The common voice of the people about a man's character, his
fitness for office, or his desert of death, is more to be trusted than the
advice of courtiers or high officials.

     Mencius explicitly asserts the right of revolution: "If a prince have
grave faults," he told a king to his face, "the nobles and ministers who are
of his blood ought to remonstrate with him, and if he do not listen to them
after they have done so again and again, they ought to dethrone him." The
murder of a tyrant like Chou was not the putting to death of a sovereign, but
the cutting off of a base fellow; by his crimes he had forfeited all right to
a better name than ruffian and robber or to different treatment.  But only a
"minister of Heaven" may presume thus to execute its requirements.

     Wang Ch'ung, who wrote toward the end of the first century of our era,
occupies in some respects a place apart in the history of Chinese thought. ^1
He may be described as a materialistic monist, and his physical philosophy
somewhat resembles that of Epicurus and Lucretius.  At the beginning there was
a homogeneous vaporous or nebulous chaos.  Out of this the lighter and the
heavier elements "spontaneously" - that is, without intelligence or design -
separated; the warm and light (elemental fire) above, the cold and dark,
represented by water, below.  So he adapts the old doctrines of Yang and Yin,
fortifying himself by quotations from the Yih-king and the Li-ki.  The Taoist
Lieh-tsze developed a similar theory; but Wang Ch'ung, as pure materialist,
has no use for the mystical Tao nor for the primal intelligence of Chu Hi and
the Sung Confucianists.  From the combination and spontaneous interaction of
these principles all things arise.  Man's body is of coarse matter, Yin; his
vital spirit and intelligence are of the fiery nature of the Yang.  Heaven -
that is, the sky - is material just as truly as the earth, only of a different
composition, and its operations are equally without design.  It does not take
note of men's doings to punish the bad and reward the good.  Heaven does not
speak, nor does it hear what men say; divination is absurd - how can the shell
of a dead tortoise or the stalks of a withered weed elicit a response from
Heaven!  "Some people think that Heaven produces grain for the purpose of
feeding mankind, and silk and hemp to clothe them.  That would make Heaven
man's farmer or mulberry-girl!" The philosopher is fond of pricking man's
self-importance.  To this vast frame of nature we are no more than insects
crawling on a human body.  The struggle for existence is proof that there is
no wise and good purpose in creation.  "If Heaven had produced its creatures
on purpose, it ought to have taught them to love one another, and not to prey
upon and destroy one another" - precisely the argument of Epicurus.

[Footnote 1: See A. Forke, Lun-Heng: Philosophical Essays of Wang Ch'ung.
1907.]

     The vital spirit, or soul, is a particle of the cosmic principle of
warmth and light; it is born with the body, grows and decays with it, and at
death returns to its source.  It is an individual soul endowed with
intelligence and activity only through its union with the body.  There is no
consciousness before birth and none after death.  If souls were immortal, they
would give some sign of their existence.  He combats the notion that the dead
become ghosts and can harm men.  Ghosts are not the spirits of the dead, they
are the creatures of morbid fancy.  "When sick people are haunted by fears,
ghosts appear; their fears set their imaginations to work, and their eyes have
visions." By dispelling these beliefs, he, like Lucretius, would deliver men
from the fears to which they are in bondage.

     Sacrifices are useless; there are no personal beings such as people
imagine to enjoy them, nor can the spirits do anything for man or against him.
At most, offerings are symbolical acts expressing the gratitude and piety of
the offerer; but no evil consequence can follow from omitting them.  Exorcism
is equally unprofitable; the spirits cannot harm man; and if they could, they
certainly would not let themselves be driven away, but would resent the
attempt and would make it the worse for the exorcist.

     In his ethics Wang Ch'ung does not depart so widely from the current
doctrine.  On the much-debated question of the native goodness of man he holds
that some are good and some bad, just as some are intelligent and some stupid.
Good fortune is not the reward of virtue, nor misfortune the punishment of
vice; both depend on fate.  "Profound philosophy does not procure riches, and
the highest accomplishments do not get a man into office."

     Not the least striking pages in these essays are those in which the
author roundly denies that the former times, whose praises everybody sang,
were better than the present.  This superstition is of a piece with the notion
that in antiquity people were all tall and strong, good-looking and
long-lived, while nowadays they are little and ugly, feeble and short-lived.
Human nature has been the same in all ages; there were unprincipled characters
in the past and there are to-day men of the keenest sense of honour.  Wang
Ch'ung has no reverence for his predecessors because of their antiquity.  He
has an essay on Taoist untruths, and is particularly hard on the political
theories of Han-fei; but he freely criticises Confucius and Mencius, whose
authority their followers did not dare to question, pointing out obscurities
and contradictions in their teachings.

     In the following centuries Confucian orthodoxy prevailed, and became as
stagnant as undisputed orthodoxies are wont to be.  The great expansion of
Buddhism falls in this period, and what thinking was done in China for a
thousand years was chiefly done in Buddhist monasteries, and on metaphysical
and theological questions with which Confucianism had never concerned itself.
In the eleventh and twelfth centuries of our era, however, in the brilliant
renaissance of all branches of literature, new life was breathed into the dry
bones of philosophy.  Buddhism had been reduced to low estate by the great
persecution under the emperor Wu Tsung (in the middle of the ninth century)
and by a succession of repressive measures under later rulers; it was,
moreover, intellectually in decadence. Taoism had long since degenerated into
magical quackery.  The field was clear for a revival of Confucianism.  The
revival could, however, not be a mere repristination of the teachings of
Confucius and Mencius.  Taoism and Buddhism had raised metaphysical problems
which never entered into the mind of those worthies, but which, when once they
were raised, could not be ignored.

     The founder of the Neoconfucianism of the Sung dynasty, or, as it called
itself, Sing-li, Philosophy of Nature, was Chou Tun-i (1017-1073 A. D.).  His
system is based on the Yih-king, whose occult meaning he was, according to Chu
Hi, the first to fathom.  From our point of view his significance lies in the
fact that he endeavoured to transcend the dualism of Chinese cosmic philosophy
with its two forces, Yin and Yang, whose reciprocal operation explained the
universe and all its phenomena, by positing a "Great Ultimate," or first
principle, from which both proceed - a species of monism.  The Ultimate in
motion generates the Yang, or active principle, at rest, the Yin, or passive
principle, and this alternation repeats itself eternally, motion tending to
rest and rest passing over again into motion, "each is the cause of the
other." Yang and Yin coming together generate the five elements and the five
corresponding meteorological phenomena, and the four seasons begin their
rotation.  The male and female principles are evolved, and generate all
things.  Man occupies the highest place in nature, being of a more spiritual
constitution.  By contact with the world, the five cardinal virtues are called
into action; good and evil are discriminated; different types of conduct
emerge.  The virtuous man governs himself by moderation, straightforwardness,
humanity, and righteousness, and thus realises the idea of manhood.
Cultivating his character, the virtuous man is happy, while the common man,
living in conflict with it, is unhappy.

     The greatest name in the Confucian revival is Chu Hi (1130-1200 A. D.).
His recension of the classical texts and his interpretation of them in his
commentaries became authoritative, and his manuals of domestic rites and of
morals and manners, chiefly based on the Li-ki, have done more, perhaps, than
any other books to educate the Chinese people in correct Confucian conduct and
ceremonial.  In his philosophy he called himself a disciple of Chou Tun-i, but
he departed from the teaching of that thinker in some important particulars.
Chu Hi finds in the universe two principles, a primal matter (K'i) and an
incorporeal immanent intelligence which he identifies with the Ultimate of
Chou-tsze.  Both are eternal, so that it cannot be said that intelligence is
prior in time, but only that it is logically prior, as in rank it is superior.
The Ultimate is not a being existing independently before heaven and earth; it
is only a comprehensive name for the rational principle in heaven and earth
and all things.  In the terms of Western philosophy, matter and form are
correlative; there is no pure form without matter, as there is no matter
without form.  Chu Hi's relation to Chou-tsze is therefore somewhat like that
of the Stoics to Aristotle, as, indeed, the Sing-li philosophy has many other
resemblances to Stoic physics.  The Yang and the Yin, active and passive, warm
and cold, light and dark, are modes of matter, whence proceed the five
elements and all sensible objects.  Humanity, righteousness, moral ideals, and
wisdom are qualities of the rational principle.

     Western critics often call this philosophy materialistic; but inasmuch as
Chu Hi's eternal matter is informed and directed by an immanent intelligence,
it is evident that Neoconfucianism is a materialism only in the sense in which
Stoicism may be called a cosmological materialism. Indeed, the name is in one
sense less properly applicable to it than to Stoicism, since for Chu Hi the
immanent intelligence is incorporeal.  With atomistic mechanical materialism
such as Epicureanism and the Indian system of the Carvakas it has no affinity,
and as little with the modern materialistic monism which makes mind a function
of matter.  In fact, like Stoicism, it might with quite as much propriety be
called pantheism.

     It has been remarked that Confucius, in speaking of God, avoids
anthropomorphic expressions, and hardly ever uses even the title Shang-ti. Chu
Hi explicitly rejects the notion of a Heavenly Emperor, with ministers on
either hand like an earthly monarch; and it is obvious that his philosophy has
no place for a sovereign of the universe ruling it from without.  Concerning
death Confucius preserved an agnostic reticence - when you do not know about
life, how can you know about death?  Chu Hi, like the sensualist Yang Chu and
the materialist Wang Ch'ung, though from different premises, denies a
conscious existence after death.

     It is not strange that, on the ground of these negations, Neoconfucianism
has been declared essentially irreligious by those to whom belief in a
personal God and the immortality of the soul are the essence of religion.
There is no question, however, that it has been the religion of multitudes of
scholars in China, and its introduction into Japan in the seventeenth century
greatly quickened the religious interest of thinking men.  Its conception of
the "infinite and eternal Power which is not ourselves, and yet constitutes
the very essence of our being," has been thus defined: "It is not God - that
is, an individual like a man; it is not material, it is not dynamic, it is not
like our passions, nor like our knowledge, nor like our spirit or mind or
soul; it cannot be described in terms of cause and effect; it preceded even
the negative and positive principles by whose interaction the universe has
been formed.  Formless, from it has come all form; powerless, from it has come
all power; it remains through all change changeless, and yet is norm and
governor of it all.  This supreme, which we cannot yet call object, nameless
and adjectiveless, may yet be best defined by that which stirs in the soul of
man as righteousness." ^1

[Footnote 1: G. W. Knox, Development of Religion in Japan, pp. 176 f.]