BOOK I. CONFUCIUS AND HIS SCHOOL

CHAPTER I

LIFE OF CONFUCIUS

An objective attitude toward the ideals and sages of one’s own country is not easily to be attained. There is a corresponding difficulty in gaining a sufficiently sympathetic attitude toward the ideals and sages of a strange people. For these reasons it has seemed best to the writer to undertake a general estimate of the worth of Confucius and of Confucianism at the end, rather than at the beginning, of this study. The reader who has gone with him to the conclusion can better judge how far the estimate is objective, after seeing the evidence on which it is based; and he will also be better enabled to view the problem sympathetically. The words of a Western writer shall, therefore, serve as our introduction.

Von der Gabelentz says:

Quite unique is the position occupied by him who, as no other man, was a teacher of his people, who, I venture to say, has become and continued to be a ruler of his people, the Sage of the family K‘ung in the State of Lu, whom we know by the name of Confucius. Unique is his position, not only in the history of philosophy, but also in the history of mankind. For there is hardly any other man who, like Confucius, incorporated in his own person all the constituent elements of the Chinese type and all that is eternal in his people’s