Confucius

“ Have we reason to receive Tso’s narratives as reliable, Are Tso's narratives reliable? Were they supplemented or added to?having been transcribed by him from pre-existent records with merely such modifications of style as suited his taste? Or did he invent some of them himself? Or were they added to by writers in the Ts‘in dynasty and that of the Former Han? It is difficult to reply to these questions categorically. What has the greatest weight with me in favour of Tso’s general credibility is the difference between his commentary and those of Kung-yang and Kuh-lëang. ”

“ Chinese scholars write of Tso under the influence of their admiration and veneration for the sage. I could wish that he had written altogether independently of the Classic, in which case we might have had a history of those times as complete as a man knowing only the heroes and events of his own country could make. It is not too much to call Tso the Froissart of China. The historical novel called ‘The History of the various States’ shows the use which can be made of his narratives. ”

“ The making of a history, indeed, is different from the making of a poem, the development of a philosophy, and other literary achievements in which we expect large results of original thought. What we are to expect in a history.In those we look for new combinations of the phaenomena of human character, and new speculations on the divine order of the universe,—'things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.' But from the historian all that we are entitled to require is a faithful record of facts. ”

“ During the past forty years her position with regard to the more advanced nations of the world has been entirely changed. She has entered into treaties with them upon equal terms; but I do not think her ministers and people have yet looked this truth fairly in the face, so as to realize the fact that China is only one of many independent nations in the world, and that the 'beneath the sky,' over which her emperor has rule, is not all beneath the sky, but only a certain portion of it which is defined on the earth's surface and can be pointed out upon the map. ”

“ Ts‘e and Ts‘in were exempted from taking the oath, so that the agreement was narrowed to a compact between Ts‘oo and Tsin, and the States which adhered to them respectively; and though this would secure a temporary peace to the kingdom, yet the two other great States, being left unbound, might take advantage of it, to prosecute their own ambitious designs. Ts‘oo, moreover, displayed a fierce and unconciliating spirit which promised ill for the permanence of the arrangement. However, the covenant was accepted with these drawbacks. There should be war no more! ”

“ Instead of the harmony which the principles of benevolence and righteousness, carried out with courtesy and in accordance with the rules of propriety, should have produced, we find the States biting and devouring one another, while the large and strong oppressed and absorbed the small and weak. In the Chuen on IX. xxix. 7, during a dispute at the court of Tsin on some encroachments which Loo had made on the territory of K‘e, an officer reminds the marquis of what Tsin itself had done in the same way. ”

“ When our contributions and offerings have no limit set to them, we have only to wait for our ruin.’ It is evident, as we study the history of this system of a leading State, that there was no help to come from it to the House of Chow, and no permanent alleviation of the evils under which the nation was suffering. ”

“ Sëang of Sung was not entitled to a place among the five chiefs, either from his own character, or from the strength and resources of his State. He appears rather as a madman than a man of steady purpose; and many scholars exclude this name from the category, and introduce instead Hoh-leu of Woo or Kow-ts‘ëen of Yueh. Nor is Muh of Ts‘in much better entitled to the place assigned to him, for though he was a prince of very superior character to Sëang, his influence was felt only in the west of the kingdom, and not by the States generally. ”

“ It is hardly possible for a Chinese to cast off from his mind the influence of this 'praise-and-censure' theory in studying the Classic. He has learned it when a child by committing to memory at school the lines of the 'Primer of Three Characters,' [10] and it has been obtruded upon him in most of his subsequent reading. Even a foreigner finds himself occasionally casting about for some such way of accounting for the ever varying forms of expression, unwilling to believe that the changes have been made at random. ”

“ Christianity, calling to universal ‘peace on earth,’ has come into the field; and under its auspices nations unheard of, it may be said unborn, in the era of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw, have attained a wondrous growth, with appliances of science and a development commerce, which were then all unknown:—and is it still a delusion to hope for arrangements which will obviate the necessity of a recurrence to ‘the last resort,’ the appeal to the force of arms? ”

“ In the Chuen at the beginning of the 13th year of duke Hwan we have an account of a fruitless expedition from Ts‘oo against the small State of Lo, [51] Lo being assisted by an army of the Loo Jung. One of the names in king Woo’s ‘Speech at Muh,’ which I have referred to, thus comes here before us. These Jung occupied what is now the district of Nan-chang, in the department of Sëang-yang, Hoo-pih. Tso says that, though they were called Jung, they belonged to the Man of the south. Geographically, they must be classed with them. ”

“ This characteristic of the Work has not escaped the notice of native scholars themselves. As early as the Tsin dynasty, Wang Tsëeh preferred to it the commentary of on this account. ‘Tso’s style,’ said he,’ is so rich, and his aim so extensive, that he is to be regarded as an author by himself, and not having it for his principal object to illustrate the classic.' [36] Nearly to the same effect is the account of Tso given by Wang Cheh of the Sung dynasty. ”

“ That there were the records of events, kept in the ofiices of historiography, must be freely admitted, and it will appear, when I come to speak of the commentary of Tso K‘ëw-ming, that to them we are mainly indebted for the narratives which impart so much interest to his Work. But the entries in the various Ch‘un Ts‘ëw were not made from them,—not made from them fairly and honestly as when one tries to give in a very few words the substance of a narrative which is before him. ”

“ No line of rulers can continue to keep possession of the supreme authority in a nation, if their incompetency be demonstrated for centuries together. The sentimental loyalty of Confucius had lost its attractions by the time of Mencius, who was ever on the outlook for 'a minister of Heaven,' who should make an end of Chow and of the contentions among the warring States together. ”

“ When a notice was entered in the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw of Loo, say of the burial of the marquis Ch‘ung-urh of Tsin, the entry was that on such and such a month and day they buried duke Wăn of Tsin. But the officers, deputed for the purpose from Loo, had assisted at the burial not of any duke of Ts‘oo or of Woo, but of king so and so. What were the historiographers to do? If they called the king when living a viscount, it would seem to us reasonable that they might have been satisfied to call him a duke when dead. ”

“ The Puh dwell apart from one another; and when they are hurriedly going off, each tribe for its own towns, who among them will have leisure to think of anybody but themselves?' It happened as he said. In fifteen days from Ts‘oo’s appearing in force there was an end of the attempt of the Puh. Only twice more are they mentioned in the Chuen. In Chaou’s 9th year, on occasion of a dispute between Chow and Tsin, the representative of the royal court says boastfully that, when Woo subdued Shang, Pa, the Puh, Ts‘oo, and Tăng were the territories of the kingdom in the south ”

“ Even where the outlying chiefs or princes claimed connexion with the House of Chow, or traced their first appointment to it, the languages spoken in their States may have been different from that of China proper. I have pointed out how the names of the lords of Woo, both in structure and sound, do not appear to be Chinese. And in the account of Tsze-wăn who had been chief minister of Ts‘oo, given in the Chuen on VII. iv., his name of Now-woo-t‘oo is explained by reference to the fact that he had been suckled by a tigress, when he was a child and cast away in a forest. ”

“ The seeds of this contrivance were sown, perhaps, at the very commencement of the dynasty, when the dukes of Chow and Shaou were appointed viceroys over the eastern and western portions of the kingdom respectively, and other princes were made, on their first investiture, 'chiefs of regions', [4] embracing their own States and others adjacent to them. These arrangements were disused as the kings of Chow felt secure in their supremacy over all the States, and the nominees in the first instance had been sincerely loyal and devoted to the establishment of the dynasty ”

“ It is acknowledged on all hands that he was a master of his art. Condensed, yet vivid, he is eminently pictorial. The foreign student does not for some time find it easy to make out his meaning, but by and by he gets familiar with the style, and it then has a great charm for him. In the words which the foremost of French sinologues once used to me of him, Tso was un grand ecrivain. [38] But the peculiarity which I have in view is the way in which Tso constantly varies the appellations of the actors in his narratives. ”