Edward Harper Parker

“ No vassal prince ever presumed to style himself "Son of Heaven," though nearly all the barbarous vassals called themselves "King" (the only other title the Chou monarchs took) in their own dominions. "In the Heaven there can only be one Sun; on Earth there can only be one Emperor"; this was the maxim, and, ever since the Chou conquest in 1122 B.C., the word "King" had done duty for the more ancient "Emperor," which, in remote times had apparently not been sharply distinguished in men's minds from God, or the "Emperor on High." ”

“ There were not lacking sensible men, even in those days, who ridiculed the science of astrology: for instance, Shuh Hiang of Tsin—the man who so strongly disapproved Tsz-ch'an's written laws, and the man who discussed with the Ts'i envoy, the philosopher Yen-tsz, the worthlessness of their respective dukes—said on one occasion when the "course of the heavens towards north-west" was supposed to indicate a success for Tsin: "The course of the heavens, as that of our success, lies in the qualities of the prince, and not in the situation of the stars." ”

“ CHAPTER XLII MUSIC In these pictures of ancient Chinese life which we are endeavouring to present, the idea is to repeat from every point of view the main characteristics of that life, so that a strange and unfamiliar subject, very loosely depicted in the straggling annals of antiquity, may receive fresh rays of light from every possible quarter, and thus stand out clearer as a connected whole. ”

“ There is really no use in attempting to advance one step beyond the point to which we are carried by specific evidence, either in this or in other matters. It has been said that no great discovery was ever made without imagination, which may be true; but evidence and imagination must be kept rigidly separate. What we may reasonably hope is that, by gradually ascertaining and sifting definite facts and data touching ancient Chinese history, we shall at least avoid coming to wrong positive conclusions, even if the right negative ones are pretty clearly indicated. ”

“ In 482 one of Confucius' pupils made the following casuistical reply to the government of Wu on their application for renewal of a treaty with her: "It is only fidelity that gives solidity to treaties; they are determined by mutual consent, and it is with sacrifices that they are laid before our ancestors; the written words give expression to them, and the spirits guarantee them. A treaty once concluded cannot be changed: otherwise it were vain to make a new one. Remember the proverb: "What needs warming up more may just as well be eaten cold." ”

“ It is presumed, therefore, that life was even more humdrum than it is now, except that women at least had feet to walk upon. We gain some glimpses of excessive taxation and popular misery, forced labour and the press-gang; of callous luxury on the part of the rich, from the pages of Lao-tsz and Mencius; the Book of Odes also tells us much about the pathetic sadness of the people under their taskmasters' hands. In all countries popular habits change slowly; in none more so than in China. ”

“ When we reflect what petty "worlds" the Assyrian, Egyptian, and Greek worlds were, we can hardly blame the Chinese, who had probably been settled in Ho Nan just as long as the Western ruling races had been in Assyria and Egypt respectively, for imagining that they, the sole recorders of events amongst surrounding inferiors, were the world; and that the incoherent tribes rushing aimlessly from all sides to attack them, were the unreclaimed fringe of the world. ”

“ This, indeed, was part of the celebrated Kwan-tsz's economic philosophy. Thus generation after generation of statesmen and scholars kept in steady touch with one another, exactly as our modern scientists of the first rank, each as a link, form an unbroken intimate chain from Newton down to Lord Kelvin, outside which pale the ordinary layman stands a comparative stranger to the arcana within.
Kwan-tsz, the statesman-philosopher of Ts'i, and in a sense the founder of Chinese economic science, was himself a scion of the imperial Chou clan ”

“ When we read Renan's masterly examination into the origins of our own Gospels, and when we reflect that even the origin of Shakespeare's plays, and the individuality of Shakespeare's person, are open to everlasting discussion, we may not unreasonably leave Chinese critics and Chinese historians to judge of the value of their own national evidence, and accept in general terms what they tell us of fact, however imperfect it may be in detail, without adding hypothetical facts or raising new critical difficulties of our own. ”

“ All orthodox China seemed to feel now that the interesting wanderer, after all his experiences of war, travel, Tartars, Chinese, barbarians, and politics, was the right man to be Protector. But it was first necessary for Tsin to defeat Ts'u in a decisive battle; a war had arisen between Tsin and Ts'u out of an attempt on the part of CHÊNG (one of the orthodox Chinese states that had been uncivil to the wanderer) , to drag in the preponderant power of Ts'u by way of shielding itself from punishment at Tsin's hands for past rude behaviour. ”

“ There is no documentary evidence for the barest existence of ancient China, or of any part of it, which is not to be found in the Chinese records, and in them alone; no nation anywhere near China has any record or tradition of either its own or of China's existence at a period earlier than the Chinese records indicate. Those records do not contain the faintest allusion to Egypt, Babylonia, India, or any other foreign country or place whatever outside the extremely limited area of the Central Nucleus, and the larger area occupied by the semi-Chinese colonial powers surrounding it. ”

“ CHAPTER XXXII THE CALENDAR Allusion has already been made to the eclipses mentioned in Confucius' history as a means by which the probability of his general truth as a historian may in a certain measure be gauged. A few words upon the Chinese calendar, as it is and was, may therefore not be amiss. The Chinese month has from first to last been uncompromisingly lunar; that is to say, the first day of each month, or "moon" as it may strictly and properly be called, always falls within the day (beginning at midnight) during which the new moon occurs. ”

“ In 572 B.C., when the legitimate ruler of Tsin, who had been superseded by irregular successors, was fetched back from the Emperor's court, to which he had gone for a quiet asylum, he drew up a treaty of conditions with his own ministers, and immolated a chicken as sanction; this idea is still occasionally perpetuated in British courts of justice, where Chinese, probably without knowing it, draw upon ancient history when asked by the court how they are accustomed to sanction an oath; cocks are often also carried about by modern Chinese boatmen for purposes of sacrifice. ”

“ To put it in another way: given the existence 4000 or 5000 years ago of Chinese in China, Egyptians in Egypt, and Babylonians in Babylonia—why should one group be assumed to be older than the other? The only ground for suggesting that these groups had not each a separate evolution, is the assumption that man was "created" once for all, and created summarily; in which case it follows with mathematical precision that the ultimate ancestry of every man living extends back to exactly the same date. ”

“ Each successive generation in China alludes to existing antiquities, or to contemporaneous objects which have since become antiquities, with the quiet confidence of those who actually possess, and who doubt not of their possessions. The very lacunae are pointed out by themselves—no scepticism of ours is required; for whenever any historian, or any less formal writer, has outstepped the bounds of truth or probability, the critics are immediately there, and they always frankly say what they believe. In a word, the Chinese documents, be they iron, stone, wood, silk, paper, buildings, or graves ”

“ In 436 B.C. the Emperor sent a present of sacrificial meat to Lu by X. As X is thus "named," he must be of "scholar" rank, as an imperial "minister" (it is explained) could not be thus named. The ruler alone has the right to "affront a man" at all times with his personal name, but even a son in speaking of his own father to the Emperor may "affront" his father, because both his father and himself are on equal subject footing before the Emperor. To "name" a man in history is not always like "naming" a member in the House of Commons. ”

“ Moreover, the imperial dynasty, which Lao-tsz served, had no political influence at all: it was an ironical saying of the times; "the best civilians are Ts'u's, but they all serve other states," (meaning that the Ts'u rule was too capricious to attract talent) . Hence, apart from the fact that Confucius doubted the wisdom of Lao-tsz's novel philosophy, Confucius had no occasion whatever to mention the secluded, self- contained old man in his political history, or, rather, in his bald annals of royal-movements. ”

“ On the other hand, two-thirds of the produce of the people's labour go to the prince, whilst only one-third remains for the sustenance of the producers. The prince's stores rot away, whilst our old men die of starvation. False feet are cheaper than shoes in the market-place (owing to the number of people punished with amputation of a foot) ; the people are smarting with a sense of wrong, and are longing for the advent (of the CH'ÊN family) , whom they love as a parent, and towards whom they tend, just as water runs downhill. ”

“ In other words, the population of China had grown so enormously, both by peaceful in-breeding and by imperceptible absorption of kindred races, that more elbow-room was needed; more freedom from the shackles of ritual, rank, and feudal caste; more independence, and more liberty to take advantage of local or changed traditions. ”

“ Within a single generation Wu was so civilized that one of the royal princes was sent the rounds of the Chinese states as special ambassador, charged, under the convenient cloak of seeking for civilization, ritual, and music, with the duty of acquiring political and strategical knowledge. ”

“ This language was approved by Confucius, who himself always declined to dogmatize on death and spirits, maintaining that men knew too little of themselves, when living, to be justified in groping for facts about the dead. At first sight it would appear strange that a barbarous country like Wu should suddenly produce a learned prince who at once captivated by his culture Yen-tsz of Ts'i, Confucius of Lu, Tsz-ch'an of Cheng, K'u-peh-yu of Wei, Shuh Hiang of Tsin, and, in short, all the distinguished statesmen of China ”

“ As a rule, however, it is to be feared that the wealthy Chinese classes in ancient (as in modern) times found their chief recreation in feasting, literary bouts, and female society. Curiously enough, nothing is said of gambling. Women are depicted at their looms, or engaged upon the silk industry; but it is singular how very little is said of home life, of how the houses were constructed, of how the hours of leisure were passed. In modern China the bulk of the male rural population rises with or before the dawn, and is engaged upon field or garden work until the shades of evening fall in ”

“ Nature's bounty is the spring, and therefore rewards are conferred in spring; nature's fall is in the autumn, which is the time for decreeing punishments; these are carried out in winter, when death steals over nature. A generous table accompanies the dispensing of rewards, a frugal table and no music accompanies the allotment of punishments ”

“ In 880 B.C., when the imperial power was already waning, and the first really historical King of Ts'u was beginning to bring under his authority the people between the Han and the Yang-tsz, he said: "I am a barbarian savage, and do not concern myself with Chinese titles, living or posthumous." In 706, when the reigning king made his first conquest of a petty Chinese principality (North Hu Pêh) , he said again: "I am a barbarian savage; all the vassals are in rebellion and attacking each other; I want with my poor armaments to see for myself how Chou governs, and to get a higher title." ”

“ Another great pillar of the state praised by Confucius was Shuh Hiang of Tsin, whose reputation as a sort of Chinese Cicero is not far below that of Tsz-ch'an. He belonged to one of the great private families of Tsin, of whom it was said in Ts'u that "any of them could bring 100 war-chariots into the field." Nothing could be more interesting than the interviews and letters (see Appendix No. 1) between these two friends and their colleagues of Ts'i, Ts'u, Lu, and Sung.
Yen-tsz of Ts'i almost ranks with Kwan-tsz as an administrator, philosopher, economist, author, and statesman. ”

“ Ts'in never seems to have produced a native literary statesman on its own soil. During this 500-year period of isolated development, and also during the later period of conquest in the third century B.C., all its statesmen were borrowed from Tsin, or from some orthodox state of China proper; in military genius, however, Ts'in was unrivalled, and a special chapter will be devoted to her huge battues. The literary reputation of Ts'u was high at a comparatively early date, and even now the "Elegies of Ts'u" include some of the very finest of the Chinese poems and belles lettres ”

“ Incidentally this statement is of value; for when the King of Ts'u, as narrated above, was making his demands upon the Emperor, one of his grievances was that he possessed no relics of the founder such as the presents which had been made by him to Ts'i, Lu, Yen, Tsin, and other favoured states of no greater status than his own. The above are only a few instances out of many which show how, from age to age, the Chinese have seen with their own eyes things which in the vista of the distance now seem to us uncertain and incredible. As usual, Ts'in gives us nothing in the way of antiquity ”

“ The Chinese diplomats then, as now, had the most roundabout ways of pointing a moral or delicately insinuating an innuendo. On arrival at the outskirts of the capital, instead of building the usual daïs for formalities and sacrifices, Tsz-ch'an threw up a mean hut for the accommodation of his mission, saying: "Altars are built by great states when they visit small ones as a symbol of benefits accorded, and by way of exhortation to continue in virtuous ways." ”