saw indeed their full importance as symbols, but he also knew that, divorced from the inward feeling, they were meaningless and without value. In this way it is easy to see how the word li, as a human attribute, acquired its various shades of meaning, from the harmony in the soul which prompts action in accordance with true natural instincts, down to ordinary politeness and good manners—also an indispensable lubricant in the lesser dealings of life between man and man.

It was in the family again that Confucius found a natural force at work which he thought might be utilised as an immense incentive to virtue. This was the universal human proneness to imitation. Knowing that personal example is the most effective way in which a father can teach his sons what is right, he unhesitatingly attributed the same powerful influence to the personal conduct of the sovereign, and went so far as to declare that if the ruler was personally upright, his subjects would do their duty unbidden; if he was not upright, they would not obey, whatever his bidding. "The virtue of the prince," he said, "is like unto wind; that of the people, like unto grass. For it is the nature of grass to bend when the wind blows upon it." It must be admitted that Confucius has in this particular somewhat overshot the mark and formed too sanguine an estimate of the force of example. It would be unfair, however, to base our argument on the analogy of modern democratic states, where the controlling power is split up into several branches, and the conspicuousness of the monarch is much diminished. Not that even the constitutional sovereign of to-day may not wield a very decided influence in morals. But this influence was much greater while the king retained full despotic power, and greatest of all in feudal times, when the successive gradations of rank and the nice arrangement of a hierarchy of officials, each accountable to the one above him, were specially designed to convey and filter it among all classes of the community. Had Confucius been able to find a prince who would have acted consistently on Confucian principles, the results might have been almost as grand as he anticipated. The experiment was tried, we must remember, on a small scale, when Confucius himself became governor of a town in the State of Lu. And although one must be chary of accepting all the extravagant tales which gathered round his brief official career, it seems indisputable that this political theory, unlike many others, proved reasonably successful in actual practice.

Of course the weak point is that every king cannot be a Confucius, and unless some practical method can be devised of electing rulers on the ground of merit alone, it is impossible to ensure that their conduct shall serve as a pattern to their people. "Rotten wood cannot be carved," the Master himself once remarked, and he found bitter confirmation of his saying in Duke Ting of Lu. Nothing could ever have been made out of such utterly weak and worthless material. And he afterwards spent thirteen years of his life in the fruitless search for a sovereign who would correspond even faintly to his ideal. Such unswerving devotion to the abstract cause of right and justice and good government cannot but puzzle those who have been taught to regard Confucius as the very type and embodiment of materialistic wisdom and practical utilitarianism. But in truth, strange though it may sound, he was a great idealist who gained his hold on his countrymen by virtue rather of his noble imaginings and lofty aspirations than of any immediate results or tangible achievements. By the men of his own day he was more often than not considered a charlatan and an impostor. It is remarkable that even the two Taoist recluses and the eccentric Chieh Yü (p. 122) should have condemned him as a visionary and a "crank." Similar was the impression he made on the gate-keeper who asked a disciple if his Master was the man "who was always trying to do what he knew to be impossible." This playful sarcasm is really the best commentary on his career, and one that pays him unintentionally the greatest honour. Though often disheartened by the long and bitter struggle against adverse circumstance and the powers of evil, he never gave over in disgust. Therein lay his greatness. "Wer immer strebend sich bemüht, Den können wir erlösen," sing the angels in Faust, and no man ever toiled for the good of his fellow-creatures with greater perseverance or with less apparent prospect of success. In this, the truest sense, he could say that his whole life had been a prayer (p. 87). He succeeded in that he seemed to fail. He never achieved the Utopian object of reforming all mankind by means of a wise and good sovereign. On the contrary, after his death confusion grew worse confounded, and the din of arms rose to a pitch from which it did not subside until after the momentous revolution which swept away the Chou dynasty and established a new order of things in China. In a radically individualistic and liberty-loving country like China, the feudal system was bound sooner or later to perish, even as it perished in a later day among ourselves. But throughout the anarchy of that terrible period, the light kindled by Confucius burned steadily and prepared men's minds for better things. His ideal of government was not forgotten, his sayings were treasured like gold in the minds of the people. Above all, his own example shone like a glorious beacon, darting its rays through the night of misery and oppression and civil strife which in his lifetime he had striven so earnestly to remove. And so it came about that his belief in the political value of personal goodness was in some sort justified after all; for the great and inspiriting pattern which he sought in vain among the princes of his time was to be afforded in the end by no other than himself—the "throneless king," who is for ever enshrined in the hearts of his countrymen. It is absurd, then, to speak of his life as a failure. Measured by results—the almost incalculably great and far-reaching consequences which followed tardily but irresistibly after he was gone—his life was one of the most successful ever lived by man. Three others, and only three, are comparable to it in world-wide influence: Gautama's self-sacrificing sojourn among men, the stormy career of the Arab Prophet, and the "sinless years" which found their close on Golgotha.