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Rh Mencius on one side, though that method of proceeding can hardly be vindicated on critical grounds.

There can be no doubt, however, that the expression in Mencius about ‘the righteous decisions’ has had a most powerful and pernicious influence over the interpretation of the Classic. Chaou K‘e, the earliest commentator on Mencius, explains the passage as intimating that the sage in making the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw exercised his prerogative as ‘the unsceptred king.’ A subject merely, and without any order from his ruler, he yet made the Work on his own private authority; and his saying that he ventured to give his own judgments on things in it was simply an expression of his humility. Chaou gives the same explanation of those words of Mencius, that ‘what the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw contains are matters proper to the son of Heaven.' 'Confucius,’ says the commentator, ‘made the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw by means of the Historical Records of Loo, setting forth his laws as an unsceptred king, which are what Mencius calls "the matters of the Son of Heaven."'

Hundreds of critics, from Kung-yang and Kuh-lëang downwards, have tried to interpret the Classic on the principle of finding in almost every paragraph some 'righteous decision;’ and in my notes I have in a hundred places pointed out the absurdities in which such a method lands us. The same peculiarity of the style, such as the omission of a clan-name, becomes in one passage the sign of censure and in another the sign of praise. It may be well here to give the discussion of one notable case, the occasional omission of the term king:—taken from Chaou Yih’s ,:— ‘Every year should commence with "In the spring, in the king’s first month," or if there was nothing to be recorded under the first month, "In the spring, in the king's second month,” or “In the spring, in the king’s third month;"  the object being thereby to do honour to the king. In the 9th and 11th years, however, of duke Yin, we have only "In the spring," and in all the years of duke Hwan but four the expression 'the king's' is omitted. Too Yu holds that in those years the king had not issued the calendar; but seeing the prime intent of the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw was to honour the king, is it likely that for such an emission the classic would have denied the year to be the king’s? Moreover, such omission was most likely to occur when the court was in confusion, as in the troubles occasioned by the princes T‘uy, Tae, and Chaou; and yet we find the years of those times all with the regular formula. How unlikely that the calendar should have been given out in seasons of disorder, and neglected when all was tranquil in the times of Yin and Hwan! Too's explanation is inadmissible. 'Ch‘ing E-ch‘uen says, “Duke Hwan succeeded to Loo by the murder of his predecessor, and in his first year the author wrote ‘the king’s,’ thereby by a royal law indicating his crime. The same expression in the second year in the same way indicates the crime of Tuh of Sung in murdering his ruler. Its omission in the third year shows that Hwan had no [fear of the] king before his eyes." But this is very inconsistent. If we say that the omission “the king’s" shows that Hwan had no fear of the king, surely it ought to have been omitted in his first year, when he was guilty of such a crime. If we say that its occurrence in the first year is to indicate his crime, are we to infer that wherever it occurs it indicates the crime of the ruler? What had Loo to do with Tuh of Sung’s murdering his ruler? Is it reasonable that Loo's historiographers should have constructed their annals to punish him? ‘Ho Hëw says,—“In [Hwan's] 10th year we find ‘the king's,’ because ten is the completion of numbers, and we find it in his 18th year because that was the last of his rule." According to this we ought to find "the king‘s" only in the year of a ruler's accession, in his tenth year, and the year of his death; but the practice in the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw is quite different from this. Ho Hëw's remark is unintelligible.  ‘It may be said that since the Chow commencement of the year was not universally followed during the Ch‘un Ts‘ëw period, some States reckoning by the 1st month of Yin and others by that of Hëa, although Loo generally held to the ritual of Chow, yet its irregularities in the matter of intercalation show that it did not keep to the first month of Chow. Perhaps the historiographers did so sometimes, and then Confucius wrote "the king's first month," by way of distinction, while he left the cases in which they made the year begin differently unmarked by such a note,—thereby condemning them.‘ This last is poor Chaou Yih's own explanation of the phenomenon, not a whit better than the devices of others which he condemns! It shows the correctness of my remark that it is next to impossible for a Chinese scholar to shake of the trammels of the creed in which he has been educated. The whole Book is a 5 ]