Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/336

324 324 CHRISTIANITY IN CHINA, ETC. is to be found in all the academies, in the places where the learned assemble, and where literary examinations are undergone. All the towns in China have temples raised to his honour, and more than three hundred millions of men proclaim him with one voice the saint par excellence. Never has it been given to any mortal to exercise, for so many ages, such an empire over his fellow- creatures, or to receive from them homage so like actual worship ; although every one knows per- fectly well that Confucius was simply a man who lived in the principality of Lou, two centuries before the Christian era. The annals of the human race present no more extraordinary fact than of this civil homage and religious adoration, rendered by an immense nation, for twenty-four centuries, to a simple citizen. The descendants of Confucius too, who still exist in great numbers, participate in the extraordinary honours rendered by the Chinese to their glorious ancestor. They constitute, in fact, the only hereditary nobility of the empire, and enjoy certain privileges, reserved for them alone. The second religion of China is regarded by its disciples as the primitive one of its most ancient inhabitants. It has numerous analogies with the preceding ; but the individual existence of genii and demons is recognised in it, independently of the parts of nature over which they preside. The priests and priestesses of this worship are devoted to celibacy, and practise magic, astrology, necromancy, and a thousand absurdities. They are called Tao-sse, or Doctors of Reason, because their fundamental dogma taught by the renowned Lao-tze, is that of a primordial reason, which has created the world. This doctrine is con-