Page:Columbia University Lectures on Literature (1911).djvu/94

80 but he insists on the perfection of the inner man. Benevolence and justice are the great virtues which should govern man's actions in all his relations, the most important of these relations being that of sovereign and people; and sovereigns should cultivate these virtues in the first instance. The great lesson Mencius gives to mankind of all times and throughout the world concerns the education of one's personal character. Character is more important than cleverness. Man's life ought to be a constant strife in subduing one's passions; and all this striving for perfection should not be undertaken for the sake of external rewards, but for the pleasure one takes in perfection itself.

Like Confucius, Mencius was loyal to the traditional sovereigns and the federal constitution of the Chou dynasty. His zeal in this respect was bound later to stigmatize the Confucianist school as the chief enemy of the new order of things under Shi-huang-ti, the first emperor of the Ts'in dynasty, who had gained the throne of China by the utter disregard of loyalty and legitimacy. This emperor, the celebrated "burner of the books," resolved to blot out every trace of that school which was bound both by tradition and by its entire character to side with the ruined house of Chou and its ancestors. The emperor's plan, suggested to him by his minister Li Ssi, to destroy all existing Literature with the exception of works on divination, agriculture, and medicine, could not, of course, prevent many books from being secretly buried, immured, or otherwise concealed, and thus saved from oblivion.

The Confucian classics of which I have tried to give a faint idea are, of course, not the only books forming the first of the "Four Treasuries" of Literature. The greater part consists of commentaries and expositions and some independent works of ancient origin, not received among the number of canons, such as the Hiau-king, or "Canon of Filial Piety," ascribed to Tsong Ts'an, one of the disciples of Confucius, and the ir-ya, a dictionary of terms used in the Classics, the oldest