Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 6.djvu/290

262 occasions he and his company were in danger of perishing from want, and the courage of even Tze-lu gave way. “Has the superior man, indeed, to endure in this way?” he asked. “The superior man may have to endure want,” was the reply, “but he is still the superior man. The small man in the same circumstances loses his self-command.” While travelling about, Confucius repeatedly came across ,—a class of men who had retired from the world in disgust. That there was such a class gives us a striking glimpse into the character of the age. ly, and of, they had given up the conflict with the vices and disorder that prevailed. But they did not understand the, and felt a contempt for him struggling on against the , and always hoping against hope. We get a fine idea of him from his encounters with them. Once he was looking about for a, and sent Tze-lu to ask a man who was where it was. The man was a, and having found that his questioner was a of Confucius, he said to him : &ldquo;Disorder in a swelling spreads over, and no one is able to repress it. Than follow a master who withdraws from one ruler and another that will not take his advice, had you not better follow those who withdraw from the world altogether?&rdquo; With these words he resumed his, and would give no information about the. Tze-lu went back, and reported what the man had said to the master, who observed: &ldquo;It is impossible to withdraw from the world, and associate with s and that have no affinity with us. With whom should I associate but with suffering men? The disorder that prevails is what requires my efforts. If ruled through, there would be no necessity for me to change its state.&rdquo; We must recognize in those words a brave heart and a noble sympathy. Confucius would not abandon the cause of the people. He would hold on his way to the end. Defeated he might be, but he would be true to his humane and righteous mission. It was in his sixty-ninth, 483undefined, that Confucius returned to undefined. One of his s, who had remained in, had been successful in the command of a expedition, and told the that he had learned his skill in  from the master, urging his recall, and that thereafter mean persons should not be allowed to come between the ruler and him. was now in the hands of the son of the undefined whose neglect had driven the away; but Confucius would not again take. Only a few s remained to him, and he devoted them to the completion of his, and the delivery of his lessons to his s.

The next was marked by the death of his son, which he bore with equanimity. His wife had died many s before, and it jars upon us to read how he then commanded the young man to hush his of sorrow. We like him better when he mourned, as has been related, for his own mother. It is not true, however, as has often been said, that he had d his wife before her death. The death of his favourite, Yen Hwui, in 481undefined, was more trying to him. Then he wept and mourned beyond what seemed to his other followers the bounds of, exclaiming that undefined was destroying him. His own last, 478undefined, dawned on him with the tragic end of his next beloved , Tze-lu. Early one morning, we are told, in the fourth, he got up, and with his hands behind his back, dragging his , he moved about his door, crooning over—

Tze-kung heard the words, and hastened to him. The master told him a dream of the previous, which, he thought, presaged his death. &ldquo;No intelligent ruler, he said, arises to take me as his master. My time has come to die.&rdquo; So it was. He took to his, and after seven s expired. Such is the account we have of the last s of the of. His end was not unimpressive, but it was melancholy. Disappointed hopes made his bitter. No wife nor child was by to do the s of affection, nor was the expectation of with him, when he passed away from among. He uttered no, and he betrayed no apprehension. s before, when he was very, and Tze-lu asked leave to for him, he expressed a doubt whether such a thing might be done, and added, &ldquo;I have ed for a long time.&rdquo; Deep-treasured now in his heart may have been the thought that he had served his generation by the will of ; but he gave no sign. When their master thus died, his s him with. A multitude of them s near his, and remained there,  as for a father, for nearly three s; and when all the rest were gone, Tze-kung, the last of his favourite three, continued alone by the  for another period of the same duration. The news of his death went through the as with an electric thrill. The man who had been neglected when alive seemed to become all at once an object of unbounded admiration. The began to flow which has hardly ever ebbed during three-and-twenty centuries. The of Confucius is in a large rectangle separated from the rest of the K&lsquo;ung, outside the city of undefined. A magnificent undefined gives admission to a fine, lined with and conducting to the , a large and lofty mound, with a   in front, bearing the inscription of the title given to Confucius under the : &ldquo;The most ly ancient Teacher; the all-accomplished, all-informed.&rdquo; A little in front of the , on the left and right, are smaller mounds over the s of his son and grandson, from the latter of whom we have the remarkable  called The Doctrine of the Mean. All over the place are tablets of different, with glowing tributes to the one man whom  delights to honour; and on the right of the grandson's mound is a small  said to mark the place of the  where Tze-kung passed his nearly five s of loving vigil. On the mound grow es, s, what is called &ldquo;undefined,&rdquo; said not to be elsewhere found, and the undefined, the whose stalks were employed in ancient times for purposes of. The is still the home of the K&lsquo;ung ; and there are said to be in it between 40,000 and 50,000 of the descendants of the. The present chief of the is in the line of the 75th generation, and has large estates by, with the title of &ldquo; by  appointment and , continuator of the .&rdquo; It is thus no empty honour which is still given by the s of  to Confucius, in the persons of his descendants. The of undefined finally perished two centuries and a quarter after the death of the  at the hands of the  of the, the first of the  of undefined, who swept away the foundations of the , and laid those of the ic  which was subsequently and gradually matured, and continues to the present. after went down before his blows, but the name and followers of Confucius were the chief obstacles in his way. He made an effort to destroy the memory of the from off the, consigning to  all the ancient s from which he drew his rules and examples (save one), and  alive hundreds of s who were ready to swear by his name. But 