Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/123



Confucius, with a change of countenance, replied, after a short pause, "In the West there is a sage. He governs not, yet there is no disorder; he speaks not, yet he is naturally trusted; he attempts no reforms, yet his influence has free course. Vast and far-reaching are his aims! The people can find no name for it. I suspect that he is a sage; yet I cannot be sure whether even he is or no."

The Premier relapsed into silence, and pondered in his heart whether Confucius were not chaffing him.

We will skip over the next few pages, contenting ourselves with a brief summary of some of their more interesting contents. There is a description of several fabulous countries, their beauties and marvellous productions, together with the strange legends pertaining to their origin. One of these imaginary realms is called the Country of Salamanders, where, to show their filial piety, the people leave the corpses of their relations to rot, and then throw the flesh away and bury their bones; while in another a man drives away his aunt when his uncle dies, on the ground that it is impossible for people to live with the wife of a ghost. A still more curious passage is devoted to a discussion between the Emperor T'ang and his Minister, Hsia Kŏ, about the extent and eternity of matter. The Emperor begins by asking his Minister whether matter existed from the beginning of all things, and the Minister replies by asking how, if it did not, it came to exist at present, and whether their descendants would be justified in denying that matter existed in His Majesty's own day. The Emperor naturally enough rejoins that, by this argument, matter must have existed from all eternity—a remark that the Minister parries by saying that no records remain of the time