Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/45

 Or, looked at from the more dispassionate standpoint of statesmanship, what an opportunity for weighing the immediate and subsequent results of the decree, for pointing the moral deducible from the eventual failure of the object held in view, and gauging in some measure the real motives which influenced the memorialist in recommending so barbarous and futile a policy to the tyrant! But all this is far beneath the dignity of Chinese history, the highest ideal of which appears to consist in as close an approximation as possible to an almanac. Three words, and three words only, follow the text of the memorial as given by Ssŭ-ma Tsien: "The Emperor agreed." The subject is then dismissed, and another event portrayed in as brief and laconic a style as the preceding. Ssŭ-ma Kuang, however, does add a little incident, for which it behoves us to be duly grateful. It appears that at this time there was a certain descendant of Confucius, named K'ung Fu, who stood foremost among the literary men of the day. To him remarked Ch'en-yu, a native of the state of Wei, "His Majesty intends to destroy all the books of the former kings. Now you, Sir, as the descendant of the Holy Man, may be considered the representative and chief of the literary world; so you are in great danger." "The knowledge I possess," replied K'ung Fu, "is of no use in the present state of affairs; it is only my friends, such as you, who know me. Now the Emperor, not being my friend, knows nothing of me; in what danger, then, do I stand? I shall just retire into concealment, and wait until he sends after me; and when he does that, there will be no more to fear." One would think that the historian might have deemed it worth while, by the addition of four or even three more characters, to have chronicled the fact that many books C