Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/72

 our command. Briefly, then, the doctrine of filial piety, as practised and interpreted in China, is in many ways a curse and a calamity to the people. It is a flagrant and flagitious example of a virtue exaggerated into a vice. The admiration of the Chinese is extorted for numerous instances of filial piety that have come down from antiquity, and they are taught to believe that upon this is based their loyalty to the Throne. No brighter pattern of this so-called virtue exists than that of the great Emperor Shun, who, cursed with an unnatural father and a malignant stepmother, who on one occasion burnt his house down over his ears, and on another threw him down a well, went about roaring and weeping to Compassionate Heaven in the channelled fields. And why?—because of his parents' cruelty? No; but because of his own imagined vileness—vileness which can have been the only cause of their ill-treatment of him, so virtuous a person shrinking from imputing any blame to those who had given him life. Is not such a type degrading? Then there was another bright example, an old philosopher, who at the age of seventy used to dress himself up in a baby's frock and dance around and roll about the floor, shaking a rattle or beating a little drum, simply to amuse his doting parents, who are said to have cackled with delight as their venerable offspring jerked himself about and frolicked for their entertainment. Nearly all the instances of filial piety held up to the Chinese for imitation are equally grotesque and mischievous. But worse remains behind. No man, be he a viceroy or a general, or what he may, or whatever age he may have attained, is a free agent so long as his father is alive. In the eye of custom and the law he is a