Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/37

 of their meaning is given. 'The Four Books' require two years even for a clever scholar, while to include the 'Five Classics' extends the cheerless task to four or five years even for the cleverest, though a total of seven would perhaps strike the average. During this period of mental daze, the scholar is 'a pig in the woods'; his entrance on study is 'lifting the darkness,' and to teach a beginner is 'to instruct darkness.' Such phrases depict reality. The method of instruction and the characteristics of the teacher are the same as have already been noted.

The texts which are thus swallowed whole to await a deferred digestion are forever taken as models of correct composition and with their commentaries are regarded as embracing about all there is to know. 'The Four Books' contain digests of the moralizings of Confucius (551-478 B.C.) as gathered by his disciples, and consist of 'The Great Learning' The Doctrine of the Mean,' 'Confucian Analects' and the 'Words of Mencius' (371-288 B.C.).

Confucius, the Aristotle of Asia, produced as a self-confessed 'transmitter and not a maker' a 'system of ethics or of anthropology' in which man, his relations to family, society, the state and heaven are fully discussed and the attributes and conduct of the 'Princely Man' elaborated in detail. The leading features of the Confucian doctrine are 'subordination to superiors and kind upright dealing with our fellow men.' The foundations of political morality are found in private rectitude. Though containing some exceptionable dogmas, these writings as compared with those of Grecian and Roman sages are good in their general tendency, and in adaptation to the life of the time eminently practical. The defects and errors of Confucianism are, briefly stated, 'the production of a character which is essentially mundane in spirit, the development of the passive rather than of the active virtues, the suppression of individuality, and the evil effects of neglecting the study of nature.' The 'Great Learning,' Ta Hsüeh (or 'Learning for Adults,' 2,000 words), was, prior to Chü Hsi in the eleventh century, a section of the 'Book of Kites.' It discusses the duties and privileges of the princely or superior man, and has been styled a 'system of social perfectionating' or 'politico-ethical treatise.' Its authorship is unknown, but usually the first of its eleven chapters is attributed to Confucius, while the rest is due to the compilers, expanders and annotators through whose hands it has come. The portion supposed to have come directly from the master himself contains the following well-known climax:

The ancients, desiring to manifest great virtue throughout the empire, began with good government in their own states. For this, it was necessary first to order aright their own families, which in turn was preceded by