Page:The Spirit of the Chinese People.djvu/101

Rh this fine feeling, this good taste or sense of honour which made them see the soul of justice called Honour? This beautiful sentence of Joubert will explain it. Joubert says: "Les hommes no sont justes qu'envers ceux qu'ils aiment. Man cannot be truly just to his neighbour unless he loves him." Therefore the inspiration which made the man and woman see what Joubert calls true justice, the soul of justice called Honour, and thus enable them to discover the secret—the open secret of Goethe, the law of the gentleman of Coufucius—is Love—the love between the man and the woman which gave birth, so to speak, to the law of the gentleman; that secret, the possession of which has enabled mankind not only to build up society and civilisation, but also to establish religion—to find God. You can now understand Goethe's confession of faith which he puts into the mouth of Faust, beginning with the words:

Now, I told you that it is not the belief in God taught by religion, which makes men obey the rules of moral conduct. What really makes men obey the rules of moral conduct is the law of the gentleman—the Kingdom of Heaven within us—to which religion appeals. Therefore the law of the gentleman is really the life of religion, whereas the belief in God together with the rules of moral conduct which religion teaches, is only the body, so to speak, of religion. But if the life of religion is the law of the gentleman, the soul of