Page:The Spirit of the Chinese People.djvu/110

64 in men are different from those of the Church of the Church religion in other countries. The school, the Church of the State religion of Confucius in China, does not awaken and kindle this inspiration or living emotion in men by exciting and arousing the feeling of unbounded admiration, love, and enthusiasm for Confucius. Confucius in his lifetime did indeed inspire in his immediate disciples a feeling and emotion of unbounded admiration, love, and enthusiasm, and, after his death, has inspired the same feeling and emotion in all great men who have studied and understood him. But Confucius even while he lived did not inspire, and, after his death, has not inspired in the mass of mankind the same feeling and emotion of admiration, love, and enthusiasm which the founders of all the great religions in the world, as we know, have inspired. The mass of the population in China do not adore and worship Confucius as the mass of the population in Mohammedan countries adore and worship Mohammed, or as the mass of the population in European countries adore and worship Jesus Christ. In this respect Confucius does not belong to the class of men called founders of a religion. In order to be a founder of a religion in the European sense of the word, a man must have an exceptionally or even an abnormally strong emotional nature. Confucius indeed was descended from a race of kings, the house of Shang, the dynsstydynasty [sic] which ruled over China before the dynasty under which Confucius lived—a race of men who had the strong emotional