Page:The Spirit of the Chinese People.djvu/111

Rh nature of the Hebrew people. But Confucius himself lived under the dynasty of the House of Chow—a race of men who had the fine intellectual nature of the Greeks, a race of whom the Duke of Chou, the founder, as I told you, of the pre-Confucian religion or religion of the old dispensation in China was a true representative. Thus Confucius was, if I may use a comparison, a Hebrew by birth, with the strong emotional nature of the Hebrew race, who was trained in the best intellectual culture, who had all that which the best intellectual culture of the civilisation of the Greeks could give him. In fact, like the great Goethe in modern Europe, the great Goethe whom the people of Europe will one day recognise as the most perfect type of humanity, the real European which the civilisation of Europe has produced, as the Chinese have acknowledged Confucius to be the most perfect type of humanity, the real Chinaman, which the Chinese civilisation has produced—like the great Goethe, I say, Confucius was too educated and cultured a man to belong to the class of men called founders of religion. Indeed, even while he lived Confucius was not known to be what he was, except by his most intimate and immediate disciples.

The school in China, I say, the Church of the State religion of Confucius, does not awaken and kindle the inspiration or living emotion necessary to make men obey the rules of moral conduct by exciting and arousing the feeling and emotion of admiration, love, and enthusiasm for Confucius. But