Page:The Spirit of the Chinese People.djvu/70

24 prevent, thought he would save the drawings and plans, and he accordingly saved the drawings and plans of the Chinese civilisation, which are now preserved in the Old Testament of the Chinese Bible—the five Canonical Books known as the Wu Ching, five Canons. That, I say, was a great service which Confucius has done for the Chinese nation—he saved the drawings and plans of their civilisation for them.

Confucius, I say, when he saved the drawings and plans of the Chinese civilisation, did a great service for the Chinese nation. But that is not the principal, the greatest service which Confucius has done for the Chinese nation. The greatest service he did was that, in saving the drawings and plans of their civilisation, he made a new synthesis, a new interpretation of the plans of that civilisation, and in that new synthesis he gave the Chinese people the true idea of a State—a true, rational, permanent, absolute basis of a State.

But then Plato and Aristotle in ancient times, and Rousseau and Herbert Spencer in modern times also made a synthesis of civilisation, and tried to give a true idea of a State. Now what is the difference between the philosophy, the synthesis of civilisation made by the great men of Europe I have mentioned, and the synthesis of civilisation—the system of philosophy and morality now known as Confucianism? The difference, it seems to me, is this. The philosophy of Plato and Aristotle and of Herbert Spencer has not become a religion or the equivalent of a religion, the