Page:The sayings of Confucius; a new translation of the greater part of the Confucian analects (IA sayingsofconfuci00confiala).pdf/27

 read there, was uniformly cheerful in demeanour, and he evidently unbent to quite an unusual extent with his disciples, considering the respect and deference universally shown to age and learning in China. Is it at all conceivable that a man of cold and unlovable temper should have attracted round him hundreds of disciples, with many of whom he was on terms of most intimate intercourse, meeting them not only in the lecture-room, as modern professors meet their classes, but living with them, eating, drinking, sleeping and conversing with them, until all their idiosyncrasies, good or bad, were better known to him than to their own parents? Is it explicable, except on the ground of deep personal affection, that he should have been followed into exile by a faithful band of disciples, not one of whom is known ever to have deserted or turned against him? Is coldness to be predicated of the man who in his old age, for once losing something of his habitual self-control, wept passionately for the death of his dearly loved disciple Yen Hui, and would not be comforted?

But it has been reserved for the latest English translator of the Analects, the Rev. Mr. Jennings, to level some of the worst charges at his head. To begin with, he approvingly quotes, as Legge's final opinion on Confucius, words occurring in the earliest edition of the Chinese Classics to the effect that he is "unable to regard him as a great