Page:The sayings of Confucius; a new translation of the greater part of the Confucian analects (IA sayingsofconfuci00confiala).pdf/30

 this alleged self-satisfaction in a peculiarly noticeable degree. For an answer to this question the reader may be referred to Tsêng Tzǔ's remarks on p. 128.

The truth is, though missionaries and other zealots have long attempted to obscure the fact, that the moral teaching of Confucius is absolutely the purest and least open to the charge of selfishness of any in the world. Its principles are neither utilitarian on the one hand nor religious on the other, that is to say, it is not based on the expectation of profit or happiness to be gained either in this world or in the next (though Confucius doubtless believed that well-being would as a general rule accompany virtuous conduct). "Virtue for virtue's sake" is the maxim which, if not enunciated by him in so many words, was evidently the corner-stone of his ethics and the mainspring of his own career. Not that he would have quite understood the modern formula, or that the idea of virtue being practised for anything but its own sake would ever have occurred to his mind. Virtue resting on anything but its own basis would not have seemed to him virtue in the true sense at all, but simply another name for prudence, foresight, or cunning. Yet material advantage, disguised as much as you will, but still material advantage in one form or another, is what impels most men to espouse any particular form of religion. Hence it is nothing less than