Page:The sayings of Confucius; a new translation of the greater part of the Confucian analects (IA sayingsofconfuci00confiala).pdf/32

 runner of Comte in his positivist mode of thought.

His whole system is based on nothing more nor less than the knowledge of human nature. The instincts of man are social and therefore fundamentally good, while egoism is at bottom an artificial product and evil. Hence the insistence on altruism which we find in the sayings of Confucius, the injunction to "act socially," to live for others in living for oneself.

The most important word in the Confucian vocabulary is jên, which in the following extracts is translated "virtue" only for want of a better term. Our English word "virtue" has so many different shades of meaning and is withal so vague, that in using it, the idea of altruism is often hardly present to our mind. But in jên the implication of "social good" emerges much more distinctly. Its connotation has no doubt extended gradually until it seems often to be rather a compendium of all goodness than any one virtue in particular. But this development only means that the word is following in the track of the thing itself. For let a man be but thoroughly imbued with the altruistic spirit, and he may be termed "good" without qualification, since all other virtues tend to flow from unselfishness.

The Confucian theory of man's social obligations rests first and foremost on the fact that he forms part of a great social machine—an aggre-