ing the truth, in the
same way that they have found mercantile honesty to be unquestionably
the best policy, and that trade is next to impossible without it. But
to argue, as many do, that China is wanting in morality, because she
has adopted a different standard of right and wrong from our own, is,
_mutato nomine_, one of the most ridiculous traits in the character of
the Chinese themselves. They regard us as culpable in the highest
degree because our young men choose their own partners, marry, and set
up establishments for themselves, instead of bringing their wives to
tend their aged parents, and live all together in harmony beneath the
paternal roof. We are superior to the Chinese in our utter abhorrence
of falsehood: in the practice of filial piety they beat us out of the
field. "Spartan virtue" is a household word amongst us, but Sparta's
claims to pre-eminence certainly do not rest upon her children's love
either for honesty or for truth. The profoundest thinker of the
nineteenth century has said that insufficient truthfulness "does more
than any one thing that can be named to keep back civilisation,
virtue, everything on which human happiness, on the largest scale,
depends"--an abstract proposition which cannot be too carefully
studied in connection with the present state of public morality in
China, and the general welfare of the people. Dr Legge, however, whose
logical are apparently in an inverse ratio to his linguistic powers,
rushes wildly into the concrete, and declares that every falsehood
told in China may be traced to the example of Confucius himself. He
acknowledges that "many sayings might be quoted from him, in which
'sincerity' is celebrated as highly and demanded as stringently as
ever it has been by any Christian moralist," yet, on the strength of
two passages in the Analects, and another in the "Family Sayings," he
does not hesitate to say that "the example of him to whom they bow
down as the best and wisest of men, encourages them to act, to
dissemble, to sin." And what are these passages? In the first,
Confucius applauds the modesty of an officer who, after boldly
bringing up the rear on the occasion of a retreat, refused all praise
for his gallant behaviour, attributing his position rather to the
slowness of his horse. In the second, an unwelcome visitor calling on
Confucius, the Master sent out to say he was sick, at the same time
seizing his harpsichord and singing to it, "in order that Pei m