o attracted
these scholars to their side, employed them as tutors for their
children, and entrusted them with the conduct of sacrifices and
festivals.

China's best-known philosopher, Confucius (Chinese: K'ung Tzu), was one
of these scholars. He was born in 551 B.C. in the feudal state Lu in the
present province of Shantung. In Lu and its neighbouring state Sung,
institutions of the Shang had remained strong; both states regarded
themselves as legitimate heirs of Shang culture, and many traces of
Shang culture can be seen in Confucius's political and ethical ideas. He
acquired the knowledge which a scholar had to possess, and then taught
in the families of nobles, also helping in the administration of their
properties. He made several attempts to obtain advancement, either in
vain or with only a short term of employment ending in dismissal. Thus
his career was a continuing pilgrimage from one noble to another, from
one feudal lord to another, accompanied by a few young men, sons of
scholars, who were partly his pupils and partly his servants. Many of
these disciples seem to have been "illegitimate" sons of noblemen, i.e.
sons of concubines, and Confucius's own family seems to have been of the
same origin. In the strongly patriarchal and patrilinear system of the
Chou and the developing primogeniture, children of secondary wives had a
lower social status. Ultimately Confucius gave up his wanderings,
settled in his home town of Lu, and there taught his disciples until his
death in 479 B.C.

Such was briefly the life of Confucius. His enemies claim that he was a
political intriguer, inciting the feudal lords against each other in the
course of his wanderings from one state to another, with the intention
of somewhere coming into power himself. There may, indeed, be some truth
in that.

Confucius's importance lies in the fact that he systematized a body of
ideas, not of his own creation, and communicated it to a circle of
disciples. His teachings were later set down in writing and formed,
right down to the twentieth century, the moral code of the upper classes
of China. Confucius was fully conscious of his membership of a social
class whose existence was tied to that of the feudal lords. With their
disappearance, his type of scholar would become superfluous. The common
people, the lower class, was in his view in an entirely subordinate
position. Thus his moral teaching is a code for the ruling class.
Accordingly it retai