onious
names by which they are popularly known. Stripped of their disguise
they appear respectively as K'ung Fu-tse and Meng-tse. Exchanging
the _ore rotunda_ of Rome for the sibillation of China, they
never could have been naturalised as they are now.

CONFUCIUS

Born in the year 549 B. C., Confucius was contemporaneous with
Isaiah and Socrates. Of a respectable but not opulent family he
had to struggle for his
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education--a fact which in after years he was so far from concealing
that he ascribed to it much of his success in life. To one who
asked him, "How comes it that you are able to do so many things,"
he replied, "I was born poor and had to learn." His schoolmasters
are unknown; and it might be asked of him, as it was of a greater
than Confucius, "How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?"

Of his self-education, which continued through life, he gives the
following concise account: "At fifteen I entered on a life of study;
at thirty I took my stand as a scholar; at forty my opinions were
fixed; at fifty I knew how to judge and select; at sixty I never
relapsed into a known fault; at seventy I could follow my inclinations
without going wrong." Note how each stage marks an advance towards
moral excellence. Mark also that this passage gives an outline
of self-discipline. It says nothing of his books or of his work
as a statesman and a reformer.

He is said to have had, first and last, three thousand disciples.
Those longest under instruction numbered twelve. They studied, not
with lectures and textbooks, as in modern schools, but by following
his footsteps and taking the impress of his character, much as
Peter and John followed the steps and studied the life of Christ.
Some of them followed Confucius when, bent on effecting a political
as well as an ethical reform, he travelled from court to court
among the petty principalities. They have placed it on record that
once, when exposed to great peril, he comforted them by saying,
"If Heaven has made me the depositary of these teachings, what
can my enemies do against
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me?" Nobly conscious of a more than human mission, so pure were
his teachings that, though he taught morals, not religion, he might
fairly, with Socrates, be allowed to claim a sort of inspiration.

The one God, of whom he knew little, he called Heaven, and he always
spoke of Heaven with the profoundest reverence. When neglected or
misunderstood he consoled himself by