e of another, but it falls short of that active charity
which has changed the face of the world.

It were easy to point out Confucius' limitations and mistakes; yet
on the whole his merits were such that his people can hardly be
blamed for the exaggerated honours which they show to his memory.
They style him the "model teacher of all ages," but they do not
invoke him as a tutelary deity, nor do they represent
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him by an image. Excessively honorific, their worship of Confucius
is not idolatry.

MENCIUS

A hundred years later Mencius was born, and received his doctrine
through the grandson of the Sage. More eloquent than his great
master, more bold in rebuking the vices of princes, he was less
original. One specimen of his teaching must suffice. One of the
princes asking him, "How do you know that I have it in me to become
a good ruler?" he replied, "I am told that, seeing the extreme
terror of an ox that was being led to the altar, you released it
and commanded a sheep to be offered in its stead. The ox was before
your eyes and you pitied it; the sheep was not before your eyes
and you had no pity on it. Now with such a heart if you would only
think of your people, so as to bring them before your eyes, you
might become the best of rulers."

Mencius lost his father in his infancy, but his mother showed rare
good sense in the bringing up of her only child. Living near a
butcher, she noticed that the boy mimicked the cries of the pigs.
She then removed to the gate of a cemetery; but, noticing that the
child changed his tune and mocked the wailing of mourners, she
struck her tent and took up her abode near a high school. There
she observed with joy that he learned the manners and acquired the
tastes of a student. Perceiving, however, that he was in danger
of becoming lazy and dilatory, she cut the warp of her web and
said, "My son, this is what you are doing with the web of life."

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The tomb of each of these sages is in the keeping of one of his
descendants, who enjoys the emoluments of a hereditary noble. Mencius
himself says of the master whom he never saw, "Since men were born
on earth there has been no man like Confucius."

LAO-TSE

I cannot close this chapter without a word or two on Lao-tse, the
founder of Taoism. He bore the family name of _Li_, "plum-tree,"
either from the fact that his cottage was in a garden or possibly
because, like the Academics, he placed his school in a grove of