Before him there was no Confucius,
Since him there was no other.
Confucius! Confucius!
Great was our Confucius!

The praise given by these early Jesuits to Confucius was at first
regarded at Rome as apology for the meager success of their
ministrations. But later scientific study of Chinese literature
corroborated all that the Jesuit Fathers proclaimed for Confucius, and
he stands today in a class with Socrates and the scant half-dozen whom
we call the saviors of the world.

Yet Confucius claimed no "divine revelation," nor did he seek to found a
religion. He was simply a teacher, and what he taught was the science of
living--living in the present, with the plain and simple men and women
who make up the world, and bettering our condition by bettering theirs.
Of a future life he said he knew nothing, and concerning the
supernatural he was silent, even rebuking his disciples for trying to
pry into the secrets of Heaven. The word "God" he does not use, but his
recognition of a Supreme Intelligence is limited to the use of a word
which can best be translated "Heaven," since it tokens a place more than
it does a person. Constantly he speaks of "doing the will of Heaven."
And then he goes on to say that "Heaven is speaking through you," "Duty
lies in mirroring Heaven in our acts," and many other such New-Thought
aphorisms or epigrams.

That the man was a consummate literary stylist is beyond doubt. He spoke
in parables and maxims, short, brief and musical. He wrote for his ear,
and always his desire, it seems, was to convey the greatest truth in the
fewest words. The Chinese, even the lowly and uneducated, know hundreds
of Confucian epigrams, and still repeat them in their daily conversation
or in writing, just as educated Englishmen use the Bible and Shakespeare
for symbol.

Minister Wu, in a lecture delivered in various American cities, compared
Confucius with Emerson, showing how in many ways these two great
prophets paralleled each other. Emerson, of all Americans, seems the
only man worthy of being so compared.

The writer who lives is the man who supplies the world with portable
wisdom--short, sharp, pithy maxims which it can remember, or, better
still, which it can not forget.

Confucius said, "Every truth has four corners: as a teacher I give you
one corner, and it is for you to find the other three."

The true artist in words or things is always more or less
impressionistic--he talks in parables, and