tesy and politeness, these
the most outward expression of it. On these too Confucius
insisted which is the very worst you can say about him.--Now, the
ruler stands between Gods and men; let his _li_ be perfect--let
the forces of heaven flow through him unimpeded,--and the people
are regenerated day by day: the government is by regeneration.
Here lies the secret of all his insistence on loyalty and
filial piety: the regeneration of society is dependent on the
maintenance of the natural relation between the Ruler who rules--
that is, lets the _li_ of heaven flow through him--and his
people. They are to maintain such an attitude towards him as
will enable them to receive the _li._ In the family, he is the
father; in the state, he is the king. In very truth, this is
the Doctrine of the Golden Age, and proof of the profound occult
wisdom of Confucius: even the (comparatively) little of it that
was ever made practical lifted China to the grand height she has
held. It is hinted at in the _Bhagavad-Gita:_--"whatsoever is
practised by the most excellent men"; again, it is the Aryan
doctrine of the Guruparampara Chain. The whole idea is so remote
from modern practice and theory that it must seem to the west
utopian, even absurd; but we have Asoka's reign in India, and
Confucius's Ministry in Lu, to prove its basic truth. During
that Ministry he had flashed the picture of such a ruler
on to the screen of time: and it was enough. China could
never forget.

But if, knowing it to have been enough,--knowing that the hour of
the Open Door had passed, and that he should never see success
again,--he had then and there retired into private life, content
to teach his disciples and leave the stubborn world to save or
damn itself:--enough it would not have been. He had flashed the
picture on to the screen of time, but it would have faded.
Twenty years of wandering, of indomitability, of disappointment
and of ignoring defeat and failure, lay before him: in which to
make his creation, not a momentary picture, but a carving in jade
and granite and adamant. It is not the ever-victorious and
successful that we take into the adyta of our hearts. It is the
poignancy of heroism still heroism in defeat,--

"unchanged, though fallen on evil years,"

--that wins admittance there. Someone sneered at Confucius, in his
latter years, as the man who was always trying to do the
impossible. He was; and the sneerer had no idea what