CONFUCIUS, Kung-fu-tze, was born B.C. 551 in Tsow, a district of the province of Shan tung. He died in the year 479 B.C., at the age of 72 or 73. He was of a ducal house, descended from a brother of Chow, the last sovereign of the Yin dynasty. His father, Shuh-leang-heih, was a soldier of great bravery ; and Confucius was the child of a second marriage when he was upwards of seventy years of age.—Gray, p.76. Confucius married when nineteen years of age. He was almost contemporary with Pythagoras, Thales, Solon, Buddha, and Herodotus, in an epoch of philosophical and literary activity equally im portant for the west, which commenced with Pythagoras, ELB contemporary of Confucius, em braced Zeno, Empedocles, Herodotus, Thucydides, Socrates, and Plato, and ended with Aristotle, who died about the Ramo time a-s the Mencius (Mang-taze) of the Chinese. Confucius devoted himself to reducing the traditions and rough records of antiquity into a perfect form, and he sue,ceeded before his death in compiling and editing the five King,—tivo canonical books which are reverenced as embodying the truth, upon the highest subjects, from those whom they venerate as holy and a ise men. Ile was the founder of the school of philosophy in China, which contains in junctions as 40 conduct, and may be termed the moral code of China, in which learning (Wen), courtesy, good-breeding, and propriety (Li), doing as you would be done by (Situ), sincerity in wor ship of the deity (Tien), are everywhere incul cated, and form a recognised state religion. Every word he uttered has become in China a maxim, a proverb, and an aphorism ; and in the fact that his language is intelligible to every Chinaman at the present day, his inculcations are of greater power than any in the Latin or tho Greek, both of which are unknown to their descendants. Once he was asked whether there were ono word which repre sented all the duties of life, he answered Shu,' a word which Confucius and his cotnmentators have explained to mean, As I would not that others should injure me, so would I not injure them also.' And, certainly, to seek the good of others equally with your own, is to fill a large portion of the field of virtue. The number of his disciples was about 3000, of whom about 72 were his more intimate associates. All his tetehing consists of a few simple words. One of his aphorisms, Chu chung sin,' verbally, 'Head, faithful, sincere,' mean that fidelity and sincerity are the paramount or primary virtues. Another is that Wen and Li make up the whole sum of human excellences. Another, Lnn pi," Judge others indulgently, yourself severely.' Confucius was a sage and a statesman. Ile and Lao-tsze were contemporaries, and Lao-tsze was the founder of the Taoist or Reason Sect,. But Lao tsze was an ascetic, who discouraged acceptance of public employments. He made reason the groundwork of his doctrines, and they have much to recommend them ; but his teachings have merged into gross idolatrous rites, the study of astrology and necromancy, fanatical observances, self-inflic tions, such as dancing in flames, mutilating the body, practising abstinence and seclusion.
Among other celebrated literary labours under taken by Confucius in B.C. 490 and the following year; he edited the Yih-king, and appended those annotations which have given the work its subse quent value. What philosophical views may have been attached to the Yili-king of 1Van-wang and Chou-kung by the contemporaries of Confucius, we know not. That work, together with the other three works edited or compiled by Confucius, viz. the Shu-king and the Le-ke, constitute the whole of the ancient literature of China which has come down to posterity, and who have it only, as it was explained, arranged or modified in passing through his hands. It is well known that ho expressly repudiated portions of it, as containing doctrines adverse to the views which he held and strove to diffuse. The names only of some celebrated ancient books, ono dating from the times of Fuh-ho him self, have been preserved. It is these circum stances which constitute the labours of Confucius the commencement of a distinct literary epoch. Apart from the labours of Confucius himself, the permanent literary results of this, the ftrst of the two great philosophic or literary epochs of China, are contained in tho collection of works called the Four Books, composed by different members of the school which he founded. The last contains a record of the ethical and political teachings of Mencius (Mang-taze), a philosopher who died in B.c. 317, and closed the first epoch. The Chinese people are in nowise prohibited from worshipping in the Buddhist and Taoist temples ; in lathe/ words, they may regulate their purely religious life by the tenets of these, or indeed of any othet sect. But where Taoism or Buddhism would leave the region of religion, and, in the form of philo sophy or morality, extend their direct influence into the domain of the social science and art, there Confucianism peremptorily and effectually prohibits their action. Not only are the national legislation and administration formed exclusively on Confucian principles ; it is by them also that the more important acts of the private life of the Chinese are regulated, as for instance marriages. The cause of the prevalence of Mahomedanism in China in spite of discouragements, lies in the fact thakonfucianism says little or nothing of a supernatural world or of a future existence. Hence it leaves almost unsatisfied those ineradicable crav ings of human nature, the desire to revere, and the lonaing for immortal life. That it has, not withstanding its want of these holds on the human heart, maintained itself not simply in existence, but as the ruling system, is a fact that must, as soon as it is perceived, form for every true thinker a decisive proof of the existence of great and vital truths in its theories, as well as thorough sound ness and wholesomeness in the practical rules which it dictates. By Chinese philosophy must be understood Confucian philosophy, and by Chinese morality the moral principles rooted in that philosophy.