The Crest-Wave Of Evolution Part 14

They asked him once if any single ideogram conveyed the whole law of life.--"Yes," he said; and gave them one compounded of two others, which means 'As heart':--the missionaries prefer to render it 'reciprocity.' His teaching--out of his own mouth we convict him--was the Doctrine of the Heart. He was for the glow in the heart always; not as against, but as the one true cause of, external right action. But the Heart doctrine cannot be defined in a set of rules and formulae; so he was always urging middle lines, common sense. That is the explanation of his famous answer when they asked him whether injuries should be repaid with kindness. What he said amounts to this: "For goodness sake, use common sense! I have given you 'as heart' for your rule."--We know Katherine Tingley's teaching: not one of us but has been helped and saved by it a thousand times. I can only say that, in the light of that, the more you study Confucius, the greater he seems; the more extraordinary the parallelisms you see between her method and his. Perhaps it is because his method has been so minutely recorded. We do not find here merely ethical precepts, or expositions of philosophic thought: what we see is a Teacher guiding and adjusting the lives of his disciples.

When he had been three years at Ts'ae, the King of Ts'u invited him to his court. Ts'u, you will remember, lay southward towards the Yangtse, and was, most of the time, one of the six Great Powers.* Here at last was something hopeful; and Confucius set out. But Ts'ae and Ch'in, though they had neglected him, had not done so through ignorance of his value; and were not disposed to see his wisdom added to the strength of Ts'u. They sent out a force to waylay him; which surrounded him in the wilderness and held him besieged but unmolested for seven days. Food ran out, and the Confucianists were so enfeebled at last that they could hardly stand. We do not hear that terms were offereed, as that they should turn back or go elsewhere: the intention seems to have been to make an end of Confucius and Confucianism altogether,--without bloodshed. Even Tse Lu was shaken.--"Is it for the Princely Man," said he, "to suffer the pinch of privation?"--"Privation may come his way," Confucius answered; "but only the vulgar grow reckless and demoralized under it." So saying he took his lute and sang to them, and hearing him they forgot to fear. Meanwhile one of the party had won through the lines, and brought word to Ts'u of the Master's plight; whereat the king sent a force to his relief, and came out from the capital to receive him in state. The king's intentions were good; but we have seen how his ministers intrigued and diverted them. In the autumn of that year he died, having become somewhat estranged from the Master. His successor was one from whom no good could be expected, and Confucius returned to Wei.

------- * _Ancient China Simplified:_ by Prof. E. Harper Parker; from which book the account of the political condition and divisions of the empire given in these lectures is drawn.

Duke Ling was dead, and his grandson, Chuh, was on the throne.

There had been a complication of family crimes plottings: Chuh had driven out his father, who in turn had attempted the life of his own mother, Nantse. Chuh wished to employ Confucius, but not to forgo his evil courses: it was a situation that could not be sanctioned. For six years the Master lived in retirement in Wei, watching events, and always sanguine that his chance would come.

He was not sixty-nine years old; but hoped to begin his life's work presently.

Then suddenly he was in demand,--in two quarters. There was a sort of civil war in Wei, and the chief of one of the factions came to him for advice as to the best means of attacking the other. Confucius was disgusted. Meanwhile Lu had been at war with Ts'i; and Yen Yu, a Confucianist, put in command of the Lu troops, had been winning all the victories in sight. Marquis Ting now slept with his fathers, and Marquis Gae reigned in his stead; also there was a new Chief of Clan Chi to run things:-- Gae to reign, Chi to rule. They asked Yen Yu where he had learned his so victorious generals.h.i.+p; and he answered, "from Confucius."--If a mere disciple could do so much, they thought, surely the Master himself could do much more: as, perhaps, lead the Lu armies to universal victory. So they sent him a cordial invitation, with no words as to the warlike views that prompted it. High in hope, Confucius set out; these fourteen years his native country had been pulling at his heart-strings, and latterly, more insistently than ever. But on his arrival he saw how the land lay. Chi consulted him about putting down brigandage: Chi being, as you might say, the arch-brigand of Lu.--"If you, Sir, were not avaricious," said Confucius, "though you offered men rewards for stealing, they would cleave to their honesty." There was nothing to be done with such men as these; he went into retirement, having much literary work to finish.

That was in 483.

In 482 his son Li died; and a year later Yen Huy, dearest of his disciples. We have seen how he gave way to grief. There is that strange mystery of the dual nature; even in Such a One. There is the human Personality that the Great Soul must work through.

He had performed his function; he had fulfilled his duty; all that he owed to the coming ages he had paid in full. But the evidence goes to show that he was still looking forward for a chance to begin, and that every disappointmtnt hurt the outward man of him: that it was telling on him: that it was a sad, a disappointed, even a heart-broken old man that wept over Yen Huy.--In 481, we read, a servant of the Chief of Clan Chi caught a strange one-horned aninial, with a white ribbon tied to its horn. None had seen the like of it; and Confucius, being the most learned of men, was called in to make p.r.o.nouncement. He recognised it at once from his mother's description: it was the _k'e-lin,_ the unicorn; that was the ribbon Chingtsai had decked it with in the cave on Mount Ne the night of his birth. He burst into tears. "For whom have you come?" he cried; "for whom have you come?" And then: "The course of my doctrine is run, and wisdom is still neglected, and success is still wors.h.i.+ped. My principles make no progress: how will it be in the after ages?"

--Ah, could he have know!--I mean, that old weary mind and body; the Soul which was Confucius knew.

Yen Huy, Tse Lu, and Tse Kung: those were the three whom he had loved and trusted most. Yen Huy was dead; Tse Lu, with Tse Kao, another disciple, he had left behind in Wei holding office under the duke. Now news came that a revolution had broken out there.

"Tse Kao will return," said he; "but Tse Lu will die." So it fell. Tse Kao, finding the duke's cause hopeless, made his escape; but Tse Lu fought the forlorn hope to the end, and died like a hero. Only Tse Kung, of the three, was left to him. Who one morning, when he went to the Master's house, found him walking to and fro before the door crooning over this verse:

"The great mountain must crumble, The strong beam must break.

The wise man must wither like a flower."

Heavy-hearted, Tse Kung followed him in.--"What makes you so late?" said Confucius; and then: "According to the rites of Hia, the dead lay in state at the top of the eastern steps, as if he were the host. Under the Shangs, it was between the two pillars he lay, as if he were both host and guest. The rite of the Chows is for him to lie at the top of the western steps, as if he were the guest. I am a man of Shang,"--it will be remembered that he was descended from that royal house; "and last night I dreamed that I was sitting between the pillars, with offerings set out before me. No intelligent monarch arises; no prince will make me his teacher. My time has come to die."--That day he took to his bed; his pa.s.sing was a week later.

On the banks of the Sze his disciples buried him; and for three years mourned at his grave. But Tse Kung built himself a cabin at the graveside, and remained there three years longer. "All my life," said he, "I have had heaven above my head, but I do not know its height. I have had earth beneath my feet, but I have not known its magnitude. I served Confucius: I was like a thirsty man going with his pitcher to the river. I drank my fill, but I never knew the depth of the water."

And Tse Kung was right; and what he felt then, one feels now.

You read Boswell, and have your Johnson in the hollow of your hand: body, soul, and spirit: higher triad and lower quaternary. Of Confucius we have a picture in some respects even more detailed than Boswell's of Johnson; but when we have said everything, we still feel that nothing has been said. Boswell lets you in through his master's church-door; shows you nave and aisle, vault and vestry; climbs with you to the belfry; stands with you at the altar and in the pulpit; till you have seen everything there is to see. But with Confucius as with every Adept the case is quite different. "The Master's wall is fathomless," said Tse Kung; but he and the other disciples took care that China at least should find the gate of entry; and it is still possible for us to go in, and "see the beauty of the temple, the richness of the robes of the officiating priests." You go through everything; see him under all sorts of circ.u.mstances; and ask at last: "Is this all?"--No, says your guide; "see here!" and flings one last door open. And that, like the door in Lord Dunsaney's play, opens on to the vastness of the stars. What is it that baffles us and remains undefined and undefinable? Just this: TAO: the Infinite Nature. You can survey the earth, and measure it with chains; but not s.p.a.ce, in which a billion leagues is nowise different from an inch or two, --it bears the same proportion to the whole.

There was his infinite trust;--and his unbroken silence as to the Things he trusted in. Time and the world went proving to him year by year that his theories were all impracticable, all wrong; that he was a failure; that there was not anything for him to do, and never would be a chance for him to do it;--and all their arguments, all the sheer dreadful tyranny of fact, had no weight with him at all: he went on and on. What was his sword of strength? Where were the Allies in whom he trusted? How dared he pit K'ung Ch'iu of Lu against time and the world and me?--The Unseen was with him, and the Silence; and he (perhaps) lifted no veil from the Unseen, and kept silent as to the silence;--and yet maintained his Movement, and held his disciples together, and saved his people,--as if he himself had been the Unseen made visible, and the Silence given a voice to speak.

And with it all there was the human man who suffered. I think you will love him the more for this, from the _a.n.a.lects:_

"The Minister said to Tse Lu, Tseng Hsi, Jan Yu, and Kung-hsi Hua as they sat beside him: 'I may be a day older than you are, but forget that. You are wont to say, "We are unknown." Well; had ye a name in the world, what would ye do?'"

"Tse Lu answered lightly: 'Give me charge of a land of a thousand chariots, crushed between great neighbors, overrun by soldiery and oppressed by famine; in three years' time I should have put courage and high purpose into the people.'"

"The Master smiled,--'What wouldst thou do, Ch'iu?' he said."

"Jan Yu answered: 'Had I charge of sixty or seventy square miles, or from fifty to sixty, in three years' time I would give the people plenty. As for courtesy, music and the like, they could wait for these for the rise of a Princely Man.'"

"'And what wouldst thou do, Chih?' said the Master."

"Kung-hsi Hua answered: 'I would speak of the things I fain would learn, not of what I can do. At service in the Ancestral Temple, or at the Grand Audience, clad in black robe and cap, I fain would fill a small part.'"

"'And thou, Tien?' said the Master."

"Tseng Hsi stopped playing, pushed away his still sounding lute, rose up, and made answer: 'My choice would be unlike those of the other three.'"

"'What harm in that?' said the Master. 'Each but speaks his mind.'"

"Tseng Hsi said: 'In the last days of Spring, and clad for the season, with five or six grown men and six or seven lads, I would bathe in the waters of Yi, all fanned by the breeze in the Rain G.o.d's Glade, and wander home with song.'"

"The Master sighed.--'I hold with Tien,' said he."

Very, very human, I say; very Chinese. But here is that which was not human but divine: he never turned from his path to satisfy these so human and Chinese longings; the breeze in the Rain G.o.d's Glade never blew for him. It is just as well to remember, when you read of the ceremonies, the body bent under the load of the scepter, the carefully chosen (as it may seem) and habitually worn expression of face on pa.s.sing or approaching the throne, the "elbows spread like wings":--all the formal round of proprieties;--that it was the last days of Spring, and the waters of Yi, and the breeze in the Rain G.o.d's Glade, that were calling to his Chinese heart.

Yes; he was very human; listen to this:--Yuan Jang awaited the Master squatting on the ground. "The Master said:--'Unruly when young, unmentioned as man, undying when old,--this spells _Good-for-nothing';_ and hit him on the leg with his staff."

Which brings one naturally to his sense of humor.

Once he was pa.s.sing through a by-street when a man of the district shouted:--"Great is Confucius the Philosopher! Yet for all his wide learning he has nothing which can bring him fame!"

The Master turned to his disciples and said:--"What shall I take up? Shall I take up charioteering?--or archery?--I must certainly take up charioteering!"

His disciples once were expecting him at the city of Ch'ing; and Tse Kung asked a man who was coming from the east gate if he had seen him there.--"Well," said the man, "there is a man there with a forehead like Yao, a neck like Kao Yao, his shoulders on a level with those of Tse-ch'an, but wanting below the waist three inches of the height of Yu;--and altogether having the forsaken appearance of a stray dog." Tse Kung recognised the description and hurried off to meet the Master, to whom he reported it _verbatim._ Confucius was hugely delighted. "A stray dog!" said he; "fine! fine!" Unluckily, no contemporary photographs of Yao and Yu and the others have come down; so the description is not as enlightening now as it may have been then.

"Tse Kung," we read, "would compare one man with another." The Master said:--"What talents Tse has! Now I have no time for such things!"

I keep on hearing in his words accents that sound familiar.

When he was at Loyang--Honanfu--one of the things that struck him most was a bronze statue in the Temple of the Imperial Ancestors, with a triple, clasp on its mouth. One does not wonder. A Great Soul from the G.o.d World, he kept his eyes resolutely on the world of men; as if he remembered, nothing of the splendor, and nothing foresaw. . . . Indeed, I cannot tell; one would give much to know what really pa.s.sed between him and Laotse. If you say that no word of his lightens, for you that 'dusk within the Holy of holies',--at least he gives you the keys, and leaves you to find and open the 'Holy of holies' for yourself if you can.

There are lost chapters, that went at the Burning of the Books; and an old-fas.h.i.+oned Chinaman would often tell you of any Western idea or invention his countrymen may not have known, that you should have found all in the lost chapters of Confucius. It may be;--and that you should have found there better things, too, than Western ideas and inventions. There is a pa.s.sage in the _a.n.a.lects_ that tells how the disciples thought he was 'keeping back from them some part of his doctrine: "No, no," he answered; "if I should not give it all to you, to whom should I give it?" Distinctly, then, this suggests that there was an esotericism, a side not made public; and there is no reason to suppose that it has been made public since. But it is recorded that he would lift no veils from the Other-worlds. "If you do not understand life," said he, "how can you understand death?"

Well; we who are stranded here, each on his desert island of selfhood, thrust out after knowledge: peer for signs at all the horizons;--are eager to inquire, and avid of the Unknown--which also we imagine to be something outside of our own being. But suppose a man, as they say one with Tao, in which all knowledge rests in solution: what knowledge would he desire? After what would he be inquisitive? And how much, desiring it, would he possess? What is the end of being, after all? To perform your function, your duty; what men and the world,--ay, and the far suns and stars,--are requiring of you:--that is all. Not to gain infinite knowledge; but to have at, every step what knowledge you need; that so you may fill your place in the Universe, meeting all contours and flowing into them; restoring and maintaining the Harmony of Things. So we hear much about this performance of duty. But in reality, to do one's duty is to sing with the singing spheres; to have the Top of Infinity for the roof of one's skull, and the bottom of the Great Deep for one's footsoles: to be a compendium, and the Equal, of Heaven and Earth. The pa.s.sword into the Tao of Laotse is Silence; Confucius kept the great Silence more wonderfully than Laotse did--or so it seems to me now. Laotse said: _Sing with the singing spheres, and behold, your duty is doing itself uder your hands._ The pa.s.sword into the Tao of Confucius is _Duty:_ he said merely _Do that, and,_--the rest is silence. He may have played that _rest_ on his lute; we are not to hear it in his words. There was a knowledge that Laotse, enthroned in his silence, had no means of using; that Confucius riding the chariot of duty, had no occasion to possess.

Now whether you call Tao _duty,_ or _silence,_--what should the Man of Tao desire beyond the fulness of it? All the light is there for him; all the suns are kindled for him;--why should he light wax candles? That is, for himself: he will light them fast enough where others may be in need. To us, a great poem may be a great thing: but to them who have the fulness of which the greatest poem is but a little glimpse--what should it matter to them? And of the infinite knowledge at his disposal, would the Man of Tao choose to burden himself with one little item of which there was no present need?

So when they say, "Confucius was n.o.body; there is no evidence that he knew the great secrets"; answer them:--"Yes, there is.

He knew that supreme secret, how to _teach,_ which is the office of a Teacher: he knew how to build up the inner life of his disciples; to coax, train, lure the hidden G.o.d into manifestation in them." And for evidence you can give them this: Tse Kung--who, you remember, was always comparing this man with that--asked which was the better, s.h.i.+h or Shang. (They were two disciples.) Confucius answered: "s.h.i.+h goes too far; Shang not far enough." Said Tse Kung (just as you or I would have done):-- "Then s.h.i.+h is the better man?"--"Too far," replied Confucius, "is not better than not far enough."--To my ears there is more occultism in that than in a thousand ethical injunctions.--Or answered;--"Whilst thy father and they elder brother are alive, how canst thou do all thou art taught?" Jan Yu said:--"Shall I do all I am taught?" The Master said:--"Do all thou art taught."

Kung-hsi Hua said: "Yu asked, 'Shall I do all I am taught?'

and you spoke, Sir, of father and elder brother. Ch'iu asked, 'Shall I do all I am taught?' and you answered: 'Do all thou art taught.' I am puzzled, and make bold to ask you, Sir." The Master said:--"Ch'iu is bashful, so I egged him on. Yu has the pluck of two, so I held him back."

Think it over! Think it over!

This though occurs to me: Was that sadness of his last days caused by the knowledge that the School could not continue after his death; because the one man who might have succeeded him as the Teacher, Yen Huy, was dead? So far as I know, it did not go on; there was no one to succeed him. That supreme success, that grand capture of future ages for the G.o.ds, was denied him; or I daresay our own civilization might have been Confucian--BALANCED --now. But short of that--how sublime a figure he stands! If he had known that for twenty-five centuries or so he was to s.h.i.+ne within the vision of the great unthinking ma.s.ses of his countrymen as their supreme example; their anchor against the tides of error, against abnormalities, extravagances, unbalance; a bulwark against invading time and decay; a check on every bad emperor, so far as check might be set at all; a central idea to mold the hundred races of Chu Hia into h.o.m.ogeneity; a stay, a prop, a warning against headlong courses at all times of cyclic downtrend;--if he had known all this, he would, I think, have ordered his life precisely as he did. Is there no strength implied, as of the Universal, and not of any personal, will, however t.i.tanic, in the fact that moment after moment, day after day, year after year, he built up this picture, gave the world this wonderful a.s.surance of a man? In his omissions, no less than in his fulfilments. He taught,--so far as we know,--nothing but what the common mind might easily accept; nothing to miss the mark of the intelligence of dull Li or Ching toiling in the rice-field;--nor yet too paltry for the notice of the Hw.a.n.gti on the Dragon Throne. Laotse had come in the spirit of Plenydd the Light-bringer; in the spirit of Alawn, to raise up presently sweet profusions of song. He illuminated the inner worlds; his was the urge that should again and again, especially later when reinforced by Buddhism, p.r.i.c.k up the Black-haired People to heights of insight and spiritual achievement.--But the cycles of insight and spiritual achievement, these too, must always run their course and fall away; there is no year when it is always Spring. Dark moments and seasons come; and the Spirit becomes hidden; and what you need most is not illumination,--which you cannot get; or if you could, it would be h.e.l.l, and not heaven, that would be illuminated for you; not a spur to action,--for as things are const.i.tuted, any spur at such a time would drive you to wrong and exorbitant action:--what you need is not these, but simply stability to hold on; simply the habit of propriety, the power to go on at least following harmless conventions and doing harmless things; not striking out new lines for yourself, which would certainly be wrong lines, but following as placidly as may be lines that were laid down for you, or that you yourself laid down, in more righteous and more luminous times. A strong government, however tyrannical, is better than an anarchy in which the fiend in every man is let loose to run amuck. Under the tyranny, yes, the aspiring man will find himself hindered and thwarted; but under the anarchy, since man is no less h.e.l.l than heaven, the gates of h.e.l.l will be opened, and the Soul, normally speaking, can only retire and wait for better times:--unless it be the Soul of a Confucius, it can but wait till Karma with ruthless hands has put down the anarchy and cleared things up.

Unless it be the Soul of a Confucius; and even Such a One is bound to be a failure in his own day.

But see what he did. The gates of h.e.l.l were swung wide, and for the time being, not the hosts of the Seraphim and Cherubim,--not the armed Bodhisatvas and Dhyanis,--could have forced them back on their hinges: "the ripple of effect," we read, "thou shalt let run its course." But in the ideal world he erected a barrier against them. He set up a colossal statue with arms outthrown to bar the egress; the statue of Confucius preaching the Balanced Life. With time it materialized, so to say, and fell into place.

You can never certainly stop the gates of h.e.l.l,--in this stage of our evolution. But perhaps as nearly as it can be done, he did it. Rome fell, and Christendom made a mess of things; it has never yet achieved that union which is the first condition of true civilization. But China, older than Rome, despite her sins and vicissitudes, has made a s.h.i.+ft to stand. I shall come to comparing the two histories presently; then you will see.

When the pralaya came on her, and the forces of life all went elsewhere--as they do and must from every civilization in their season,--China lost two of her treasures: Plenydd's vision, and Alawn's gift of song, were taken from her. But this stability; these Gloves of Gwron; this instinct for middle courses and the balance, this Doctrine of the Mean and love of plain sane doings: she has retained enough of this to keep her in being. And it was K'ung Ch'iu of Lu that gave it to her. Shall we not call him Such a One as only the G.o.ds send?

Someone told me the other day what he had seen a couple of Chinamen do in a Californian garden. They had a flower-bed to plant, about forty feet long; and each a basket of seedlings to plant it with, and a slip of wood for a model, with mystic unintelligible signs inscribed thereon: WELCOME HOME in English capitals. One went to one end of the bed and the other to the other, and they began their planting. They made no measurements or calculations; used no rod or line; but just worked ahead till they met in the middle. When that happened, and the job was done, the bed was inscribed, in perfectly formed and proportioned English capitals made of young plants, WELCOME HOME. There was no crowding or omission. To account for it you have twenty-four centuries of Confucianism,--of Katherine Tingley's doctrine of Middle Lines, the Balanced Life.

It is a very small thing; but it may help us to understand.