112 The provisions read: “If a man aid a male or female slave of the palace, or a male or female slave of a freeman to escape from the city gate, he shall be put to death.”

“If a man harbor in his home a male or female slave who has fled from the palace or from a freeman, and do not bring him [the slave] forth at the call of the commandant, the owner of that house shall be put to death” (Code, secs. 15, 16).

113 Maspero, The Dawn of Civilization, p. 744.

114 Taylor, Ancient Ideals (1896), vol. i, p. 41.

115 Records of the Past, New Series, vol. ii, pp. 143 ff.

116 “The white man has no doubt committed great barbarities upon the savage, but he does not like to speak of them, and when necessity compels a reference he has always something to say of manifest destiny, the advance of civilization and the duty of shouldering the white man’s burden in which he pays tribute to a higher ethical conscience” (Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution (1906), vol. i, p. 27). King Leopold may have been responsible for barbarities committed against the natives of the Kongo as atrocious as those of the Assyrians, but he paid tribute to the modern conscience by refraining from portraying them in imperishable marble at The Hague.

117 Cf. Martin, The Lore of Cathay (1901), p. 226.

118 Though the people are shut out from participation in the state worship, they have set up for themselves a multitude of local shrines where they worship the spirits of almost every earthly thing, such as mountains, rivers, trees, and rocks. “Men debarred from communion with the Great Spirit resorted more eagerly to inferior spirits, to spirits of the fathers, and to spirits generally.... The accredited worship of ancestors, with that of the departed great added to it, was not enough to satisfy the cravings of men’s minds.” (Legge, The Religions of China (1881), p. 176).

119 The Lore of Cathay (1901), p. 274.

120 Williams, The Middle Kingdom (1883), vol. ii, p. 239.

121 We do not mention Buddhism in this connection for the reason that it is not possible to trace any decisive influence, save in the promotion of toleration, that this system has exercised upon Chinese morality. Buddhism enjoins celibacy, and this, like Christian asceticism, is in radical opposition to the genius of Confucianism. For this reason, in conjunction with others,—among these its early degeneracy,—Buddhism has remained practically inert as an ethical force in Chinese society. What little influence it has exerted has been confined almost wholly to the monasteries.

122 “The dread of spirits is the nightmare of the Chinaman’s life.”—Legge, The Religions of China (1881), p. 197.

123 The Religion of the Chinese (1910), p. 34.

124 The Taoist doctrines are contained in the Tao-teh-king, supposed to have been written by Lao-tsze, a sage who lived in the fifth century B.C. The religion which grew out of his philosophy became in time degenerate, absorbed the worst elements of Buddhism, and is to-day a system of gross superstitions, magic, and sorcery, which has undeniably a blighting effect upon morality.

125 De Groot, The Religion of the Chinese (1910), pp. 139 ff.

126 Ibid. 138.

127 Legge, The Religions of China (1881), p. 229.

128 De Groot, The Religion of the Chinese (1910), p. 143.

129 Nietzscheism is in essence at one with Taoism. Nietzsche insists that man should behave as Nature behaves; for instance, that the strong should prey upon the weak. The difference between Lao-tsze and Nietzsche lies in their different readings of the essential qualities of the universe. See below, p. 355.

130 Taoism is too lofty a doctrine for the multitude. They are enjoined to imitate the ancient sages, and as these imitated the way of heaven and earth, in imitating them they are really imitating the universe.

131 De Groot, The Religion of the Chinese (1910), p. 143.

132 The imitation of the qualities of nature “have given existence to important state institutions, considered to be for the nation and rulers matters of life and death.” (De Groot, The Religion of the Chinese (1910), p. 139).

133 The Works of Mencius (The Chinese Classics, 2d ed., vol. ii), bk. vi, pt. i, chap. ii, 2.

134 “This inference [that man is naturally good] comes into prominence in the classics as a dogma, and therefore has been the principal basis of all Taoistic and Confucian ethics to this day” (De Groot, The Religion of the Chinese (1910), p. 137). Every schoolboy is taught this doctrine: “Man commences life with a virtuous nature” (Martin, The Lore of Cathay (1901), p. 217).

135 The Works of Mencius, bk. vii, pt. i, chap. ii, 2. And so Confucius: “An accordance with this nature [man’s] is called the Path of Duty” (The Doctrine of the Mean, chap. i; The Chinese Classics, 2d ed., vol. i).

136 The Works of Mencius, bk. vi, pt. i, chap. vii, 2, 3.

137 Confucian Analects (The Chinese Classics, 2d ed., vol. i), bk. xvii, chap. ii. The student of biology will see in this view an anticipation of the latest teaching of modern science in respect to the relative importance of heredity and education in the determining of character.

138 “There is nothing in this world so dangerous for the national safety, public health and welfare as heterodoxy, which means acts, institutions, doctrines not based upon the classics.”—De Groot, The Religion of the Chinese (1910), p. 48.

139 Confucius thus describes himself: “A transmitter and not a maker, believing in and loving the ancients” (Confucian Analects, bk. vii, chap. i).

140 The Religions of China (1881), p. 255.

141 Chinese literature bears unique testimony to the high consideration in which the virtue of filial devotion and reverence is held. It abounds in anecdotes exalting this virtue, holding up great exemplars of it for imitation by the Chinese youth. See Doolittle, Social Life of the Chinese.

142 The Hsiao King (Sacred Books of the East, vol. iii), chap. xviii.

143 Ibid. chap. xi.

144 Doolittle, Social Life of the Chinese (1868), p. 103.

145 Ibid. p. 103.

146 China in Law and Commerce (1905), p. 34.

147 “The chief characteristic of Chinese society and the essence of Chinese morality is reverence for the past.”—Reinsch, World Politics (1900), p. 90.

148 The Great Learning (The Chinese Classics, 2d ed., vol. i), chap. iii, 5.

149 Confucian Analects, bk. xi, chap. xv, 3.

150 It is interesting to compare the portraiture of The Princely Man, as depicted by the pagan Chinese moralist, with that of The Prince, as portrayed by Machiavelli.

151 “The standard of excellence [in The Princely Man] is placed so high as to be absolutely unattainable by unaided human nature; and though [the author] probably intended to elevate the character of his grandfather [Confucius] to this height, and thus hand him down to future ages as a shing jin, or ‘perfect and holy man,’ he has in the providence of God done his countrymen great service in setting before them such a character as is here given in the Chung Yung. By being made a text-book in the schools it has been constantly studied and memorized by generations of students to their great benefit.”—Williams, The Middle Kingdom (1883), vol. i, pp. 655 f.

152 Confucian Analects, bk. viii, chap. xii.

153 The Great Learning (text), par. 5.

154 Quoted by Pfleiderer, Religions and Historic Faiths, p. 96.

155 The Great Learning, chap. x, 22.

156 The Works of Mencius, bk. vi, pt. ii, chap. xiii, 6.

157 The Great Learning, chap. ix, 8.

158 Confucian Analects, bk. xii, chap. xix.

159 The Great Learning, chap. x, 21.

160 Confucian Analects, bk. xiii, chap. xi.

161 Okakura-Kakuzo, The Ideals of the East (1905), p. 239.

162 Hobhouse, Morals in Evolution (1906), vol. i, p. 265.

163 The Works of Mencius, bk. vi, pt. ii, chap. viii, 8.

164 Ibid. bk. vii, pt. ii, chap. iv, 1.

165 Ibid. bk. vii, pt. ii, chap. ii, 1. While denouncing the essential wickedness of war, Mencius sanctioned rebellion against a tyrannical and wicked ruler.

166 The Great Learning, chap. vi, 2.

167 The Works of Mencius, bk. iv, pt. i, chap. xx.

168 Confucian Analects, bk. iii, chap. iv, 3.

169 Ibid. bk. iv, chap. xv, 2.

170 Ibid. bk. vi, chap. xvii.

171 Ibid. bk. ix, chap. xvii.

172 Ibid. bk. xv, chap. xxiii. The same precept is found in bk. xii, chap. ii, of the Analects, and also in The Doctrine of the Mean, chap. xiii, 3.

173 The Works of Mencius, bk. vii, pt. i, chap. xvii.

174 Ibid. bk. iv, pt. ii, chap. xii.

175 Ibid. bk. vi, pt. i, chap. x, 1.

176 Confucian Analects, bk. vii, chap. xv.

177 The Works of Mencius, bk. vi, pt. ii, chap. xv, 2.

178 Ibid. bk. vi, pt. ii, chap. xv, 5.

179 Ibid. bk. vii, pt. i, chap. xviii, 1.

180 The Chinese pay worship, it is true, to the multitude of inferior gods of Buddhism, but there is little in these cults calculated to awaken and discipline the moral feelings.

181 The Religions of China (1881), p. 256.

182 See Colquhuon, China in Transformation (1898), p. 189.

183 Reinsch, World Politics (1900), p. 98. In their relations with foreigners the Chinese bankers have won an enviable reputation for integrity and the scrupulous observance of engagements. The word of a Chinaman in financial matters is his bond.

184 The Lore of Cathay (1901), p. 214.

185 Froebel has an illuminating comment on the danger to true morality that lurks here: “A life whose ideal value has been perfectly established in experience never aims to serve as a model in its form, but only in its essence, in its spirit. It is the greatest mistake to suppose that spiritual, human perfection can serve as a model in its form. This accounts for the common experience that the taking of such external manifestations of perfection as examples, instead of elevating mankind, checks, nay, represses, its development” (The Education of Man, pt. i, sec. 10).

186 Etiquette has been well defined as “the formal expression of courtesy,” and courtesy as “morality in trifles.” In Japan, as Kikuchi informs us, etiquette forms a part of the moral instruction in the schools. See Sadler, Moral Instruction and Training in Schools, vol. ii, p. 342.

187 Edward A. Ross (The Changing Chinese (1911), p. 193) says native authorities admit that from one tenth to one twentieth of the girl infants are abandoned or made away with.

188 “Female infanticide in some parts is openly confessed and divested of all disgrace and penalties everywhere” (Williams, The Middle Kingdom (1883), vol. i, p. 836). Jernigan, however, says, “When carried to the extreme there is a public sentiment in China which condemns it, and there are official proclamations against infanticide” (China in Law and Commerce (1905), p. 123).

189 The primitive kinship group is a characteristic feature of Chinese society. “Thousands of Chinese villages comprise exclusively persons having the same surname and the same ancestors” (A. H. Smith, Chinese Characteristics (1894), p. 226). “I have seen a town of 25,000 people, all belonging to the same clan and bearing the same family name” (Martin, The Lore of Cathay (1901), p. 272). Along with this clan constitution of society goes the principle of collective responsibility. The group is to a great degree held responsible for the conduct of each of its members. In case of serious crime, as, for instance, treason, all the male adult members of the criminal’s family are punished along with the offender (Westermarck, The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas (1906), vol. i, p. 45). Recently the punishment of relatives of the offender has been abolished in certain cases.

190 The efforts of the Chinese government to put an end to the use of opium among its subjects—the anti-opium decree was issued in 1906—is the most noteworthy matter in the recent moral history of China. This movement is motived by moral feeling as truly as is the movement among ourselves for the suppression of the liquor traffic. It is, in the words of Professor Edward A. Ross, “the most extensive warfare on a vicious private habit that the world has ever known” (The Changing Chinese (1911), p. 146).

191 “The Emperor is sacred and inviolable.”—Japanese Constitution, art. iii.

192 The state in Japan occupies the place of the Church with us. “To look up to the state as a sacred institution has always been characteristic of the people, and from the great work of the recent reformation onward there has not been a single event of national consequence which has not originated in this peculiar turn of mind” (Count Okuma, Fifty Years of New Japan (1909), vol. ii, p. 559).

193 Corresponding to the knights in European feudalism were the samurai, above them the daimios, and at the head of the system the Shogun.

194 Japanese boys and men, Dr. William Elliot Griffis affirms, are “more tender and careful with all living creatures than are those of Christendom” (The Religions of Japan (1895), p. 294). Buddhism caused in large measure the disuse of flesh for food.

195 This word means “the way of the warrior,” or “the rule of knighthood.”

196 Nitobé, Bushido: the Soul of Japan, p. 98. The edition cited throughout this chapter is that of G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1905. The Introduction is by William Elliot Griffis.

197 Nitobé, Bushido, p. 32.

198 Ibid. p. 30.

199 For the subject of the downfall of feudalism and the Restoration, see Count Okuma, Fifty Years of New Japan (1909), vol. i, chap. ii.

200 Nitobé, Bushido, p. 189.

201 Baron Kikuchi, in Sadler, Moral Instruction and Training in Schools (1908), vol. ii, p. 323.

202 Scherer, What is Japanese Morality? (1906), p. 10.

203 Nitobé, Bushido, p. vi.

204 The works of Molière, it is said, have been put under the ban of the censor in Japan and their circulation forbidden, for the reason that Molière ridicules old age, and constantly, like the comic supplement of the newspapers, “makes some father the butt of jokes and gross wit by his child or children.”

205 “Any social system of which filial piety is not the moral cement; any social system in which children leave their parents in order to establish families of their own; any social system in which it is considered not only natural but right to love wife and child more than the author of one’s being; any social system in which marriage can be decided independently of the will of parents, by the mutual inclination of the young people themselves; any social system in which the mother-in-law is not entitled to the obedient service of the daughter-in-law, appears to him [the Japanese] of necessity a state of life scarcely better than that of the birds of the air and the beasts of the field, or at best a sort of moral chaos.”—Lafcadio Hearn, Out of the East (1895), p. 89.

206 Okakura-Kakuzo, The Awakening of Japan (1904), p. 179. Romantic love is almost unknown in Japan. B. H. Chamberlain affirms that in a residence of twenty-eight years he heard of only one love match, and then the young people had been brought up in America.

207 Out of the East (1985), p. 80.

208 Five per cent of the men have concubines.

209 “The central idea in Japanese life is obedience to parents and reverence for ancestors. Should a Japanese father have misfortunes, his daughter would think it her filial duty to sell her body. She would not be regarded as fallen and disgraced, but as having done a right and noble deed, and might afterwards be restored to her place in society. But, though it is hard to explain, the Japanese woman is as chaste and pure and exalted in her ideas of womanhood as any woman on the globe.”—Sir Edwin Arnold (in an interview).

210 Bacon, Japanese Girls and Women (1891), p. 121.

211 Chamberlain, Things Japanese, 4th ed., p. 220. By “the ancient way” is meant hara-kiri, or disemboweling. The death by his own hand of General Nogi, the hero of Port Arthur, during the funeral of his departed sovereign Mutsuhito (September 13, 1912), reveals another motive for suicide which is wholly foreign to our modes of thought and feeling. “In very early, almost prehistoric, times the custom of jun-shi, or dying with the master, led to the interment of living Japanese retainers with their dead lord. The custom gradually died out, but voluntary suicide as a means of showing personal devotion or attachment to a master or superior persisted for many centuries” (George Kennan, “The Death of General Nogi,” New York Outlook for October 5, 1912). It was this ancient custom that Count Nogi followed. “When all was over”—such is Mr. Kennan’s interpretation of his act—“he ended his own life as an expression of his boundless devotion to the man whom he had loved. It was in the spirit of Old Japan, but Nogi was a man of that era, and lived in the mental and moral atmosphere of that time.”

212 Japanese feudalism began about the eleventh century. The year 1868 saw its final downfall.

213 Nitobé, Bushido, p. 99.

214 Okakura-Kakuzo, The Awakening of Japan (1904), p. 175. Count Okuma makes a similar assertion: “The humanitarian efforts which in the course of the recent war were so much in evidence, and which so much surprised Western nations, were not, as might have been thought, the products of the new civilization, but survivals of our ancient feudal chivalry” (Fifty Years of New Japan (1909), vol. i, p. 124). By no people has the Red Cross movement been taken up with greater enthusiasm than by the Japanese.

215 Consult Count Okuma, Fifty Years of New Japan (1909), vol. ii, pp. 566 f.

216 “The obloquy attached to the calling brought within its pale such as cared little for social repute” (Nitobé, Bushido, p. 66). “The trades-people,” writes Chamberlain, “stood at the very bottom of the scale. The hucksters or traders were a degraded class in old Japan, and degraded their business morals remain, which is the principal cause of the difficulties experienced by European merchants in dealing with them” (Things Japanese, 4th ed., p. 93).

217 Nitobé, Bushido, p. 67.

218 The statement has obtained wide currency that all the banks in Japan employ only Chinese as cashiers because they cannot find honest Japanese for these positions of trust. Chinese are sometimes employed in Japanese banks, but the true reason for their employment is not the one here assigned. One well qualified to speak authoritatively on this subject says:

219 “If the descendants of the samurai can erect a standard of commercial integrity at all comparable to their fine record for courage and loyalty, we shall be their debtors, not they ours.”—The New York Nation for July 30, 1908, p. 90.

220 Baron Kikuchi, in Sadler, Moral Instruction and Training in Schools (1908), vol. ii, p. 343.

221 Baron Kikuchi, in Sadler, Moral Instruction and Training in Schools (1908), vol. ii, p. 331.

222 Ibid. vol. ii, p. 319.

223 Ibid. vol. ii, p. 230.

224 “I certainly consider that the courage and devotion of the Japanese soldiers during the late war was to a great extent the result of this systematic moral instruction and training in schools.”—Baron Kikuchi, in Sadler, Moral Instruction and Training in Schools (1908), vol. ii, p. 344.

225 Wedgwood (The Moral Ideal, 3d ed., p. 22) suggestively likens the reduction to unity of the various gods of polytheism to the correlation of the physical forces—light, heat, electricity, and magnetism. Just as all these are found to be merely different manifestations of a single force or energy, so are all the deified phenomena of nature at last discovered to be but different manifestations of a single primal power—the One, the Supreme, the Eternal. This correlation of the gods, this reduction of polytheism to monotheism, holds the same place in the records of the religious and moral evolution of the race that the correlation of the physical forces holds in the records of the progress of science.

226 There may be some philosophers and scientists who profess materialism, and who make an infinite and eternal unconscious energy the primal cause of all things. But this is a philosophy of the universe which has never secured a wide acceptance in the West.

227 Oldenberg, Buddha (1882), p. 59.

228 Hopkins, The Religions of India (1895), p. 356.

229 This was the work of the Brahmans, who, to secure the ascendancy of their own class, falsified and misinterpreted the sacred books.