Confucius

CONFUCIUS. - Italianized form, from the Chinese Ccomfuze [K'ung Fu-tzu] meaning "The Master (or Philosopher) Ccom," later accepted by almost all Western languages, under which the Jesuit Matteo Ricci (v.) around 1600 made the Chinese sage known to Europe. Born in 551 B.C. in the ancient city of Tsou, about 25 km. southeast of the district of Szushui in the environs of Yenchow in what was the principality of Lu and corresponds in part to the present province of Shantung. His father, at the age of more than 70, had married a girl of 15, and from their union C. was born. He, though not his father, had as surname Ccom [K'ung], as personal name Cchieu [Ch'iu], that is "hill," and as agnomen Ciomni [Chung-ni], which means "second-born hill with a crater," from the shape of his skull, which was said to have vaguely resembled a hill with steep slopes and concave at the top. Very little is known of his childhood and youth. Left an orphan of his father at the age of three and of his mother after his twentieth year, he lived constantly in poverty, although his family traced back to the ancient kings of the second dynasty (1558-1049 B.C.). Like his father, he was of tall stature, exceeding two meters, which caused him to be called "the giant." From his marriage, contracted around the age of 20, he had a son who lived half a century, from 532 to 483 B.C.

Soon he found himself surrounded by numerous and ardent disciples, the so-called "disciples of the gate," from the name of the gate that led into the private apartments at the back of the courtyard where the master held his lessons. He sat with his face turned toward the south and overlooked the assembly of disciples by a few steps. These paid as a very modest salary a package of ten slices of salted meat, an expression that later came to mean "honorarium." There has been talk of 3000 disciples, a figure probably exaggerated; among them 72 were the favored ones, and of these 10 were the flower of the school. He demanded much reflection and used to say: "I teach nothing to one who does not strive to understand; I do not help to express himself one who does not exert himself to speak; if after having set forth one corner of a question, someone is not capable of finding the other three corners, I do not repeat the matter" (Discourses of C., VIII, 8). Of the six liberal arts that young Chinese studied from the age of ten to twenty, namely dancing, archery, driving chariots, writing, calculation and music, C. taught only the last three. He took pride in inventing nothing new, but only in transmitting the pure doctrine of antiquity. "I transmit and do not invent, I have faith in antiquity and to it I consecrate my love" (Discourses of C., II, 14), he declared, content to transmit to posterity the exact interpretation of the true thought of the ancients.

The China of C.'s time was a feudal China, divided into a great number of small states, of which at least a hundred were located in the basin of the Yellow River. Over them reigned a king of the already decadent Ceu [Chou] dynasty, whose sovereignty in practice was only nominal. The king resided in the capital of Loyang, present-day Honan, in the province of the same name. Not before the year 517 B.C. did C. go to the court of the Ceu to study antiquity there more thoroughly. In fact, from this visit he derived a great and profound admiration for the ancient sages, and especially for the duke of Ceu (11th century B.C.), brother of the first king of the third dynasty. According to suspect accounts by Taoist authors, whose purpose was to humble the sage and his school, during this stay in the capital C. would have met Laoze [Lao Tzu] and would have received a strong reprimand from him. Returned to his homeland, C. continued to teach the disciples, who now flocked even from the most distant regions. From 513 to 501 he studied deeply the poetry, history, ceremonies and music of the country.

Between 501 and 499 he accepted first the office of governor of a city, then that of superintendent of public works and finally that of minister of justice. It is said that while he was minister, everything proceeded very well: in men sincerity and fidelity were admired, and in women chastity and submission; not even merchants would have dared to cheat on prices. In short, therefore, C. became the idol of the people and the subject of popular songs. But the neighboring states were alarmed by it. With a government directed by such a minister, it was said, the principality of Lu will easily gain the upper hand over the other states and therefore will be able to threaten to annex them. To avert this threat, care was taken to distract the prince of Lu and his ministers from the concerns of government. To this end, 80 beautiful dancing girls and 40 four-horse chariots of excellent horses were sent to the prince. The prince fell into the trap, and C., seeing the futility of his efforts to bring him back to better sentiments, preferred to abandon his homeland and set out to travel through various other states in the hope of finding someone who would listen to his counsels of sound politics: he wanted to be the bell that calls men together to hear the truth. The bell in fact rang, but unfortunately very few listened to him. He said: "If someone were willing to make use of me, after a year there would already be good results, and after three I would be capable of setting up a perfect government" (Discourses of C., XIII, 10).

After 14 years of voluntary and fundamentally useless exile, C. was recalled to his homeland in 483, at the age of 69. The remaining five years of his life were no happier than those already past. Finding no public office entrusted to him, he set about carefully revising the ancient classical books, to which he was to bind his name forever.

In the first days of the fourth moon of 479, C., already ill and conscious of his approaching end, leaning on a staff, walked slowly before the door of his house and sang softly, weeping: "The highest mountain is about to fall; — The main beam is about to fall; — The sage is about to wither!"

Indeed, seven days later he was dead. He was buried in a place called today "C.'s grove," 1 km. north of the city of Küfow, again in Shantung; a surrounding wall of several kilometers encircles the ground that encloses the tomb. A writer of the 3rd century A.D. says that it was surrounded by a hundred trees, all different from one another, trees that would have been planted by the disciples, who would have brought the saplings from their native countries.

The most complete moral portrait of C. is given to us by his disciples in the Discourses of C., especially in ch. 10. In public, in the temple and at court, he was constantly the man of rule, although in private he was very simple. Full of veneration and respect for the prince, he spoke with every freedom to superior officials and to inferior ones with much firmness. He used to say: "I am content even if I must feed on coarse foods, if I have only water to drink, and if my arm must serve me as a pillow; but riches and honors acquired by unjust means are for me like floating clouds" (Discourses of C., VII, 15). These and other similar natural virtues led certain Christian men of letters or friends of Christians of the 17th century to think that, had he known the Gospel message, C. would have been the first to ask for Baptism; thus reports the Sicilian Jesuit Prospero Intorcetta in his Confucius Sinarum philosophus, Paris 1687, p. cxix.

The fortune of C., almost insignificant during his life, begins with his death. The prince of Lu, who nevertheless had not known how to make use of him while he was alive, was the first to sing his praises immediately after his death and to erect a temple for him where an offering was made to him in every season. At first the cult did not cross the borders of the principality of Lu, but in the year 57 A.D. it was decreed that sacrifices would be offered to him in the Imperial College and in the principal colleges of the Empire. For some time the cult had as its inseparable object C. and the Duke of Chou; only in 609 A.D. did people begin to erect halls solely in honor of C. There then came into vogue the custom, which lasted until the beginning of the 20th century, of erecting these monuments, improperly called temples, in honor of C. next to the colleges and the examination halls. In them there are no statues of idols, but only tablets on which is inscribed the name of the sage's disciples and of the best exponents of his doctrine. Before 1912, twice a year, in spring and in autumn, the emperor offered a solemn sacrifice in his honor. Through the centuries the emperors were lavish toward C. with titles extolling his knowledge and his virtue. On the civil or religious character of the honors rendered by the Chinese to C., and therefore whether they were lawful or not for converted Catholics, much was discussed during the famous question of the Chinese rites (v.). The fact remains, however, that, since the Chinese government in recent years, no less than in past centuries, has often and explicitly proclaimed the civil character of such honors, it has, within certain limits, been declared lawful by Pius XII on 8 Dec. 1939 (cf. AAS, 32 [1940], p. 25). To underscore its civil character, today in China one pays to enter the temples of C., whereas entry to all other temples is free and open. A temple of C. is therefore practically considered as a museum.

Never has a simple mortal had so much influence over so great a number of men as C. For nearly two millennia, to attain any public office in China it was absolutely indispensable to have a good command of the Chinese classics, with which the name of C. was indissolubly linked. The magistrates of ancient China, until the beginning of the 20th century, were all doctors in Confucian sciences, and in these alone. In the eyes of every good Chinese of the old stamp, C. had the incontestable merit of having preserved for us the literary monuments of antiquity and of having lived a temperate life, so as to be a model for future generations and to be considered as the ideal of human perfection and of knowledge in China. Mencius and other disciples placed C. far above the emperors Yao [Yao] and Shun [Shun] of antiquity, who nevertheless in all Chinese literature are regarded as the incomparable models of every virtue; indeed they even maintained that from the beginning of the human race onward no man has ever attained the perfection and knowledge of C. The first Chinese historian, in order of time and importance, Ssu-ma Ch'ien [Szu-ma Ch'ien] (c. 145-80 B.C.), well aware of the enormous influence C. had on the entire intellectual world of his country, as early as c. 99 B.C. dedicated to him one of the most important and longest chapters of his Historical Memoirs, a chapter that is not found among the monographs of famous men, as is the case for Laozi, but in that part which treats of the various houses of feudal lords; the historian therefore considered him as an uncrowned king, the king of thought. His treatment, which is the most complete monograph of the great sage and the most worthy of consideration, the one that has served as a source for all other Chinese and non-Chinese authors up to the modern era, closes with this eulogy: «Numerous in the world are those who, like sovereigns and sages, have been honored during their lifetime and have ended in oblivion after their death. But C., though a simple private individual, has transmitted his fame for more than ten generations (in fact, in the years 91-87 B.C., when this historian was writing, it was the 11th generation after C.). Those who devote themselves to studies regard him as an exemplar to imitate. And all those who, from the Son of Heaven to princes and lords, speak in China of the six liberal arts, take him as their model. He can therefore be called the wisest of all».

Such has C. always remained in the eyes of the Chinese, until 1905, when the ancient system of literary examinations, which had lasted for c. two millennia, was abolished; thus disappeared the education so intimately bound up with the doctrine of C. With the penetration of European sciences and languages into Chinese schools, Confucian doctrines were abandoned; and the «Master» was thus deposed from his two-thousand-year-old pedestal. The death blow came with the fall of the Empire and the founding of the Republic in 1912, when C. was placed among old things. Young Chinese who had learned the art of literary criticism in the universities of Europe and America wanted to exercise it immediately on the classics of China and on the texts of C.: doubt was cast on the ancient books, late interpolations were sought out, and not a few monuments hitherto believed ancient were thrown down. Today C. is not only little or not at all studied, but not infrequently is reviled and repudiated, especially by young students who see in him the representative of antiquity and the patron of the monarchy that was. Already, however, a certain reaction is noticeable on the part of right-thinking men of letters. It is in fact impossible not to take account of the one who for centuries and centuries shaped the minds and customs of so great a nation. - See plate XII.

Pasquale M. D'Elia