2. The Nine Classics

He left behind him five volumes apparently written or edited by his own hand, and therefore known to China as the “Five Ching” or Canonical Books. First, he edited the Li-Chi, or Record of Rites, believing that these ancient rules of propriety were subtle aides to the formation and mellowing of character, and the maintenance of social order and peace. Second, he wrote appendices and commentaries for the I-Ching, or Book o) Changes, seeing in this the profoundest contribution yet made by China to that obscure realm of metaphysics which he himself had sedulously avoided in his philosophy. Third, he selected and arranged the Shi-Ching, or Book of Odes, in order to illustrate the nature of human life and the principles of morality. Fourth, he wrote the Ch’un Ch’iu, orSpring and Autumn Annals, to record with unadorned brevity the main events in the history of his own state of Lu. Fifth, and above all, he sought to inspire his pupils by gathering into a Shu-Ching, or Book of History, the most important and elevating events or legends of the early reigns, when China had been in some measure a unified empire, and its leaders, as Confucius thought, had been heroic and unselfish civilizers of the race. He did not think of his function, in these works, as that of an historian; rather he was a teacher, a moulder of youth; and he deliberately selected from the past such items as would rather inspire than disillusion his pupils; we should do him injustice if we turned to these volumes for an impartial and scientific account of Chinese history. He added to the record imaginary speeches and stories into which he poured as much as he could of his solicitude for morals and his admiration for wisdom. If he idealized the past of his country he did no more than we do with our own less ancient past; if already our earliest presidents have become sages and saints in hardly a century or two, surely to the historians of a thousand years hence they will seem as virtuous and perfect as Yao and Shun.

To these five Ching the Chinese add four Shu, or “Books” (of the Philosophers), to constitute the “Nine Classics.” First and most important of these is the Lun Yü, or Discourses and Dialogues, known to the English world, through a whim of Legge’s, as the “Analects”—i.e., the collected fragments—of Confucius. These pages are not from the Master’s hand, but record, with exemplary clarity and brevity, his opinions and pronouncements as remembered by his followers. They were compiled within a few decades of Confucius’ death, perhaps by the disciples of his disciples,⁹⁴and are the least unreliable guide that we have to his philosophy. The most interesting and instructive of all statements in the Chinese Classics appears in the fourth and fifth paragraphs* of the secondShu—a work known to the Chinese as Ta Hsüeh, or The Great Learning. The Confucian philosopher and editor, Chu Hsi, attributed these paragraphs to Confucius, and the remainder of the treatise to Tseng Ts’an, one of the younger disciples; Kea Kwei, a scholar of the first century A.D., attributed the work to K’ung Chi, grandson of Confucius; the sceptical scholars of today agree that the authorship is unknown.⁹⁵ All students concur in ascribing to this grandson the third philosophical classic of China, the Chung Yung, or Doctrine of the Mean. The last of the Shu is the Book of Mencius, of which we shall speak presently. With this volume ends the classic literature, but not the classic period, of Chinese thought. There were, as we shall see, rebels and heretics of every kind to protest against that masterpiece of conservatism, the philosophy of Confucius.