and the Spring and Autumn Annals. The second volume of the collection, known as the Four Shu, embraces The Great Learning, The Doctrine of the Mean, the Analects and the four books of Mencius.2 These continued for many centuries to be the foundation of all education and official training.

Mencius, or Mêng Tzŭ, is almost as deserving of commemoration as his master. Born about a century and a half later than Confucius, he too was educated by his mother. The mother of Mêng is one of China's heroines. She changed her residence repeatedly, for fear that her son might be contaminated by the neighborhood of a cemetery, a slaughterhouse, and a market. Finally, in the environment of a school she felt herself and her son secure. Mencius lived to the year 289 B.C. and was ninety-four when he was laid to rest beside his mother. He taught a political economy which is well worth study at the present day. He was a confirmed pacifist, and did much to combat the then prevalent militarism. It is largely due to the loyalty of Mencius that the reputation of Confucius and of his doctrines continued to increase. With the exception of the Ch'ins, every fresh dynasty sought to add prestige to the system which had been promulgated with so much devotion.

The defects of Confucianism are fairly obvious, mainly due to its legalism and externality. But it is a good deal to the credit of China that she has consistently, through the Sage's influence, placed education and public life on a moral foundation. On this foundation she has taught compliance with the way of Heaven, and she has built up an empire upon the recognition of social obligations to the living and the dead.

Contemporary with Confucius - though born a few years earlier, in 604 B.C.- we have Lao Tzu,3 a somewhat mysterious, to some even a mythical, figure. Yet his philosophy is at

1 The Five Ching are called, in the Chinese, the Shu Ching, the Shih Ching, the Yi Ching, the Li Chi, and the Chun Ts'iu.

* The Four Shu are called, in the Chinese, the Ta Hsiao, the Chung Yung, the Lun Yu, and the books of Mêng.

Or "the old philosopher."

once definite and complementary to that of Confucius. Where Confucius was concerned with the observance of a meticulous legalism, Lao Tzu was insistent solely upon a right relation to the Tao, or Way. The word is variously translated, but what is meant is doubtless the law of the universe, to which if a man harnesses himself, he thereby and without difficulty lives virtuously. Lao Tzu protested against the bondage of Confucius to the law. "You cannot," he said, "turn a crow into a pigeon by painting it white." Nevertheless, Lao Tzŭ had an ethics in no way inferior to that of his rival. His are such sayings as the following:

Keep behind and you shall be put in front. Keep out and you shall be put in.

Mighty is he who conquers himself.

He who is conscious of being strong is content to be weak.

He who is content has enough.

To the good I would be good. To the not-good also I would be good, in order to make them good.

Recompense injury with kindness.2

And one of his disciples, the charming mystic and philosopher, Chwang Tzu, expressed the finest thought of China when he said:

Rewards and

The command of armies is the lowest kind of virtue. punishments are the lowest form of education. Ceremonies and laws are the lowest form of government. Music and fine clothes are the lowest form of happiness. Wailing and mourning are the lowest form of grief. These five should follow the movements of the mind.3

Unfortunately, it must be confessed, Taoism, as the system of Lao Tzu was called, rapidly degenerated from the promise of the best to the realization of the worst. Its doctrine of mysticism was corrupted into the search for the philosopher's

1 General Alexander translates Tao as "God."

2 From the Taoist Classic, Tao Têh Ching (The Classic of the Way of Virtue). Legge, The Texts of Taoism, Part I, pp. 334-5.