acts properly and exactly done,
the proper person sacrificing always to the proper object in the
proper way.

Confucius was not a man who tried to change the religion of his
country; indeed, he disliked to talk of religious subjects, and he
practised reverently the religion which had long prevailed in China.
His conversation was chiefly about what we should call worldly
matters, and it is hard to see why the religion of China, the same
after him as it had been before him, should be called by his name.
What led to the connection was: (1) That he taught in a clear and
simple way, as had never been done before, the theory of government
and morals which lies at the root of Chinese religion, and thus did
something, though unconsciously, to provide that religion with a
doctrine. And (2) that he collected and edited the books which are
the only literary documents the religion has, and which have formed
ever since the study of the ruling classes in China. Receiving these
books at his hands, they have naturally looked to him as the prophet
of their faith.

His Life.--Kung-fu-tsze (_i.e._ Master Kong; the name was Latinised
by the Jesuits) is better known to us than most other religious
founders. He lived to the age of seventy-three, surrounded by
admiring disciples, who remembered what they saw in him and heard
from his lips; and this tradition is preserved in the _Lun Yu_,
Digested Conversations,[5] a work compiled, as we observed, by
disciples of the second generation. The supernatural element which in
other cases gathered so quickly round a venerated figure, is here
entirely absent; in China such growths do not take place. There may
be some tendency to idealise the moral greatness of the sage, but
there are also passages in which this tendency evidently has not been
at work; both in its candour and in the homeliness of much that is
reported, the book invites confidence as a genuine record. We see the
sage as the diligence of students in the present generation enables
us to see Kant or Wordsworth; we hear his opinions on a great variety
of subjects; we see how he behaved on occasions of state and at his
meals in private, towards princes and towards common men; we laugh at
his jokes and sigh with him at his privations.

[Footnote 5: Dr. Legge, _Confucian Analects_.]

He was born in 551 B.C. in a good rank of society, but was brought up
in poverty, and owed all his success to his own merits. The bent of
his mind showed its