CONFUCIUS, or Cong-fu-tse, or Koung-tsee, the most eminent and venerated of all the philosophers of China, and a descendant of the imperial family of the dynasty of Chang, was born in the kingdom of Loo, now called the province of Chang-tong, about 550 years before the commencement of the Christian era, which makes him contemporary with Pythagoras and Solon, and prior to the days of Socrates. At an early period of life, he gave striking proofs of uncommon talents, and these were cultivated and improved with great assiduity under the tuition of the ablest masters. Scarcely had he attained to the years of maturity, when he showed himself acquainted with all the literature of that period, and, in particular, possessed of a comprehensive knowledge of the canonical and classical books, ascribed to the legislators Yao and Chun, which the Chinese emphatically denominate the Five Volumes, as containing the essence of all their sciences and morality. Nature had bestowed upon him a most amiable temper, and his moral deportment was altogether unexceptionable. He acquired a distinguished reputation for humility, sincerity, the government of his appetites, a disinterested heart, and a sovereign contempt of wealth; qualities which pointed him out as a proper person to fill offices of importance and trust in the government of his country, which lie did with honour to himself and advantage to the empire. These public stations afforded him excellent opportunities of estimating with accuracy the true state of morals among his countrymen, which at this time were dissolute and vicious in the extreme. He conceived the idea of attempting a general reformation both in morals and in politics, and his efforts for some time were attended with such effect, that he inspired his countrymen with a veneration for his character, and gratitude for his exertions. He was raised to a station of high importance in the province of Loo. His counsels and advice were productive of the mostbeneficial consequences in establishing good order, the due exercise of justice, concord, and decorum throughout the whole kingdom. As the province thus became an object of admiration, so, likewise, neighbouring princes beheld with envy its growing happiness and prosperity, to destroy which they contrived a fatal and effectual expedient. The king of Tsi being apprehensive that if the king of Loo continued to be directed by the wisdom and sound policy of Confucius, he would soon become by far too powerful, sent him and his nobility a present of the most beautiful young women, trained up from infancy in all the arts of seduction, and who were but too successful in plunging the whole court into voluptuousness and dissipation. This in a short time demolished the whole of that beautiful fabric which had been erected by Confucius; and finding it a hopeless attempt to stem the universal torrent of corruption and depravity, he resolved to exert his talents in some distant kingdom, in the philanthropic cause of moral reformation, with better hopes of success. But he had the mortification to discover that vice was everywhere triumphant, while virtue was compelled to hide her head. This induced him to adopt the more humble, although not the less interesting employment of a teacher of youth, in which he made great and rapid progress. About six hundred of his scholars were sent into different parts of the empire to carry on his favourite work of moral reformation. Among his disciples, seventy-two were remarkably distinguished above the rest for their mental acquisitions, and ten others were deemed superior even to these, as having a thorough comprehension of their master’s whole system. These were divided by him into four classes; the first being destined to the study of the moral virtues; the second to the arts of logic and of public speaking; the third class studied jurisprudence and the duties of the civil magistrate; and public speaking, or the delivery of popular discourses on moral topics, occupied the fourth. Indefatigable, however, as his labours were, the task was too mighty to be acomplished by human exertions. During his last illness, he declared to his pupils, that the grief of his mind occasioned by the profligacy of human nature had become insupportable; and with a melancholy voice he exclaimed, “Immense mountain, how art thou fallen! The grand machine is demolished, and the wise and the virtuous are no more. The kings will not follow my maxims: I am no longer useful on earth; it is, therefore, time that I should quit it.” On uttering these words he was seized with a lethargy, which brought him to the grave. He finished his honourable career in the seventy-second year of his age, in his native kingdom, to which he had returned in company with his disciples. It is frequently the fate of illustrious characters never to be properly valued till after they are cut off by death. This was the case with Confucius. The whole empire of China bewailed the loss of him, and erected innumerable edifices to perpetuate his memory, adorned with such honourable inscriptions as the following: “To the great master “To the chief doctor “To the saint ;” “To the wise king of literature ;” “To the instructor of emperors and kings.” All his descendants, even to the present day, enjoy the honourable title and office of mandarins, and are exempted from the payment of taxes to the emperor, as well as to the princes of the blood. The man who applies for the title of doctor must previously have made a present to a mandarin descended in a direct line from Confucius. The writings of this great man are esteemed by the Chinese as of the highest authority, next to the Five Volumes, to which he modestly acknowledges himself to have been much indebted. His works arc, 1. The Taynio, “ The Grand Science, or School of Adults,” chiefly intended for the information of princes and magistrates, recommending the duties of self-government and uniform obedience to the laws of right reason; 2. The Chong-yong i or “Immutable Medium,” in which he shows its importance in the government of the passions by a variety of examples, and points out the method of arriving at perfection in virtue; 3. Lung-yu, or moral and sententious discourses, which exhibit a lively picture of the opinions, conduct, and maxims of Confucius and his followers; 4. Meng-tsi, the book of Mencius, which derived its name from one of that great philosopher’s disciples. These are all deservedly esteemed by the Chinese, being held next in importance to the Five Volumes. 5. The Hyau-king, or dissertation on the duty and respect which children owe their parents; and, 6. The Syan-hyo, or science for children, being a judicious collection of moral sentences from various writers.

If a fair and impartial estimate of the religion of Confucius be made, it cannot be viewed in any other light than as uncorrupted deism, although he has sometimes been accused of befriending and secretly propagating atheistical sentiments; but such an accusation is as cruel as it is unjust, since the purity of his moral precepts, and the acknowledged rectitude of his whole deportment, are utterly incompatible with such a supposition. He considered the Tien or Deity as the purest and most perfect essence, principle, and source of all things in the boundless universe; as a being who is absolutely independent, omnipotent, the governor and guardian of every thing; possessed of infinite wisdom, which nothing can deceive; holy, without partiality, of unlimited goodness and inflexible justice. We are at a loss to form any adequate opinion of his sentiments relative to the soul of man and the doctrine of futurity, [7:7:213]having no well authenticated data on which to proceed. But his morality is in many respects superior to that of Greece and Rome, and yields to none upon earth, except to that of divine revelation. The religion of Confucius, notwithstanding the estimation in which he is held, is adopted as a model by none of his countrymen, the literati excepted. Their prevailing system is a medley of pagan idolatry, and the fabulous superstition of the Indians, introduced into China by Fo in the first century of the Christian era.