Confucius is the personification of the doctrines he propagated. All students of the ANALECTS and other literary anecdotes about him can very easily and vividly visualize the man as he was. He is extremely humane, most rational and unbiased, understanding and approachable, righteous and upright, talented in all the arts, enjoys the pleasant and beautiful things of life but advises moderation in their enjoyment, gentlemanly in manners, cheerful, robust and brave-he is everything that a man could wish to be. He has his two feet planted firmly on the earth and he looks on life as an end in itself. Consequently, he is progressive and constructive and he takes it as his life mission to improve the world through better politics, better and more harmonious human relationship.
Confucius did not deny the usefulness of religion as a political weapon, for in China the chief of the state had been traditionally called the Son of Heaven from time immemorial; but in private life he does not speculate on god, the life beyond or spiritual things. When asked about such things, he said:
"You do not yet know what life is, why bother about death?"; "Respect the gods and the ghosts, but keep away from them." His idea is that mankind can live harmonious, though not necessarily identical, lives happily and peacefully together through education and training of the mind and can ultimately make the world a paradise for themselves and their descendants. He teaches and exhorts but never threatens or indoctrinates. He leaves it to religion to keep the mass of people who are not yet initiated and converted by his philosophy to behave themselves through fear of the unknown. He is said to be very pious in sacrificial ceremonies and sometimes refers to Heaven in his talks. But his interest is most probably in the ceremonies per se; and, when he refers to Heaven, either when he was in difficulties or on any other occasions, he did it more likely to confirm the truth of others in his own judgment and most probably he spoke of Heaven not without a chuckle in his heart. Though he never admitted it, he was agnostic at heart but he worshiped his ancestors with a sincere faith.
Though living in the age of the divine right of kings, Confucius was democratic in the true sense of the word. He placed the interests of the people before the rights of their sovereign and openly and bravely vindicated his views in the face of the kings. His ideal state is a practical version of Utopia, the main principles of which have been absorbed by Dr. Sun Yat-sen into the Three People's Principles and expounded by him in his description of an ideal universal state.
This common conception of the personality and doctrines of the Master has kept us Chinese together as a people and preserved our civilization for thousands of years. China has been the center of Eastern civilization for thousands of years, so Confucianism is the fountainhead from which the people of Asia have been drawing their spiritual food. Most of our people look on religion as a part in life which only supplements the ineffectiveness of Confucianist education in the interest of an orderly and peaceful life. Most of us do not need the commandments of a god to restrain us from doing evil, because Confucius and his followers, including our own ancestors, have taught us to understand the four fundamentals of propriety, righteousness, integrity, and sense of shame and the eight supplementary virtues of loyalty, filial piety, beneficence, love, honesty, uprightness, moderation, and fair play.
People of different lands and ages have different conceptions of virtue. An understanding of the Chinese-and Asian-mentality may be had from description of the Confucian virtues 'in the following:
The four fundamentals, "li", "yi", "lien", and "chi", loosely translated here as "propriety", "righteousness", "integrity" and "sense of shame" are the cornerstones of Chinese society on which a government relies to keep its stability. Etymologically, "li" means a shoe or a footstep, and to have "li" is to follow in the footsteps of our wise men. All our' customs, conventions,' traditions and the etiquette of daily life are molded on it and have been practiced from time immemorial down the ages to smooth human relationship. The pursuit of a Chinese scholar always starts from a study of "li", and the mark of a Chinese gentleman is his proficiency in its practice. "Li" is more than a mere code of etiquette; it is the spontaneous and sincere expression and desire of a cultured person to show his respect for other people's dignity -and rights,· 'such as he himself expects to receive in return. Foreigners often consider "li" as' mere Chinese hospitality and some even mistake it as Eastern hypocrisy.
The original meaning of "yi" is correctness or suitability. To the Chinese mind, the right thing is the thing that suits everybody. Here, as in the other fundamentals, human relationship and rationality are emphasized. The Chinese people are most rational and long-suffering, but it does not mean that they are not sensitive to injustice. It may take them long to boil, but once the boiling point is reached they blow' off their tops with total disregard of consequences.
"Lien" means integrity or the moral fortitude not to take what is not due. Foreigners often think that Chinese, especially the official class, are corrupt. This misconception was intensified and utilized by the propaganda of international Communism with so much success that even our American friends were deceived during the years before and soon after the evacuation of the Chinese Government to Taiwan. Generally speaking, this accusation is most unfair to 99.9% of the Chinese officials, and where there are illegal acceptance of money or presents and where cases of accusation are publicized or even the culprits convicted, there are more excuses for the Chinese to have committed them than for officials of other countries where remunerations for official services are commensurate with the cost and standard of living.
Integrity as a innate virtue is simply non-existent. It is a habit formed by circumstances and adopted, like honesty, as the best policy to make living peaceful, because only a man of integrity can have spiritual peace. But integrity must be supported and nursed . by enough income to maintain a living. There are of course many stories of men of high moral caliber who, living a hard life, refuse to accept any material assistance which they do not consider as their due. But such are exceptions that should not be expected from the masses. The Confucian conception of integrity is "to take but not to harm integrity", or, in other words, to take not more than what is necessary to lead an austere life. There in flexibility in such behavior in accordance with the status of each individual.
The Chinese are used to call salaries of officials "fuel and water", which means that the income is to cover the expenses for fuel and water only. Whatever its origin, it indicates that in China official salaries have never been sufficient to meet all living expenses. By tradition, officials were permitted to make extra income from their posts and such income wan appropriately called "integrity - nursing allowances," which never took the form of extortion from the people but wan more in the nature of deductions from the official revenue. The size of these deductions was often restricted by tradition and by the recipients' own moral conscience. According to Robert Hart, who knew Chinese officialdom during the most corrupt period of the Ching dynasty better than any foreigner, the total receipt of a Chinese official, including the so-called "bribes" and "squeezes" was never more than the legitimate income and welfare benefits of his counterpart in the Western countries. The only objection to such a practice, in his opinion, was the lack of a system, whereby personal actions could be eliminated by legal sanctions to improve government efficiency and morale.
The problem of adequate remuneration for official services has never been so acute in China as it was during the last half century. While the legal systems of supervision and budgeting have become more and more efficient, the salaries of the officials have still remained at the "fuel and water" level. Cynics often wonder, not at the reported cases of corruption, but at their scarcity. It is the Confucian training of "chi" or loss of "face" that is holding most underpaid officials in check. When our officials say that they are the cheapest paid officials in the world they are telling nothing but the truth.
The character "chi" is composed of a radical for "ear" by the side of that for "heart". The meaning is clearly "listen to the heart". In other words, to know "chi" is not to commit actions which your heal t cannot approve. It is more than a "sense of shame" as generally translated. "A man who knows "chi," says a Confucianist, "is a man of valor." It is an active virtue, which prompts men to rectify 'and redress mistakes and injustices. The well-known Chinese love for "face" is, only a passive expression of this virtue. In the long' history of China, many a revolution was started by the people's consciousness of "chi". Nothing hurts a Chinese more than to say that he is without "chi," and the most effective battle-cry has always been not to lose "face" to the enemy. At Kinmen, President Chiang had four big characters inscribed on a cliff reading "Don't forget we are in Chu" which refers to the story over two thousand years ago when the people of the state of "Chih" were driven to a small place called "Chu" from where they finally recovered their own country and also their great loss of "face." The President wrote this as an appeal to the Chinese people's sense of "chi".
In the daily life of a Confucianist, these four fundamentals are supplemented by the eight virtues as mentioned above.
The Chinese people have no religion of their own. Some may believe in the existence of god or gods, but most of them consider it a supernatural order of things which may not exist but which is outside the sphere of their daily lives. They are mostly concerned with phenomena which they can see and feel and they are satisfied with their intuitive communion of spirit with their own ancestors, from whom they know they get their lives as well as their spirit. It seems therefore that Christian work can flourish better in China only if its propagators will intensify their efforts on the humane plane. A Chinese loves and respects a missionary doctor or educator much more than any world-famous evangelist.
There are now two ideologies that are fighting for the Asian mind, namely, Democracy and Communism. Democracy has had a head start. It depended on Christian missionaries for the spread of Western civilization in Asia, but what successes it achieved during the past centuries are being swiftly swept away by the onslaught of the satanic forces of Communism. Democratic countries should by now have learned that the propagation of democracy through Christianity as a religion is not enough in a land where people are imbued with Confucianist ideas.
The Communist conquests of parts of Asia are only conquests by strength because Communism has not conquered the Asian mind, and also because Communism, in spite of its temporal roots, has now become a religion. It insists on blind faith and obedience to a fixed ideology. It is a man-made religion to perpetuate the selfish and despotic desires of a minority of men. Originally a social and economic critique of capitalism, its followers have distorted and transformed it into a form above any political theory. In this they have succeeded by imitating the many ways and means adopted and used by ecclesiastical organizations. The Communists supplant God with a very vague idol, "THE PEOPLE", and make themselves, the Communist Party, its Jesus Christ. In the name of their illusory idol, they exact blind obedience to its commands, and force all non-Communists to admit that they are sinners to begin with and have to go through the purifying fire of "brain-washing" for a new life. The people owe their allegiance only to the idol, physically and spiritually, and any spontaneous emotion is to be controlled and suppressed, even their instinctive emotion towards their own parents and children. All they receive in life are by the grace of the idol, and all that they give back are for better grace with their idol. Human life itself means nothing, it is only the sacrifice offered at the idol's altar; and by sacrificing their present lives the people are promised a glorious future paradise.
These ideas, as taught now by Communism and put into practice by the Communists, which are selected at random and are necessarily over-simplified, are enough to reveal some startling similarities between Communism and fundamentalist Christianity. The initial intentions may be diametrically different but the effects, in the most fanatical cases, are very much the same. In different degrees, both discourage rationalism and freedom of thinking and both look on life not as an end in itself but as a step and an instrument for achieving the will of some mightier authority, in awe of which people forsake their own birthright and dignity as free and thinking human beings.
The antidote to Communism is therefore Democracy on a human plane. To win the great battle of ideologies in Asia, where Confucianism has taken root for thousands of years, the Western people have to show the Asians the benefits that democracy can give to the people as human beings. They have to assist more in bettering their economic and physical welfare; they do not have to concern overmuch with their religious beliefs. Democracy, just as Confucianism, can tolerate any form of religion that the people may choose to believe. To teach them that religion is the end and the most important thing of their whole lives is not helpful to the cause to which all freedom-loving people should now subscribe.
The role America plays as the leader of the democratic camp forces her to station a large number of military and civilian personnel in foreign lands and to devise ways to smooth relationship with the people of these lands not only for purposes of mutual security but also for better mutual understanding. The best way to understand and gain the Asian mind is to study the teachings of Confucius. Much unnecessary friction and misunderstanding could be avoided if the Americans staying with Asian countries could be educated in the fundamental principles of Confucian philosophy.
"The United States of America," as the editor of an English language paper in Taiwan has well written after the Black Friday incident, "as the world's leading democratic power and the staunchest supporter of weaker and smaller free nations, deserves a better rating in the way of prestige and popularity as she is getting now. One of the most fundamental approaches toward tackling, this problem (of better relations) is through more emphasis on her human relations activities, without which all her military and economic aid programs to help her allies and friends overseas could only reap a limited amount of success and good will."