VONGUCIUS AND THE CHINESE.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XXIII, Issue 9456, 23 July 1881, Page 3

VONGUCIUS AND THE CHINESE.

(Good Words.) The Chinese are supposed to form Jout one -third of the population of the orkl. And there is some ground for elieving that for the last 4000 years ley bare held much the same numerical roportion to the entire human race. et it may be said that there is but one tinaman who has earned a world-wide sputation — one individual who has been trge enough to lift himself above the lillions of unknown, unrecorded lives, nd force himself on the regard of the Western World. He was not a conneror stamping his name on the terrortruck imagination of surrounding tribes. Ie was not an inventor whose memory s kept green by the gratitude of those f'uo daily enjoy the fruit of his genius. & was not a poet uttering men's best Noughts and deepest feelings for them 3 words more expressive than their wn. He was not even a philosopher ; *i if a philosopher, his philosophy was >Q the level of that of Benjamin Franklu - Iv short, no ordinaiy avenue to a uie seems to have been open to him md yet, if numbers go for anything, what anie rivals that of the man who for 23 ■euhuies has been worshipped as all but livine by nearly one-half of the world, ' "id whose words are regarded as ■anouical by a people compared to whose exclusive jealousy the Jewish 'xelusiveness is latitudinarian ? The I(? ci'et of Ids fame is mainly this, that he B 'ii-s the Chinaman of the Chinamen, the toost conservative and ancestor - worshipping individual of the most conservative and ancestor-worshipping race. " was by his work that the national tendencies and popular instincts were and definitely fixed. It was he who formulated the relations of ruler and subject. It was he who gave utterance to those maxims of personal conduct which the Chinese are justly proud °f> though they do not scrupulously observe them. Especially, it was lie *ho gathered into a Chinese canon all the wisdom which had been tested by Previous generations, and so set the seal of completeness on Chinese life and cus'olus, so far as this can be done by any ttau or by any books.