HAN WÊN-KUNG.
768-824 a.d.
[From Mr. Watters’ invaluable Guide to the Tablets in a Confucian Temple, I learn that we should wash our hands in rose-water before taking up the works of Han Wên-kung, whose official name was Han Yü, Wên-kung being his title by canonisation. Known as the “Prince of Literature,” and generally regarded as the most striking figure in the Chinese world of letters, he certainly ranks high as poet, essayist, and philosopher. In official life, he got himself into trouble by his outspoken attacks upon Buddhism, at that time very fashionable at Court, and was banished to the then barbarous south, where he gained great kudos by his wise and incorrupt administration. It was there that he issued his famous manifesto to the crocodile, at which we might well smile if it were not quite clear that to the author superstition was simply, as elsewhere, an instrument of political power. Han Wên-kung was ultimately recalled from his quasi-exile, and died loaded with honours. His tablet has been placed in the Confucian temple, which is otherwise strictly reserved for exponents of the doctrines of Confucius, “because,” as Mr. Watters states, “he stood out almost alone against the heresy of Buddhism which had nearly quenched the torch of Confucian truth.”]
ON THE TRUE FAITH OF A CONFUCIANIST.
UNIVERSAL love is called charity: right conduct is called duty. The product of these two factors is called the Method; and its practice, without external stimulus, is called Exemplification.[1]
Charity and Duty are constant terms. Method and Exemplification are variable. Thus, there is the Method of the perfect man, and the Method of the mean man; while Exemplification may be either good or evil.
Lao Tzŭ merely narrowed the scope of charity and duty; he did not attempt to do without them altogether. His view of them was the narrow view of a man sitting at the bottom of a well and inferring the size of the heavens from the small portion visible to himself. He understood Charity and Duty in a limited, individual sense; and narrowness followed as a matter of course. What he called the Method was a Method he had determined was the Method. It was not what I call the Method. What he called Exemplification was different from what I call Exemplification. What I call Method and Exemplification are based upon a combination of Charity and Duty; and this is the opinion of the world at large. What
- ↑ This last term cannot be satisfactorily rendered. It is usually translated by “virtue”; but that, to go no farther, would make nonsense of the next clause. The meaning, however, may be sufficiently gathered from the context. I need hardly add that “method” must be here understood in its philosophical sense.
