creed, the pagan Empedocles as well as the Christian Paul, have insisted on the necessity of inspiration, a living emotion to make moral actions perfect." Now what is this inspiration or living emotion in Religion, the parmount virtue of Religion upon which, as I said, Religion principally depends to make men, to enable and make even the mass of mankind obey the rules of moral conduct or moral laws?
You will remember I told you that the whole system of the teachings of Confucius may be summed up in one word: the Law of the Gentleman, the nearest equivalent for which in the European languages, I said, is moral law. Confucius calls this law of the gentleman a secret.[1] Confucius says: "The law of the gentleman is to be found everywhere, and yet it is a secret." Nevertheless Confucius says: "The simple intelligence of ordinary men and women of the people even can know something of this secret. The ignoble nature of ordinary men and women of the people, too, can carry out this law of the gentleman." For this reason Goethe, who also knew this secret—the law of the gentleman of Confucius, called it an "open secret." Now where and how did mankind come to discover this secret? Confucuis said, you will remember, I told you that the recognition of the law of the gentleman began with the recognition of the relation of husband and wife—the true relation between a man and woman in marriage. Thus the secret, the open secret of Goethe, the law of the gentleman of Confucius, was
- ↑ 中庸—The Universal order XII i.
