What of Confucius - Written Evidence
It has long been recognized that the traditions about Confucius, which are accepted even by many scholars, are of questionable accuracy. More than eleven hundred years ago one of the most famous of Confucians, Han Yii, complained that his contemporaries repeated the most utter nonsense about Confucius. Thus, He asked, if one wishes to learn the truth, "from whom can he seek it?"
Almost every account of Confucius is based upon the biography included in the Historical Records, which was written around 100 B.C. Indeed, a Western scholar has written that it "will form the basis of the biographies of Confucius for all time." Yet at the beginning of the nineteenth century the great critic Ts'ui Shu pointed out that in fact this biography is, as he pungently put it, "seventy or eighty per cent slander." A Chinese scholar of our own day, who has studied this problem exhaustively, asserts that the biography contained in the Historical Records is so "utterly confused and disordered" that it could not have been written, in its present form, by its supposed author. Nevertheless, this is the foundation upon which are erected accounts of the sage that we are asked to believe.
If we are to arrive at something closer to the truth, we must approach the problem from a new direction. Since the only full accounts of Confucius that exist were written centuries after his death, it is customary to begin with them, but to seek to eliminate from them that which appears legendary or improbable. After this has been done, however, we have no assurance whatever that what remains is the truth. Once a man has become, as Confucius became, the hero of a culture, his name is used in countless stories that are based far more upon the beliefs and aspirations of those who tell them than upon any actual events of his life.
Let us consider an example from Christian tradition. Most of the early Christians were, as Paul has reminded us, humble folk, often despised and persecuted. When their children were mistreated by their playfellows, some of them consoled themselves with the thought that the boy Jesus, with his divine powers, could not have been so used with impunity. Thus in two of the Apocryphal Gospels it is related that when other children offended the young Jesus he used his supernatural powers to strike them dead on the spot.
How should we interpret these stories, as history? Should we say that they are exaggerated and reduce the number of children killed-to one? Shall we eliminate the supernatural element and say that this child was killed by purely natural means? Shall we go further and say that Jesus did not intentionally kill a child at all, but that this incident is no doubt based upon the fact that he had killed one accidentally? Obviously, all these suppositions are nonsense. And the more we alter the stories, trying to make them credible, the less chance we have of understanding their origin at all. For they grew out of the daydreams of miserable and oppressed people, and as such they have meaning and considerable historical value. But if we try to derive facts about the life of Jesus from such tales, we shall be misled, for they have almost nothing to do with Jesus at all.
No more do most of the stories about Confucius have anything to do with him. If we place them in their setting and study them carefully, they will tell us a great deal about the people of the period in which they originated, whether the Han dynasty or another. But it is quite hopeless to take the mass of legend about Confucius, as it existed when he had been dead for three centuries and more, and try to sort out the truth. It is too utterly confused, and there is no satisfactory standard by which the true may be distinguished from the false.
Instead, we shall try to find the real Confucius by means of two other kinds of material. First, while we shall not ignore the traditions that have been current in relatively recent times, we shall regard them as of secondary value, and shall place our chief reliance on records about Confucius that were written down as near to his own time as possible. We shall take as our basic materials books written within two centuries of his death. Second, we shall pay careful attention, as regards each major point, to the works that describe the situation which existed before the time of Confucius.
The importance of studying the pre-Confucian materials is sometimes overlooked. But if we are really to understand what sort of person Confucius was, it is essential. To use a modem example, it means little to say that John Smith advocated a forty-eight-hour working week unless we know under what circumstances he did so. If he did it in the middle of the twentieth century, in one of those countries where a forty-hour week is regarded by many people as standard, then he was proposing to lengthen the week and was what some would call a "reactionary." But if he did it under the conditions prevailing in many countries at the beginning of the nineteenth century, he was advocating a drastic shortening of the week and would certainly at the time have been called a "dangerous radical."
Similarly, there is little significance to the fact that Confucius said that one of his disciples might properly occupy the position of a ruler, unless we know all of the circumstances; but when we do, it is very important. For this disciple was not the heir of a ruler, and it was even intimated that his heredity was in some manner tainted. That Confucius nevertheless said that he might properly occupy a throne, because of his virtue and abilities, would have been a commonplace in Han times. But in the literature and bronze inscriptions dating from any time earlier than that of Confucius, inheritance seems to have been the only claim to such a place that was ever considered. In the light of this fact it is clear that Confucius' remark was not a casual compliment, but the statement of a revolutionary political principle of the greatest importance.
For our picture of pre-Confucian China we shall draw upon the classic known as the Book of Poetry, the genuinely early portions of the Book of Changes and the Book of History* the Spring and Autumn Annals, and inscriptions cast on bronze vessels that have come down to us. We shall also make use of the historical work known as the Tso Chuan, but since it does not seem to have been written in anything like its present form until around 300 B.C., it must be utilized with considerable caution.
For the foundation of our understanding of the life and thought of Confucius we shall use the Analects. This book consists chiefly of sayings of Confucius and his disciples. Not all of it is genuine, but those portions that have been added later often betray themselves in several ways at once. Not infrequently they differ so greatly from the genuinely early sections in style, in vocabulary, and in ideas simultaneously that there is no question that they are false. Many scholars have worked on these problems; their results are summarized and the authenticity of various portions of the Analects is discussed in detail in the Appendix.
The book named after the philosopher Mo Tzu makes some mention of Confucius. At first glance it would seem that it should be a good source since Mo Tzu lived immediately after Confucius; unfortunately, however, as critics have pointed out, most of the discussion of Confucius personally is found in passages that are obviously late additions to the Mo Tzu. The book called Mencius is, on the other hand, a very valuable source. The Confucian philosopher Mencius was bom about a century after Confucius died. The work that bears his name records the tradition about Confucius in some detail and in a very early form, which is in general quite similar to that found in the early portions of the Analects. The Tso Chuan records, in much detail, the history of Confucius' native state during the period of his lifetime. On the whole, however, it tells us remarkably little about the life of Confucius. This is one of the many facts which make it clear that in reality Confucius was not, in his lifetime, the important political figure that later tradition has represented him. The Tso Chuan also contains some Stories about Confucius that disagree with the earlier accounts and in some cases even involve the weird or supernatural. Since this is true, and since the Tso Chuan was not written in its present form until around 300 B.C., only a part of what it has to say about Confucius can be accepted as trustworthy. This part, however, is valuable in helping to fill out the picture.
Works written after Confucius had been dead for centuries give much more detailed information about him than those written near his lifetime. This is the reverse of what we should expect, and it is clear that much of the added information was derived from imagination rather than from knowledge. We shall look at a number of these later works when we come to examine the growth of the Confucian legend.
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