124 GREAT MEN OF ANCIENT TIMES. 



chief magistrate, to marry, to have ten children, to become a 

 widower and to marry again. In a country where people move as 

 deliberately as they do in China this must have required a good 



many years. 



LAO-TSE. 



Contemporary with Confucius was Lao-tse, a Chinaman in some 

 respects greater even than Confucius. There is in Chinese litera- 

 ture an account of an interview between these two great philos- 

 ophers in which Confucius appears at a disadvantage. The teach- 

 ings of Lao-tse were purely moral and they more nearly resem- 

 bled those of Jesus than did those of any other man. Lao-tse's 

 father was not married until seventy years of age, and the accounts 

 state that his mother was a very old woman. 



BUDDHA. 



At a date not far from when Confucius was born, there was 

 born in India the greatest man India ever produced. "The facts 

 of Buddha's mortal life may be briefly told. His father had mar- 

 ried sisters, Mahamaya and Mahaprajapati. Mahamaya, having 

 come to her forty-fifth year, was about to be delivered of her first 

 child, and, in accordance with the Hindu custom, had started for 

 her father's home. On the way she rested under a satin tree, 

 and there gave birth to her boy. Here legend steps in with 

 marvels." * 



This places Buddha in sub-class A 3 from his mother. I do 

 not have the age of his father, but the probabilities are that he 

 was advanced in years, otherwise he would have been apt to neg- 

 lect a 44-year old wife for the charms of some younger female. 



* Sir Edwin Arnold. 



