GREEK AND CHINESE THOUGHT. 165 



.culated, weighed, by the laws of human nature ; its one idol 

 is good sense." 



And he asks why it is that all this wisdom has 

 produced only a sublime automaton ; and finds the 

 answer in the fact that, according to Confucianism, 

 " man is deprived of any ideal above himself." 



" Chinese society," he says, " makes man the final end, 

 and so humanity finds its goal in its starting-point. It is 

 stifled within the limits of humanity. In this dwarf society, 

 everything is deprived of its crown. Morality wants heroism ; 

 royalty, its royal muse ; verse, poetry ; philosophy, meta- 

 physic ; life, immortality ; because, at the summit of every- 

 thing, there is no God." 1 



Renan, 2 in the same way, speaks of Confucianism 

 as " the least supernatural of all religions ; " and 

 he adds, "hence its mediocrity." From the great 

 Confucianist classics which remain to us, most of 

 which are now accessible in the " Sacred Books of 

 the East," we are able to judge of the truth of this. 

 If Positivism is rightly described as " Catholicism 

 minus Christianity," Confucianism may be called 

 Positivism minus its universality. Confucianism 

 has not even the "enthusiasm of humanity," like 

 that which Positivism has caught from Christianity. 

 It is rationalism pure and simple ; a system of 

 conduct, hardly even a philosophy, summed up in 

 rules regulating man's duty to his neighbour. 

 Of Taoism, the religion of Lao-Tzu, it is less 



1 Quinet, La Genie des Religions, pp. 224, 22$. 

 3 Quoted by Lilly, Ancient Religions, p. no. 



