18 GREEK AND CHINESE ART IDEALS 



as a province of that ancient Asia which was probably the 

 place of origin of all purely intellectual effort. 



One may regard the Chinese as originally nomadic 

 Mongols who settled down to an agricultural life in the 

 valley of the Yellow Kiver and evolved a system of com- 

 munism which ultimately became the environment into which 

 Confucius was born. Confucius gathered together the 

 thoughts of previous teachers in China much in the same way 

 as Homer collected the earlier ballads of Hellas. Both were 

 transcendental editors who brought the scattered ideas of 

 others into a final form of genius which is immortal. Some 

 time before Plato created his Ideal Kepublic, Confucius had 

 formulated the germ of ordered communism which was to so 

 powerfully cement the Chinese nation together for some 

 twenty-five centuries.' He described a system of mutual 

 responsibility which, from the most obscure unit to the 

 Emperor, bound the nation into a homogeneous whole, founded 

 on the sanctity of family life without degrading the intellect 

 by speculation into the unknowable. The best collective 

 attributes of man were inspiring enough to lead the people on 

 towards a good and noble life without pandering to the 

 ignorant by calling in ideals founded on untruth and not in 

 accordance with natural law. The first book put into the 

 hand of a Chinese boy for a thousand years was the " Three 

 Character Classic" which begins "Man's nature is originally 

 good." The millstone of original sin did not hang round the 

 neck of the Chinese child. Later, Mencius said ' The 

 tendency of man's nature towards good works is like that of 

 water to flow downwards." The Chinese therefore began 

 life with liberal ideas which later gave them a tolerant out- 

 look in respect to exotic religions. 



The head of the family was the source of good and evil 

 in the smallest unit of society, and responsible for those in 

 his charge; while he himself was responsible to the next 

 higher collective authority. The good deeds of the departed 

 were perpetuated by special regard for ancestors helped by 

 simple ceremonies. Such a social code seems to have been 

 freer from superstition than any up to quite recent times. 

 Confucius looked upon music and poetry as co-efficients of 

 political harmony. The ideals of Confucius like those of 

 Plato and Socrates tended towards the common good and 

 against the reduction of society to a horde of competing 

 individuals. 



It is scarcely open to doubt that it is to the teachings of 

 Confucius, particularly to his development of the ethics of 



