234 REVIEW OF RECENT BOOKS 



only, and as the title states, the attempt is not a critical study of the 

 subject, but an exhibition of the actual beliefs of the Chinese them- 

 selves, taken as a whole. As we know, there is little attempt of any 

 sort among the Chinese, with the exception of the school of Kang 

 Yu-wei, to make critical studies of the Chinese classics ; still less to 

 judge On scientific principles what truth of history lies behind the 

 accounts in the fragmentary form in which they have reached us. 

 Foreign efforts in this direction have been usually governed by a 

 wise restraint ; the student was not criticising Holy Writ, — that is, 

 not holy to him — in the interpretration of which there were vested 

 interests which had to be considered ; interests whose injury or 

 destruction would bring sadness and despair to many hearts. But the 

 best of such studies has little more than an academic interest, unless 

 it becomes more than a fragment, and is integrated with later history 

 in such a fashion that some historial wisdom, some ethical value, 

 results for the reader. More useful for the student of national ethics 

 is a work of the kind before us, wherein we learn many facts, not 

 ordinarily accessible, about what' living men are thinking and believ- 

 ing ; the tales that move their hearts, the basis of their patriotism. As 

 one reads, one begins to look forward eagerly to the volumes on 

 Buddhism and Taoism. The work is also of greater probable value 

 than some of the earlier volumes, interesting as these were. For one 

 thing, it can have a kind of completeness not possible when one is 

 trying to illustrate the inumerable sorts of local animistic superstitions. 

 And whereas these vary with the region, and come and go with the 

 years, the central ganglion for them all is the Confucian system, with 

 its reverence for China's greatest man, and its memory of his disciples. 

 In detail, the work consists of an illustrated account, taken from 

 popular sources, of the life of Confucius and of the lives of his four 

 associates, his twelve disciples and his one hundred and twenty-eight 

 lesser disciples ; these being the sages whose tablets are to be found in 

 the ordinary Confucian temple. The pictures are in the original 

 colors, and follow the tradition in their subjects ; so bound is Chinese 

 art by the dead hand that present day pictures on these subjects 

 largely reproduce the coloring, grouping and landscapes of these 

 popular chromos. Other works furnish us with detailed descriptions 

 of the Confucian ritual ; the present work confines itself to collecting 

 the biographical matter with which the average Chinese has acquain- 

 tance. The lack of an index makes the use of this work, and of the 

 others in the series, somewhat difficult; doubtless that lack will be 

 repaired in the last volume. We are glad to commend the work to the 

 student, and to the general reader as well ; whoever reads it will find 

 the explanation of much that seems difficult to understand in the 



