396 CHINESE LITERATURE
quietly and kindly until they were thoroughly committed to a certain position, with no possibility of backing out, and then he decided the case upon its merits as thus set forth. By such means, those who were bambooed had no cause for complaint, while those who were con- demned to die died without resenting their sentence ; the people were unable to deceive him, and they did not even venture to make the attempt. Thus did he carry out the Confucian doctrine of respecting popular feeling ; l and were all judicial officers to decide cases in the same careful and impartial manner, there would not be a single injured suitor under the canopy of heaven."
The following is a specimen case dealing with the evil effects of superstitious doctrines :
"The people of the Ch'ao-yang district are great on bogies, and love to talk of spirits and Buddhas. The gentry and their wives devote themselves to Ta Tien, but the women generally of the neighbourhood flock in crowds to the temples to burn incense and adore Buddha, forming an unbroken string along the road. Hence, much ghostly and supernatural nonsense gets spread about; and hence it was that the Hou-fien sect came to flourish. I know nothing of the origin of this sect. It was started amongst the Ch'ao-yang people by two men, named Yen and Chou respectively, who said that they had been instructed by a white-bearded Immortal, and who, when an attempt to arrest them was made by a predecessor in office, absconded with their families and remained in concealment. By and by, however, they came back, calling themselves the White Lily or the White Aspen sect. I imagine that White
1 " In hearing litigations, I am like any other body. What is necessary is to cause the people to have no litigations" (Legge).
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