Page:The Spirit of the Chinese People.djvu/171

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what spirit we perform these services. The difficulty, said Confucius, is with the manner of doing it. It is, I will finally say here, by virtue of this method in his teaching, of looking into the inwardness of moral actions that Confucius becomes, not as the Christian missionaries say, a mere moralist and philosopher, but a great and true religious teacher.

As a further illustration of Confucius method, take the present reform movement in China. The so called progressive mandarins with applause from foreign newspapers are making a great fuss—even going to Europe and America, —trying to find out what reforms to adopt in China. But unfortunately the salvation of China will not depend upon what reforms are made by these progressive mandarins, but upon how these reforms are carried out. It seems a pity that these progressive mandarins, —instead of going to Europe and America, to study constitution could not be made to stay at home and study Confucius. For until these mandarins take to heart Confucius' teaching and his method and attend to the how instead of the what in this matter of reform, nothing but chaos, misery and suffering will come out of the present reform movement in China.

The other, article in Dr. Giles "Adversaria Sinica" which I will briefly examine, is entitled— "The four classes."

The Japanese Baron Suyematzu in an interview said that the Japanese divided their people into four classes,—soldiers, farmers, artisans and warriors. Upon