Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 3.djvu/106

sincerity, it will be observed, a very high place is given in the list of virtues; but, on the other hand, a history written by Confucius proves that his canon of truth was sensibly affected by expediency, and that to conceal facts injurious to the reputation of the great and of the renowned did not strike him as insincerity. One of his own maxims, quoted above, shows further that, according to his view, parents and children should hide each other's crimes. That is certainly the Chinese conception of truth, as it is also the Japanese. Neither nation has ever admitted in practice that the obligation to be unreservedly veracious overrides all other moral and social obligations. The Occident in its practice equally rejects any such doctrine, but pretends to adhere to it.

One of the conspicuous creations of Confucian philosophy is the "gentleman," a term of which the Chinese equivalent has been variously translated,—"the superior man," "the princely scholar," and otherwise,—but which is most faithfully rendered "gentleman." Dr. Wells Williams, with true insight but not entirely without a display of the bigotry that often disfigures men of his persuasion, says: "It would be hard to estimate the influence of Confucius in his ideal 'princely scholar,' or the power for good over his race this conception ever since has exerted. It might be compared to the glorious work of the sculptor on the Acropolis of Athena. Like the Athens Promachos to the ancient Attic