PREFACE.

IN the following pages I have endeavoured to bring together, in the compass of a single volume, and in the form which would be most likely to interest the general reader, a résumé of all that concerns the life, times, and teaching of the great Chinese philosopher, Confucius. I have occasionally included in the details of his life incidents which are legendary, rather than historical, for the reason that, had I discarded them, I should have deprived the reader of many striking illustrations of his character, and of the manners, and of the mode of thought, belonging to the time in which he lived; and in doing this I have only followed the example of many preceding writers, amongst whom are to be enumerated such high authorities as M. Pauthier and the Jesuit Father P. Amiot.

In the various extracts from Chinese sources I

have sometimes found it necessary to alter the terms in which they had been translated, in order to incorporate within them the explanations given in notes, and the better to bring them into harmony with the object of this work, as well as to make them more capable of being understood when produced as isolated passages; but I have for this reason, more frequently preferred an adaptation from some purely literal translation, whilst in not a few instances I have gone at once to the original Chinese text. My great object in every case, in addition to that which has been already stated, having been to place the subject before the reader in language which, whilst preserving a correct idea of the meaning of the original, would be most appropriate to the period of the composition, and to the circumstances under which it was written.

I am supported in my idea of the necessity of substituting a free rendering, approaching in many cases to a paraphrase, for a close literal translation of the ancient literature of China, by no less an authority than that of the Professor of Chinese in the University of Oxford, Dr. Legge, whose translations of the sacred books, written for scholars rather than for the general public, have put him at the head of our

English translators. Dr. Legge says, in the preface to his translation of the "Yih-King," published in 1882, "The written characters of the Chinese are not representations of words, but symbols of ideas, and the combination of them in composition is not a representation of what the author would say, but of what he thinks. It is in vain, therefore, for a translator to attempt a literal version. When the symbolic characters have brought his mind en rapport with that of the author, he is free to render the ideas in his own or any other speech, in the best manner he can attain to."

And this is put forward still more forcibly by Reinhold von Plaenckner, in the introduction to Laoutsze's "Taou-ti-King," translated into German by him under the title of "der Weg zur Tugend," who writes-I cannot resist the temptation of quoting it at length—“Ich meine, es ist ein grosser Unterschied zwischen einer sklavisch-treuen und einer überlegttreuen Uebersetzung. Die erste (nicht beste) lexikale Bedeutung der Worte einer Sprache wiederzugeben, und diese Worte hier wie dort aneinanderzureihen, muss zur Unverständlichkeit und Hässlichkeit führen. Die Uebertragung eines alten classischen chinesischen.

Werkes Wort für Wort würde, wegen der oft grenzenlos erweiterten Bedeutung eines Wortes (zuweilen freilich sind die Bedeutungsgrenzen auch viel enger gestellt als im Deutschen), mehr noch wegen der kernigen, oft auch poetischen Kürze der Ausdrucksweise, geradehin unmöglich. Ich habe mich daher oft in der Lage gesehen, die mehrfache Bedeutung eines Wortes auch mehrfach wiederzugeben, vor allem aber gesucht, den Sinn von dem, was Lao-tse gedacht und in seiner Sprache classisch schön nieder geschrieben hat, wenigstens verständlich und im Zusammenhang wiederzugeben."

The foregoing remarks have a special reference to the classical and severer types of Chinese literature. Speaking of compositions of a lighter and more ornamental kind, Sir John Davis, in his admirable work on the poetry of the Chinese, observes, "There are two causes to which Chinese literature of the lighter or ornamental kind has owed its indifferent reception in the West-first, a want of choice and selection in the subjects; and secondly, a considerable absence of taste and judgment in the mode of treating them. It is really too much to expect that people will trouble themselves to look at what