The wisdom of Confucius as a social reformer, as a teacher and guide of
the Chinese people, is shown in many ways. He not only gave them a code
of personal deportment, providing them with rules for the etiquette and
ceremony of life, but he instilled into them that profound spirit of
domestic piety which is one of the strongest features in the Chinese
character. He took measures to secure also the intellectual cultivation
of his followers, and his Five Canons contain all the most ancient works
of Chinese literature, in the departments of poetry, history,
philosophy, and legislation. The Shi-King is a collection of Chinese
poetry made by Confucius himself. This great anthology consists of more
than three hundred pieces, covering the whole range of Chinese lyric
poetry, the oldest of which dates some eighteen centuries before Christ,
while the latest of the selections must have been written at the
beginning of the sixth century before Christ. These poems are of the
highest interest, and even nowadays may be read with delight by
Europeans. The ballad and the hymn are among the earliest forms of
national poetry, and the contents of the Shi-King naturally show
specimens of lyric poetry of this sort. We find there not only hymns,
but also ballads of a really fine and spirited character. Sometimes the
poems celebrate the common pursuits, occupations, and incidents of life.
They rise to the exaltation of the epithalamium, or of the vintage song;
at other times they deal with sentiment and human conduct, being in the
highest degree sententious and epigrammatic. We must give the credit to
Confucius of having saved for us the literature of China, and of having
set his people an example in preserving the monuments of a remote
antiquity. While the literatures of ancient Greece and Rome have largely
perished in the convulsions that followed the breaking up of the Roman
empire in Europe, when the kingdom of China fell into disorder and
decrepitude this one great teacher stepped forward to save the precious
record of historic fact, philosophical thought, and of legislation as
well as poetry, from being swept away by the deluge of revolution.
Confucius showed his wisdom by the high value he set upon the poetry of
his native land, and his name must be set side by side with that of the
astute tyrant of Athens who collected the poems of Homer and preserved
them as a precious heritage to the Greek world. Confucius has given us
his opinion with regard to the poems of the Shi-King. No man, he says,
is worth speaking to who has not mastered the poems of an anthology, the
perusal of which elevates the mind and purifies it from all corrupt
thoughts. Thanks to the work of modern scholarship, English readers can
now verify this dictum for themselves.

E. W.