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away from the simplo manded, who however have never quite lost
their feeling of respect for them.
Obviously the Confucian cannon must have been originally a
sene intelligent scheme of study for how else can one account for
its persistence through the ages. The charge brought against the
system today is that it is purely a training in memory but Con-
fucius apparently did not so regard his work, for he laid down
the two following principles
and again
"Learning without thought is labour lost,
Thought without learning is pcrilous",
"I unfold one corner of the thème" and leave the
pupils to explore the remainder for themselves".
"Tsze-kung,
You think I suppose that I am one who learns many things and keeps them in memory"
Tsze-kung replied
"Yes but perhaps it is not so."
"lo" was the answer I seek unity, all pervading.
"Hway gives me no assistance.
There is nothing
that I say in which he does not delight."
11
"From the man bringing his bundle of dried fish
upwards I have never refused instruction to anyone."
Here we seem to have a picture of Confucius associating with his
followers on the same terms as Socrates associated with his.
There is no idea of finality or authority in the teaching. It
is a search for truth, that is gradually unfolded as the enquiry
proceeds. No one therefore would be more surprised than Confucius
to find that the system of his day had become stagnant, and
congcated into a body of thought that had no relation with the
changed world of the present.
It
If the whole system he s degenerated into a process of memory
stuffing the charge perhaps ought not to be laid at the door of
Confucius but at the examination system which followed later.
is not only in China. howover that the cold doed hand of the exam-
ination comes down annually with a dull heavy thud upon the warm
and living body of literature. It happens elsewhere too.
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