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Chinese Recorder, by one of the leaders of the conference. It claimed that Legge was making the Confucian Classics equivalent to the Old Testament. Legge's attempts to synthesize traditional Confucian views of God and man with Christian revelation, reflected, it claimed, an unrealistic assessment of modern Confucian ideology and Confucian bureaucracy. Taking Legge's thesis to its logical conclusion, it claimed, there was no substantial reason to promote Christian missionary efforts in China. Although it was clearly not Legge's intention to weaken the Christian missionary effort, these fears were felt by many missionaries.
## II. Academic MisrepresentationsLate in Legge's career at Oxford the translations of the Confucian sacred texts Legge had prepared for The Sacred Books of the East were attacked by Barthelemy Saint Hilaire. His conclusions were that there is basically no religion in China; the Chinese honour, he stated, no spiritual Being except Heaven (Tian, 天) thus contradicting Legge's discussion of the terms Shangdi ("Lord on High") and Di ("Lord”). Hilaire ranked the religion of Confucius last among the world's religions, far behind even Graeco-Roman mythology, since it was built only on certain traditions, only had a human basis, and excluded all notions of divinity; while Confucius was admirable in his own milieu, his teachings only insult and degrade our intelligence. It would seem that Hilaire had not read Legge's texts seriously, and his views have not been much supported since.
Nevertheless, the fact that not all scholars accepted Legge's position raised some doubts in the minds of even some of his closest associates. In 1895, A.M. Fairbairn, Legge's close friend and founder of Mansfield College in Oxford, when completing a text on the philosophy of religion, was convinced by anonymous sources not to publish his materials on China (based heavily on Legge) because Legge's position was "dated".
## III. Accusations of Interpretive ErrorIn 1895 Legge was confronted with a more subtle criticism. It came from an Austrian sinologist, Franz Kühnert. He wrote a criticism of Legge's translation of The Great Learning, basing his criticism on the standard interpretation of The Great Learning of the Song dynasty
182
Chinese Recorder, by one of the leaders of the conference. It claimed that Legge was making the Confucian Classics equivalent to the Old Testament. Legge's attempts to synthesize traditional Confucian views of God and man with Christian revelation, reflected, it claimed, an unrealistic assessment of modern Confucian ideology and Confucian bureaucracy. Taking Legge's thesis to its logical conclusion, it claimed, there was no substantial reason to promote Christian missionary efforts in China. Although it was clearly not Legge's intention to weaken the Christian missionary effort, these fears were felt by many missionaries.
II. Academic Misrepresentations
Late in Legge's career at Oxford the translations of the Confucian sacred texts Legge had prepared for The Sacred Books of the East were attacked by Barthelemy Saint Hilaire. His conclusions were that there is basically no religion in China the Chinese honour, he stated, no spiritual Being except Heaven (Tian, X) thus contradicting Legge's discussion of the terms Shangdi ("Lord on High") and Di ( π “Lord”). Hilaire ranked the religion of Confucius last among the world's religions, far behind even Graeco-Roman mythology. since it was built only on certain traditions, only had a human basis, and excluded all notions of divinity while Confucius was admirable in his own milieu, his teachings only insult and degrade our intelligence*. It would seem that Hilaire had not read Legge's texts seriously, and his views have not been much supported since.
Nevertheless, the fact that not all scholars accepted Legge's position raised some doubts in the minds of even some of his closest associates. In 1895, A.M. Fairbairn, Legge's close friend and founder of Mansfield College in Oxford, when completing a text on the philosophy of religion, was convinced by anonymous sources not to publish his materials on China (based heavily on Legge) because Legge's position was "dated".'7
III. Accusations of Interpretive Error
In 1895 Legge was confronted with a more subtle criticism. It came from an Austrian sinologist, Franz Kühnert. He wrote a criticism of Legge's translation of The Great Learning, basing his criticism on the standard interpretation of The Great Learning of the Song dynasty
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