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    {
        "id": 212283,
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        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
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        "document_key": "RAS-1990",
        "page_number": 225,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "202\n\nChina and her people. It is important to note that Legge's seminal text on Chinese Religions published in 1880 further illustrates this Christian influence, even for the casual reader. More subtle analysis can show that the criteria of judgement employed by Legge parallel themes found in the Scottish Shorter Catechism (1648) which he had memorized as a child. His ethical studies, summarized most cogently in the tract, \"Christianity And Confucianism Compared in Their Teaching On The Whole Duty Of Man,\" reflect both his Christian commitments, strong Aristotelian leanings, and his unwavering concern for the spiritual enlightenment of the Chinese. Finally, Legge took great pains to pursue information about and present a critical study of the Xi'an (西安) stele often referred to as the Nestorian monument. Published in 1886, this work reflects the desire Legge still had to use his academic credentials and scholarly awareness to reassert the historical importance of the Protestant role in bringing Christianity to China.\n\nBeing for many years the senior London Missionary Society administrator in Hong Kong, Dr. Legge was also responsible for dealing with the more difficult realities faced by both missionaries and the Chinese people with whom they worked. In particular, this meant being with the dying in their last moments, encouraging them, witnessing their last testimony as believers, and reporting these matters to the officers of the Society in London. The reality of the missionary duty is nowhere more clearly evident than in these documents, for they included not just the recording of the fate of missionaries and Chinese believers, but often also a description of their last hours, their struggle with fatal diseases, and the persistence of Legge as missionary in supporting them and seeking their last confession of faith. Numerous letters which passed between Legge and London spoke of the sicknesses and deaths of missionaries and their family members. When Pastor Ho Jinshan (何進善) died, the Chinese colleague with whom Dr. Legge shared the whole of his missionary career from Malacca to Hong Kong, Legge wrote a deeply reflective memorial which was later published by the Society in London. Easily the most emotionally engaging of these testimonies from Legge's experiences came in a letter written to his father-in-law regarding the death of Mary Isabella, his first wife, during a complicated birth. In other reflections, he spoke of the final testimonies of Chinese Christians in Hong Kong, including two very memorable ones involving an elderly woman and a former Taoist priest.61\n\nPage 225\n\nPage 226",
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    {
        "id": 212285,
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        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
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        "document_key": "RAS-1990",
        "page_number": 227,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "204\n\ncolonial setting. Legge exemplified this role as a social prophet in both Chinese and English contexts in a number of ways.\n\nIn regard to the policies of the Missionary Society itself, Legge stood alone at times in his advocacy of treating Chinese colleagues as equals both in standing and in monetary compensation. Some missionaries felt this might cause too much pride among the first generation of Christians; Legge argued that a person who achieved the rank and fulfilled the duties deserved the pay, whether Chinese or Westerner,\n\nWhen given the opportunity to address the Hong Kong community at the end of his missionary career, Dr. Legge did not hesitate to speak publicly against the opium trade and gambling. This ability to distance himself on selective issues from governmental positions was in fact another aspect of his academic success. Unlike other European scholars who were bound to the directives of their religious and political superiors, Legge's Non-Conformist intellectual and spiritual disciplines were prompted by personal vision. When tensions arose between the government and the missionaries, they voiced their petitions as loyal citizens even if they opposed the government's attitudes and decisions.\n\nEven Legge's entrance into the community of Oxford University was coloured by his Non-Conformist commitments. The British Parliament having only five years earlier overturned a long-standing tradition that entering professors and students must publicly swear to belief in the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Anglican Creed, Oxford academics were still somewhat wary about introducing a Non-Conformist into their community. Legge's character had to be upheld by supporters external to the university before he was admitted. Soon afterward Legge was acting as the Vice President of the Non-Conformist Union, remaining a major leader until the Union was handed over to A. M. Fairbairn of Mansfield College. Even though Legge was busy in the first years of his Oxford professorship in building up the number of students in his classes and completing the translations of the Sacred Books of China for F. Max Müller, he unabashedly communicated his personal concern and Christian witness to Oxford colleagues who were not Christians.\n\nVI. Legge's Commonsense Philosophy\n\nBasically a form of Neo-Aristotelean philosophy, the so-called",
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    {
        "id": 212286,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
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        "document_key": "RAS-1990",
        "page_number": 228,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "205\n\n“Scottish Commonsense” philosophy was a conscious effort in the eighteenth century to counteract the sceptical implications of the radical philosopher, David Hume. The young Legge had read the writings of Thomas Reid, Dugald Stewart and Thomas Brown while a student at King's College in the early 1830s. He claimed later that he did not agree with all their philosophical implications, preferring a less rationalistic philosophy (perhaps that of William Paley), but even his granddaughter, the late Prof. Mary Dominica Legge, underscored his preference for Aristotelean ethics over the Confucian equivalent. If the content of James Legge's thought is rooted in the Biblical interpretations of the Non-Conformist tradition and Paley's evangelical system of natural theology, the categories came largely from the Commonsense tradition.\n\n72\n\nIt was these categories which, as translator and interpreter, James Legge employed in evaluating Confucian ethics, education, and epistemology. The lack of rational precision in a number of places in Confucius' life evoke from Legge a sense that there was a “want of freedom” in Confucius' behaviour. He likewise criticized the important Song dynasty Confucian commentator, Zhu Xi, for implying that, when knowledge is complete, the thoughts are by this means necessarily made sincere or without self-deception. For Legge, the moral life stemmed from a spiritual source related to the moral will, which was more penetrating and more complex than a mere mental grasp of things.\n\n7.1\n\nIn his study of Confucius' philosophy, Legge identifies specific details of the sage's biography in which his evasion of the truth (in one case involving an oath) is claimed to have produced an \"injurious influence” as an example to later Chinese people. There is also a conflict between Confucius' more humble claims about himself and the claims made about him by later Confucianists. At times these claims approach blasphemy, and Legge minces no words in decrying these assertions. The fact that other canonical texts included passages in which Confucius appears as the advocate of an ethic of revenge, especially when it involved family or clan ties, was an additional issue Legge regarded as deserving unqualified criticism. Whether or not these texts were historically reliable, their negative ethical influence was undeniable.\n\nWhat is important here is that the ethical questions Legge asked",
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        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
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        "page_number": 229,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "206\n\narose from a background related to his education in Scottish Commonsense philosophy.\n\nFrom the angle of Legge's philosophical methodology, it needs to be noted that Legge had a tendency to gauge philosophical profundity in terms of the insight a system gave to the inner workings of the mind. These kinds of questions were not extensively addressed in the Confucian Classics, although questions regarding the heart-mind were central in later Confucian metaphysical discourses. Legge was basically not interested in these systematic philosophies, most of which he felt were inarticulate and wrong. Empirical observations of human behaviour and categories inherited from an Aristotelian concept of the mind were assumed as the basic truths from which more precise models could be constructed. Legge discovered no resources of this sort in the Confucian traditions, and so could self-consciously advocate the need for Chinese students to readdress their traditional system with important questions which revealed systematic inadequacies.\n\nThough this kind of critical stance may seem too harsh and even an unjustified imposition of alien values on the Chinese ways of thinking, not long after Legge died Chinese scholars did begin an all-out attack against the traditional Confucian ethical system. This was partially responsible for the final overthrow of the imperial powers in 1911.\n\nVII. Legge's Immersion in the Confucian Tradition\n\nLegge, a missionary and advocate of Christian faith, was also responsive to the Chinese culture and people among whom he lived. There are several reasons why this was the case, beyond the simple fact of being immersed among the Chinese for thirty-five years. One important reason is the parallels Legge perceived between his Non-Conformist heritage and selective Confucian traditions. Legge located in the famous Confucian Han Yu (768-824 AD) of the Tang dynasty shared general attitudes also found in Non-Conformist Protestantism: both valued a return to the fundamental spiritual texts of the tradition; both asserted a more commonsense view of the world; and both stood in opposition to superstitious religious traditions (primarily associated with Buddhism and Taoism).\n\nIn addition, Confucian scholarship had developed its own more",
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