SOURCE: Giles, Lionel. Introduction to The Sayings of Confucius, pp. 7-36. London: John Murray, 1907.

In the following essay, Giles provides a character sketch of Confucius and discusses his reputation in the West.

Confucius is one of the few supremely great figures in the world's history. A man's greatness must always be measured, in the first place, by the consensus of opinion in his own country; the judgment of foreigners can only be allowed to have a secondary value. Especially is this true when the critics are not only foreigners, but belong to a totally different order of civilisation from the men whose greatness they would appraise. For even if they can keep their minds free from purely national bias of the unreasoning sort, they will naturally look for such attributes as are highly prized among themselves, and feel disappointed if these are not much in evidence. They will...