No sooner had the sun of Confucius set under a cloud (since sovereigns and princes had neglected if they had not scorned his precepts), than his memory and principles were duly honored.  But it was not until the accession of the Han dynasty, 206 B.C., that the reigning emperor collected the scattered writings of the sage, and exerted his vast power to secure the study of them throughout the schools of China.  It must be borne in mind that a hostile emperor of the preceding dynasty had ordered the books of Confucius to be burned; but they were secreted by his faithful admirers in the walls of houses and beneath the ground.  Succeeding emperors heaped additional honors on the memory of the sage, and in the early part of the sixteenth century an emperor of the Ming dynasty gave him the title which he at present bears in China,—­“The perfect sage, the ancient teacher, Confucius.”  No higher title could be conferred upon him in a land where to be “ancient” is to be revered.  For more than twelve hundred years temples have been erected to his honor, and his worship has been universal throughout the empire.  His maxims of morality have appealed to human consciousness in every succeeding generation, and carry as much weight to-day as they did when the Han dynasty made them the standard of human wisdom.  They were especially adapted to the Chinese intellect, which although shrewd and ingenious is phlegmatic, unspeculative, matter-of-fact, and unspiritual.  Moreover, as we have said, it was to the interest of rulers to support his doctrines, from the constant exhortations to loyalty which Confucius enjoined.  And yet there is in his precepts a democratic influence also, since he recognized no other titles or ranks but such as are won by personal merit,—­thus opening every office in the State to the learned, whatever their original social rank.  The great political truth that the welfare of the people is the first duty and highest aim of rulers, has endeared the memory of the sage to the unnumbered millions who toil upon the scantiest means of subsistence that have been known in any nation’s history.

This essay on the religion of the Chinese would be incomplete without some allusion to one of the contemporaries of Confucius, who spiritually and intellectually was probably his superior, and to whom even Confucius paid extraordinary deference.  This man was called Lao-tse, a recluse and philosopher, who was already an old man when Confucius began his travels.  He was the founder of Tao-tze, a kind of rationalism, which at present has millions of adherents in China.  This old philosopher did not receive Confucius very graciously, since the younger man declared nothing new, only wishing to revive the teachings of ancient sages, while he himself was a great awakener of thought.  He was, like Confucius, a politico-ethical teacher, but unlike him sought to lead people back to a state of primitive society before forms and regulations existed.  He held that man’s nature was good,