WHAT THE GOOD KING DELIGHTS IN MOST

“The virtuous king,” said Mencius, “is glad to have a large extent of territory and a numerous people to rule over; but his heart is not on these things.  To be at the head of a great kingdom and to see his people loyal, united, and flourishing, gives the good king joy; but his heart is not on these things.  It is on benevolence, justice, propriety, and knowledge that the good king’s heart is set.”

THE INFLUENCE OF EXAMPLE

Mencius said, “In the good days of old, men of virtue and talent abounded in the land, and their influence for good was great upon their fellows.  But now, alas, the masses of the people are ignorant, and depraved, and their dominant influence is bad.”

COUNSELLORS SHOULD LOVE RIGHTEOUSNESS RATHER THAN RICHES

Mencius said, “Those who counsel men in high places should feel contempt for their pomp and display.  I have no wish for huge and gorgeous halls, for luxurious food with hundreds of attendants, or for sparkling wine or bewitching women.  These things I esteem not; what I esteem are the rules of propriety handed down by the ancients.”

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FENELON

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

Francois de Salignac de la Mothe Fenelon was born at the chateau of Fenelon, in the ancient territorial division of Perigord, France, August 6, 1651.  At twenty-four he became a priest.  He was for many years a friend of his celebrated contemporary Bossuet, but later Bossuet attacked a spiritual and unworldly work of Fenelon, who was condemned by the Pope.  He died on January 17, 1715, leaving behind him many books, of which the “Treatise on the Existence of God,” first published in 1713, is the masterpiece.  This noble and profound work, though it accepts the “argument from design,” which the discovery of universal evolution necessarily modifies, does so with such rare philosophical insight as to stand for ever far above any other works of the kind.  Fenelon can scarcely be called a mystic, for his reason was of the finest, and never surrendered its claims; but, though a strictly rational thinker, he had the insight of the mystic or the idealist who sees in external nature, and in the mind of man alike, what Goethe called “the living garment of God.”

I.—­THE HAND THAT MAKES EVERYTHING

I cannot open my eyes without admiring the art that shines throughout all nature; the least cast suffices to make me perceive the Hand that makes everything.

Men the least exercised in reasoning, and the most tenacious of the prejudices of the senses, may yet with one look discover Him who has drawn Himself in all His works.  The wisdom and power He has stamped upon everything He has made are seen, as it were, in a glass by those that cannot contemplate Him in His own idea.  This is a sensible and popular philosophy, of which any man free from passion and prejudice is capable.