he might have posed when bereavement touched him; he might have assumed a high philosophic calm.  But no; he never bothered to; even though reproached for inconsistency.  His mother died when he was twenty-four; and he broke through all rites and customs by raising a mound over her grave; that, as he said, he might have a place to turn to and think of as his home whereever he might be on his wanderings.  He mourned for her the orthodox twenty-seven months; then for five days longer would not touch his lute.  On the sixth day he took it and began to play; but when he tried to sing, broke down and wept.  One is surprised; but there is no posing about it.  Yen Hui was his saint John, the Beloved disciple.  “When Yen Hui died,” we read, “the Master cried, ’Woe is me!  I am undone of Heaven!  I am undone of Heaven!’ When Yen Hui died the Master gave way to grief.  The disciples said:  ‘Sir, you are giving way.’—­’Am I giving way?’ said he.  ’If for this man I do not give way, for whom shall I give way?...  Hui treated me as a son his father; I have failed to treat him as a father his son.’” Confucius was old then, and near his own death...  But what I think you will recognise in his speech, again and again, is the peculiarly spontaneous... indeed impetuous ... ring of it.  He had that way of repeating a sentence twice that marks a naturally impetuous man.—­Of his sense of humor I shall speak later.

He dearly loved his disciples, and was homesick when away from them.—­“My batch of boys, ambitious and hasty—­I must go home to them!  I must go home to them!” said he.  Once when he was very ill, Tse Lu “moved the disciples to act as ministers":—­to behave to him as if he were a king and they his ministers.—­“I know, I know!” said Confucius; “Tse Lu has been making believe.  This show of ministers, when I have none,—­whom will it deceive?  Will it deceive Heaven?  I had rather die in your arms, my boys, than be a king and die in the arms of my ministers.”—­“Seeing the disciple Min standing at his side in winning strength, Tse Lu with warlike front, Jan Yu and Tse Kung fresh and strong, the Master’s heart was glad,” we read.  He considered what he calls ‘love’ the highest state,—­the condition of the Adept or Sage; but that other thing that goes by the same name,—­of that he would not speak;—­nor of crime,—­nor of feats of strength, —­nor of doom,—­nor of ghosts and spirits.  Anything that implied a forsaking of middle lines, a losing of the balance, extravagance,—­he abhorred.—­And now back to that other side of him again:  the Man of Action.

The task that lay before him was to reform the state of Lu.  Something was rotten in it; it needed some reforming.—­The rotten thing, to begin with, was Marquis Ting himself; who was of such stuff as Confucius referred to when he said:  “You cannot carve rotten wood.”  But brittle and crumbling as it was, it would serve his turn for the moment; it would give him the chance to show twenty-five