Hence his hatred of religiosity, of personal soul-saving.  You were to guard against evil in the simplest way:  by living wholly in humanity, finding all you motives and sources of action there.  If you were, in the highest sense, simply a factor in human society, you were a good man.  If you lived in yourself alone,—­having all evil to meet there, you were likely to succumb to it; and you were on the wrong road anyway.  Come out, then; think not of your soul to be saved, nor of what may befall you after death.  You, as you, are of no account; all that matters is humanity as a whole, of which you are but a tiny part.—­Now, if you like, say that Confucius did not teach Theosophy, because, so far as we know, he said nothing about Karma or Reincarnation.  I am inclined to think him one of the two or three supreme historical Teachers of Theosophy; and to say that his message, so infinitely simple, is one of the most wonderful presentations of it ever given.

It is this entire purity from all taint of personal religion; this distaste for prayer and unrelish for soul-salvation; this sweet clean impersonality of God and man, that makes the missionary writers find him so cold and lifeless.  But when you look at him, it is a marvelously warm-hearted magnetic man you see:  Such a One as wins hearts to endless devotion.  Many of the disciples were men who commanded very much the respect of the world.  The king of Ts’u proposed to give Confucius an independent duchy:  to make a sovereign prince of him, with territories absolutely his own.  But one of his ministers dissuaded him thus:  “Has your majesty,” said he, “any diplomatist in your service like Tse Kung?  Or anyone so fitted to be prime minister as Yen Huy?  Or a general to compare with Tse Lu? . . .  If K’ung Ch’iu were to acquire territory, with such men as these to serve him, it would not be to the prosperity of Ts’u.”—­And yet those three brilliant men were content—­no, proud—­to follow him on his hopeless wanderings, sharing all his long sorrow; they were utterly devoted to him.  Indeed, we read of none of his disciples turning against him;—­which also speaks mighty well for the stuff that was to be found in Chinese humanity in those days.

Tse Kung was told that some prince or minister had said that he, Tse Kung, was a greater man than Confucius.  He answered:  “The wall of my house rises only to the height of a man’s shoulders; anyone can look in and see whatever excellence is within.  But the Master’s wall is many fathoms in height; so that who fails to find the gateway cannot see the beauties of the temple within nor the rich apparel of the officiating priests.  It may be that only a few will find the gate.  Need we be surprised, then, at His Excellency’s remark?” Yen Huy said:—­“The Master knows how to draw us after him by regular steps.  He broadens our outlook with polite learning, and restrains our impulses by teaching us self-control.”