Very, very human, I say; very Chinese.  But here is that which was not human but divine:  he never turned from his path to satisfy these so human and Chinese longings; the breeze in the Rain God’s Glade never blew for him.  It is just as well to remember, when you read of the ceremonies, the body bent under the load of the scepter, the carefully chosen (as it may seem) and habitually worn expression of face on passing or approaching the throne, the “elbows spread like wings":—­all the formal round of proprieties;—­that it was the last days of Spring, and the waters of Yi, and the breeze in the Rain God’s Glade, that were calling to his Chinese heart.

Yes; he was very human; listen to this:—­Yuan Jang awaited the Master squatting on the ground.  “The Master said:—­’Unruly when young, unmentioned as man, undying when old,—­this spells Good-for-nothing’; and hit him on the leg with his staff.”

Which brings one naturally to his sense of humor.

Once he was passing through a by-street when a man of the district shouted:—­“Great is Confucius the Philosopher!  Yet for all his wide learning he has nothing which can bring him fame!” The Master turned to his disciples and said:—­“What shall I take up?  Shall I take up charioteering?—­or archery?—­I must certainly take up charioteering!”

His disciples once were expecting him at the city of Ch’ing; and Tse Kung asked a man who was coming from the east gate if he had seen him there.—­“Well,” said the man, “there is a man there with a forehead like Yao, a neck like Kao Yao, his shoulders on a level with those of Tse-ch’an, but wanting below the waist three inches of the height of Yu;—­and altogether having the forsaken appearance of a stray dog.”  Tse Kung recognised the description and hurried off to meet the Master, to whom he reported it verbatim. Confucius was hugely delighted.  “A stray dog!” said he; “fine! fine!” Unluckily, no contemporary photographs of Yao and Yu and the others have come down; so the description is not as enlightening now as it may have been then.

“Tse Kung,” we read, “would compare one man with another.”  The Master said:—­“What talents Tse has!  Now I have no time for such things!”

I keep on hearing in his words accents that sound familiar.

When he was at Loyang—­Honanfu—­one of the things that struck him most was a bronze statue in the Temple of the Imperial Ancestors, with a triple, clasp on its mouth.  One does not wonder.  A Great Soul from the God World, he kept his eyes resolutely on the world of men; as if he remembered, nothing of the splendor, and nothing foresaw. . . .  Indeed, I cannot tell; one would give much to know what really passed between him and Laotse.  If you say that no word of his lightens, for you that ’dusk within the Holy of holies’,—­at least he gives you the keys, and leaves you to find and open the ‘Holy of holies’ for yourself if you can.  There are lost chapters, that went