CHAPTER IV

THE CHINESE ETHICAL SYSTEM IN JAPAN

[Footnote 1:  “He was fond of saying that Princeton had never originated a new idea; but this meant no more than that Princeton was the advocate of historical Calvinism in opposition to the modified and provincial Calvinism of a later day.”—­Francis L. Patton, in Schaff-Herzog Encyclopaedia, Article on Charles Hodge.]

[Footnote 2:  We use Dr. James Legge’s spelling, by whom these classics have been translated into English.  See Sacred Books of the East, edited by Max Mueller.]

[Footnote 3:  The Canon or Four Classics has a somewhat varied literary history of transmission, collection, and redaction, as well as of exposition, and of criticism, both “lower” and “higher.”  As arranged under the Han Dynasty (B.C. 206-A.D. 23) it consisted of—­I.  The Commentary of Tso Kinming (a disciple who expounded Confucius’s book, The Annals of State of Lu); II.  The Commentary of Kuh-liang upon the same work of Confucius; III.  The Old Text of the Book of History; IV.  The Odes, collected by Mao Chang, to whom is ascribed the test of the Odes as handed down to the present day.  The generally accepted arrangement is that made by the mediaeval schoolmen of the Sung Dynasty (A.D. 960-1341), Cheng Teh Sio and Chu Hi, in the twelfth century:  I. The Great Learning; II.  The Doctrine of the Mean; III.  Conversations of Confucius; IV.  The Sayings of Mencius.—­C.R.M., pp. 306-309.]

[Footnote 4:  See criticisms of Confucius as an author, in Legge’s Religions of China, pp. 144, 145.]

[Footnote 5:  Religions of China, by James Legge, p. 140.]

[Footnote 6:  See Article China, by the author, Cyclopaedia of Political Science, Chicago, 1881.]

[Footnote 7:  This subject is critically discussed by Messrs. Satow, Chamberlain, and others in their writings on Shint[=o] and Japanese history.  On Japanese chronology, see Japanese Chronological Tables, by William Bramsen, T[=o]ki[=o], 1880, and Dr. David Murray’s Japan (p. 95), in the series Story of the Nations, New York.]

[Footnote 8:  The absurd claim made by some Shint[=o]ists that the Japanese possessed an original native alphabet called the Shingi (god-letters) before the entrance of the Chinese or Buddhist learning in Japan, is refuted by Aston, Japanese Grammar, p. 1; T.A.S.J., Vol.  III., Appendix, p. 77.  Mr. Satow shows “their unmistakable identity with the Corean alphabet.”]

[Footnote 9:  For the life, work, and tombs of the Chinese scholars who fled to Japan on the fall of the Ming Dynasty, see M.E., p. 298; and Professor E.W.  Clement’s paper on The Tokugawa Princes of Mito, T.A.S.J., Vol.  XVIII., and his letters in The Japan Mail.]