for by the prince to assist in receiving a royal visitor, his countenance appeared to change.  He inclined himself to the officers among whom he stood, and when sent to meet the visitor at the gate, “he hastened forward with his arms spread out like the wings of a bird.”  Recognizing in the wind and the storm the voice of Heaven, he changed countenance at the sound of a sudden clap of thunder or a violent gust of wind.

The principles which underlie all these details relieve them from the sense of affected formality which they would otherwise suggest.  Like the sages of old, Confucius had an overweening faith in the effect of example.  “What do you say,” asked the chief of the Ke clan on one occasion, “to killing the unprincipled for the good of the principled?” “Sir,” replied Confucius, “in carrying on your government why should you employ capital punishment at all?  Let your evinced desires be for what is good and the people will be good.”  And then quoting the words of King Ching, he added, “The relation between superiors and inferiors is like that between the wind and the grass.  The grass must bend when the wind blows across it.”  Thus in every act of his life, whether at home or abroad, whether at table or in bed, whether at study or in moments of relaxation, he did all with the avowed object of being seen of men and of influencing them by his conduct.  And to a certain extent he gained his end.  He succeeded in demolishing a number of fortified cities which had formed the hotbeds of sedition and tumult; and thus added greatly to the power of the reigning duke.  He inspired the men with a spirit of loyalty and good faith, and taught the women to be chaste and docile.  On the report of the tranquillity prevailing in Loo, strangers flocked into the state, and thus was fulfilled the old criterion of good government which was afterward repeated by Confucius, “the people were happy, and strangers were attracted from afar.”

But even Confucius found it impossible to carry all his theories into practice, and his experience as Minister of Crime taught him that something more than mere example was necessary to lead the people into the paths of virtue.  Before he had been many months in office, he signed the death-warrant of a well-known citizen named Shaou for disturbing the public peace.  This departure from the principle he had so lately laid down astonished his followers, and Tsze-kung—­the Simon Peter as he has been called among his disciples—­took him to task for executing so notable a man.  But Confucius held to it that the step was necessary.  “There are five great evils in the world,” said he:  “a man with a rebellious heart who becomes dangerous; a man who joins to vicious deeds a fierce temper; a man whose words are knowingly false; a man who treasures in his memory noxious deeds and disseminates them; a man who follows evil and fertilizes it.  All these evil qualities were combined in Shaou.  His house was a rendezvous for the disaffected; his words were specious enough to dazzle any one; and his opposition was violent enough to overthrow any independent man.”