Chapter IV, Confucianism, The First Teacher, Summary and Analysis

Called the First Teacher because of his prominence in China as a teacher, Confucius was born ca. 551 B.C. His father died when he was three and his mother who brought him up was impoverished. Confucius was a teacher of great candor; respected, but also feared by the politicians of his day. At the age of fifty, he realized his true mission and spent the next thirteen years traveling about to fulfill it. Having once abandoned his home province, he was invited to return when there was a change in the public administration. Then, being too old for public office, he spent the last five years of his life teaching and died at the age of seventy-two.

Confucius used a method of teaching not unlike that of Socrates. He was open...