“ But if any man hate his neighbor. &c. . . . then shall ye.do unto him, as he had thought
to have done unto his brother.” (494) At an epoch approximate, this idea became simplified
into a maxim: “ Better is a neighbor that is near, than a brother far off:” (496)
and it is still more concisely expressed in Leviticus'. “ Thou shalt love thy neighbor as
thyself.’h(496)
During the same fifth century B. 0., the simultaneousness of moral as 'well as of other
developments among Types of Mankind radically distinct, and remote from each other’s
influences, encounters a parallelism in the beautiful dictum of a Grecian Isocrates — “ Do
unto others a3 ye would they should do unto you.”
About three generations earlier there flourished in Persia the philosopher Zoroaster ;
some of whose elevated doctrines have reached our day, although through turgid Grecian,
Jewish, and Persic streams. “ Gate the 71st” of hi3.Sadder contains the following: —
“ Offer up thy grateful prayers to the Lord, the most just and pureORMUZD, the supreme
and adorable God, who thus declared to his prophet Zardusht (Zoroaster) : ‘ Hold it not
meet to do unto others what thou wouldst not have done to thyself: do that unto the people
which, when done to thyself, proves not disagreeable to thyself.’ ” (497)
Five hundred years afterwards, the writer of Matthew {498) reported Ye have heard
that it was said : Thou shalt love thy neighbor and hate thine enemy ; but I say unto you, love
your enemies.” The writer of Luke (499) considerably extends the idea in language and
contextual circumstances*^“ And he answering said: ‘ Thou shalt love the Lord thy God
[Hebraick, IeHOuaH ELoHeK] with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy
strength, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbor as thyself thus combining, into one discourse,
two citations from the Old Testament(500) slightly varied; owing probably to the
evangelists’ habit of following the Greek LXX in lieu of the Hebrew Text.
But, among the more exalted of the Hebrew nation, in the schools of Babylon and Jerusalem,
such pure ethics had been taught long previously. Thus (as our learned friend,
Dr. J. J. Cohen of Baltimore, opportunely reminds us while writing) i—
“ Let us recall the celebrated reply made by the Pharisee Hillel to a pagan who came
declaring to him that he was ready to embrace Judaism, if the Doctor could make known
to him in a few words the résumé of all the law of Moses : — ‘ That which thou likest not
[done] to thyself,’ said Hillel, ‘ do it not unto thy neighbor ; therein is all the law, the rest is
nothing butthe commentary upon it.’ ” (501)
These comparisons made, we can revert with more pleasure to China and to Coneuciot.
“ The lessons of Khoung-tseu were often less indirect. His moral [doctrine] is summed
up in the following lines : i Nothing more natural, nothing more simple, than the principles
of that morality which I endeavor to inculcate in you through salutary maxims. . . . 1st.—
It is humanity ; which is to say, that universal charity amongst all of our species, without
distinction.” ’
Father Amiot, the great Sinicized Jesuit, commenting upon this passage, observed —
“ Because it is humanity, and that humanity is nothing else than man himself.” Which
Pauthier explains :—
“ In Chinese, JIN TCHE: JIN YE: word for word; humanitas qua, homo quidem. . . .
To render comprehensible how much humanity, or benevolence, universal charity, was
recommended by Khopng-tseu, it suffices to say that the word which expresses it is
repeated above a hundred times in one of his works, the Lun-yu. And it is pretended,
with as muci levity as ignorance, that this grand principle of universal charity for mankind
had only been revealed to the world five hundred years after the Chinese philosopher, in a
little corner of Asia! Quelle pitié I ” (502)
We have deemed it expedient to preface an inquiry into the àrchæological bases of
(494) Deuteronomy, xix. 11,19.
(495) Proverbs, xxvii. 10.
(496) Leviticus, xix. 18.
(497) Ddbistan, i. 338 : and see the same quotation in Hyde, De Melig. Yet. Persarum, p. 471.
(498) Good Tidings, v. 43. Sharpe’s N. T., p. 9.
(499) Good Tidings, x. 27, 27 — Ibid., p. Î32.
.(500) Deuteronomy, vi. 5, with Leviticus, xix. 18.
(501) Munk: Palestine; p. 565 ; from Babylonian Talmud (Shabbath, ch. 2). Ibid.: Réflexions in Appendix
to Ca h en ’s Bible; 1833; iv. p. 20.
(502) Chine; pp. 146,147, and note.
Chinese chronology with the above extracts. They will furnish at once to the reader a very
different idea of the teachings of ^Confucius (five hundred years before any Greco-Judsean
writers of the Gospels lived) than he can gather from Macao supercargoes, Hong-kong
opium-smugglers, or Canton missionaries. Whatever practical developments the latter
may diurnally give to the sublime principle of “ universal charity;” whatever merit may
be due to the first human being who enunoiatèd this exalted sentiment ; or whatever
thorough knowledge of humanity’s best and loftiest interests such sentiments may imply ;
all these ascriptions, history attests, equally belong to a Sinico-mongol, Confucius ; who
died B. 0.479, or about 2332 years ago. [See his portrait; supra, Fig. 330, p. 449.]
Whether among the Hong merchants “ universal charity” (and there are noble instances)
be unexceptionably practised, any more than in Wall street, Lombard street, or in the
Place de la Bourse, concerns us not. These commercial princes are taught to reverence its
principles as much as thè D o r ia s or the M e d ic i s of Christendom ; and they are exposed
to infinitely greater temptations toward its violation, than are those Chinese archæologists,
who, scattered throughout the empire, pursue, at national expense, their historical studies
of their own monuments ; in lettered seclusion,t but with every honorable recompense
scholarship may aspire to. (503) For above twenty-three centuries, moreover, the 4th and
6th maxims of Khoung-tseu have been instilled into each generation of them from earliest
infancy.
“ It is uprightness ; that is, that rectitude of spirit and of heart, which makes one seek
for truth m everything and to desire it, without deceiving oneself or deceiving others : it is
finally « y or good faith ; which is to say, that frankness,'' that openness of heart, tempered
by self-reliance, which excludes all feints and all disguising, as much in speech as in
action.”
That the moral influence of such principles has not perished, even through the transitory
irruption of the present and expiring dynasty of Mantehou Tartars, is testified by Sir
Henry Pottinger in the eulogiums pronounced by him, at London, upon the high Chines.g,
diplomatists with whom he cohcluded the Treaty of 1844. Nor should Americans forge®
the excellent conduct which such principles have already exhibited among thousands of our
Chinese fellow-citizens in the State of California.
, We have not the slightest right to doubt, therefore, whatever reasonable account Chinese
scholars may furnish us of their nation’s indigenous history ; of which, otherwise, not a syllable
is known to us prior to the fourteenth, century after Christ ; and, where not irrational,
such annals, from such sources, may be received in the more good faith, that the Chinese
archéologue, having none of our hagiographers’ motives for chronological curtailment or
extension, cares nothing about “ outside barbarians,” their alien history or superstitions,
and did not compose his national chronicles with a view to such foreigners’ edification.
The day is evermore passed that modern science should strive to reduce Chinese chro-
nològy, for the mere whim of adapting it to the spurious computations on a Hebrew Text,
and Samaritan, Septuagint, or Vulgate version ; as was the case before Egyptian monumental
annals were proved to ascend, at least, to the thirty-fifth century b . c . (504) And we shall
presently show (sketched also in our table of Alphabetical origins, supra, p. 638), how the
highest point claimed by Chinese historians, for their nation’s antiquity, falls centuries
below that which hierologists now insist upon for Egypt: so that, if Egypt and Egyptians
were a civilized country and populous people in the thirty-fifth century, b . c., it would be
preposterous not to feel assured that Sinico-mongols (indeed every human type of Mongolia)
were already in existence, in and around China, their own centre of creation, during the
same parallel ages. What is the objection to believing that China was populated, by her
Mongolian autocthones, chiliads of years previously? Reader! “ one blushes” redder
han St. Jerome to mention, that, novv-a-days, the acceptance of this fact is questioned by
the Rev. Dr. This, or the Rev. Mr. That : neither of whom, perhaps, has ever studied
Sinology— never even opened a Sinological work!
(603) Chine; p p . 1 9 4 , 218, 228, 236, 248, 286, 308, 3 3 6 , 352,''359, 8 8 8 , 3 9 7 , t ó k l s o . B i o t Sur la O W O , , / . , » P ,-
dique de la Chine au 12àme siècle avant notre ère; 1 845 ; p p . 3, 9, &c. ’ ,
(604) B a B k o t o o t e : Filiations et -Migrations des Peuples; il! pp. 1- 43.