The distinctive features of Confucian doctrine may be summarized as follows:
(1) Filial piety is the cardinal social virtue. A dutiful son will prove dutiful in all the five relationships: those of father and son, ruler and subject, husband and wife, elder brother and younger, and that of friend. Such a tenet was naturally acceptable to a social system like the Chinese, with its patriarchalism and insistence on the family rather than the individual as the unit of society. Loyalty to family it raises to a religious duty in the rite of ancestor worship. Here Confucius did no more than emphasize with his approval a national custom—mentioned in the earliest odes—of offering food and wine to departed spirits. How far this family cult is to be construed as actual worship is disputable: some would compare it merely with the French custom of adorning graves on All Souls' Day. But it effectively strengthens the family bond, impressing as it does the sense of family unity and perpetuity through the passing generations.
(2) Between man and man the rule of practice is "reciprocity." "What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others." Benevolence—an extension of the love of son and brother—is the worthy attitude toward one's fellows, but it should not be pressed to fatuous lengths. When asked his opinion of Lao-tse's teaching that one should requite injury with good, Confucius replied: "With what, then, will you requite kindness? Return good for good; for injury return justice."
(3) The chief moral force in society is the example of the "superior man."[1] By nature man is good, and the unrighteousness of society is due to faulty education and bad example. Virtue in superiors will call out virtue in common folk. The burden of Confucius's teaching is therefore "superior" character—character so disciplined to a moral tact and responsive propriety that in every situation it knows the right thing and does it, and so poised in its own integrity as to practice virtue for virtue's sake. "What the small man seeks is in others; what the superior man seeks is in himself."
(4) Toward the world of spiritual beings the Confucian attitude is one of reverent agnosticism. The sage would have nothing to
- ↑ In the version printed in H. C., this term is translated "gentleman."
