1. Confucius

The first subject of remark with regard to the Chinese respects the teaching of Confucius (500 years before Christ) which made a great sensation in Liebnitz’s time; this teaching is a moral philosophy. Confucius has, besides, commented upon the old traditional principles of the Chinese; his high moral teaching, however, gave him his great fame, and that teaching is the authority most esteemed in China. Confucius’ Biography bas been translated by French missionaries from the original Chinese; from this he appears to have been almost contemporaneous with Thales, to have been for a considerable time Minister, to have then fallen into disfavour, lost his place and lived and philosophized amongst his own friends, while still being often asked to give advice. We have conversations between Confucius and his followers in which there is nothing definite further than a commonplace moral put in the form of good, sound doctrine, which may be found as well expressed and better, in every place and amongst every people. Cicero gives us De Officiis, a book of moral teaching more comprehensive and better than all the books of Confucius. He is hence only a man who has a certain amount of practical and worldly wisdom — one with whom there is no speculative philosophy. We may conclude from his original works that for their reputation it would have been better had they never been translated. The treatise which the Jesuits produced is, however, more a paraphrase than a translation.