epistemology, i.e. branches of philosophy which played so great a part
in the West, are of no interest to him. Nor can he be described as the
founder of a religion; for the cult of Heaven of which he speaks and
which he takes over existed in exactly the same form before his day. He
is merely the man who first systematized those notions. He had no
successes in his lifetime and gained no recognition; nor did his
disciples or their disciples gain any general recognition; his work did
not become of importance until some three hundred years after his death,
when in the second century B.C. his teaching was adjusted to the new
social conditions: out of a moral system for the decaying feudal society
of the past centuries developed the ethic of the rising social order of
the gentry. The gentry (in much the same way as the European
bourgeoisie) continually claimed that there should be access for every
civilized citizen to the highest places in the social pyramid, and the
rules of Confucianism became binding on every member of society if he
was to be considered a gentleman. Only then did Confucianism begin to
develop into the imposing system that dominated China almost down to the
present day. Confucianism did not become a religion. It was comparable
to the later Japanese Shintoism, or to a group of customs among us which
we all observe, if we do not want to find ourselves excluded from our
community, but which we should never describe as religion. We stand up
when the national anthem is played, we give precedency to older people,
we erect war memorials and decorate them with flowers, and by these and
many other things show our sense of belonging. A similar but much more
conscious and much more powerful part was played by Confucianism in the
life of the average Chinese, though he was not necessarily interested in
philosophical ideas.

While the West has set up the ideal of individualism and is suffering
now because it no longer has any ethical system to which individuals