Girardot,Norman-Victorian Text of Chinese Religion

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Norman J. Girardot

The Victorian Text of Chinese Religion: With Special Reference

to the Protestant Paradigm of James Legge's Religions of ChinaIn: Cahiers d'Extrme-Asie, Vol. 12, 2001. pp. 23-57.

Rsum

Un aspect important, bien que nglig, dans l'tude de l'orientalisme sinologique du dix-neuvime sicle et de ses conceptions

souvent contradictoires de la religion chinoise concerne la relation intime entre la tradition missionnaire et les nouvelles

disciplines philologiques ou orientalistes, ainsi qu'avec les nouvelles approches "comparatives" de l'tude des religions non

chrtiennes (incarnes dans les travaux de Max Millier). Cet article examine les relations rciproques - faites de proximit et

d'ambigut -entre l'orientalisme sinologique, la science compare des religions et une certaine forme en volution d'un

"paradigme protestant" d'interprtation associ au mouvement missionnaire du dix-neuvime sicle. Ici, nous nous attacherons

l'exemple le plus important de l'entreprise savante protestante : le grand traducteur des classiques chinois et des "Sacred Books

of China" (pour la srie des Sacred Books of the East dirige par Millier), James Legge (1815-1891). En particulier, son ouvrage

pionnier The Religions of China. Confucianism and Taoism Described and Compared with Christianity (1880), sera analys

comme le premier "'manuel" comparatif portant sur les religions chinoises. Le paradigme protestant et orientaliste de Legge a

clairement eu des implications profondes pour le dveloppement de l'tude des religions chinoises pendant la majeure partie du

vingtime sicle.

Citer ce document / Cite this document :

Girardot Norman J. The Victorian Text of Chinese Religion: With Special Reference to the Protestant Paradigm of James

Legge's Religions of China. In: Cahiers d'Extrme-Asie, Vol. 12, 2001. pp. 23-57.

doi : 10.3406/asie.2001.1164

http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/asie_0766-1177_2001_num_12_1_1164
http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/author/auteur_asie_181http://dx.doi.org/10.3406/asie.2001.1164http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/asie_0766-1177_2001_num_12_1_1164http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/asie_0766-1177_2001_num_12_1_1164http://dx.doi.org/10.3406/asie.2001.1164http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/author/auteur_asie_181


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THE VICTORIAN TEXT OF CHINESE RELIGION :WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE PROTESTANT PARADIGM OFJAMES LEGGE'S RELIGIONS OF CHINA

Norman J. GlRARDOTUn aspect important, bien que nglig, dans Vtude de Vorientalismesinologique du dix-neuvime sicle et de ses conceptions souventcontradictoires de la religion chinoise concerne la relation intime entre latradition missionnaire et les nouvelles disciplines philologiques ouorientalistes, ainsi qu'avec les nouvelles approches "comparatives" deVtude des religions non chrtiennes (incarnes dans les travaux de MaxMillier). Cet article examine les relations rciproques -faites deproximit et d'ambigut -entre Vorientalisme sinologique, la sciencecompare des religions et une certaine forme en volution d'un"paradigme protestant" d'interprtation associ au mouvementmissionnaire du dix-neuvime sicle. Ici, nous nous attacherons l'exemple le plus important de l'entreprise savante protestante : le grandtraducteur des classiques chinois et des "Sacred Books of China" (pour la

srie des Sacred Books of the East dirige par Millier), James Legge(1815-1891). En particulier, son ouvrage pionnier The Religions ofChina. Confucianism and Taoism Described and Compared withChristianity (1880), sera analys comme le premier "'manuel"comparatifportant sur les religions chinoises. Le paradigme protestant etorientaliste de Legge a clairement eu des implications profondes pour ledveloppement de l'tude des religions chinoises pendant la majeurepartie du vingtime sicle.

Of religion, too, as of language, it may be said that in it everything new isold, and everything old is new, and that there has been no entirely newreligion since the beginning of the world. The elements and roots ofreligion were there as far back as we can trace the history of man; and thehistory of religion, like the history of language, shows us throughout asuccession of the new combinations of the same radical elements. Anintuition of God, a sense of human weakness and dependence, a belief ina Divine government of the world, a distinction between good and evil,Cahiers d'Extrme-Asie 12 (2001) : 23-57.


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24 Norman J. Girardoand a hope of a better life, these are some of the radical elements of allreligions. Though sometimes hidden, they rise again and again to thesurface. Though frequently distorted, they tend again and again to theirperfect form. Unless they had formed part of the original dowry of thehuman soul, religion itself would have remained an impossibility, and thetongues of angels would have been to human ears as sounding brass or atinkling cymbal.

Max Miiller, 1867 Preface to Chips from a German Workshop 1/1895I. Introduction: Missions, Sinological Orientalism, and the Science of

ReligionsThe Western study of Chinese culture and its institutions, that hermeticallyspecialized field within the larger domain of Orientalism known as "Sinology,"has always been a peculiar discipline. From its beginnings with the Jesuits andFrench Enlightenment philosophes in the 17th and 18th centuries, down throughits crystallization as a professional academic discipline in the 19th century,Sinology has reflected and refracted the changing attitudes and "will to power"of the Western encounter with the otherness of Chinese tradition. The historyof this intercourse has most often been a one-sided intellectual and culturalexchange which, until roughly the end of the 19th century when secularized

academic institutions prevail, was primarily a record of the changing fortunes ofthe Roman Catholic and Protestant missionary enterprises.In the 19th century when the common philological and racial"brotherhood" of the "Aryan" or "Indo-European" traditions became an articleof intellectual and imperial faith, China's remarkable linguistic and culturalisolation, its "formidable solitude" as Raymond Schwab rightly put it, was acontrolling factor in the marginalized development of Sinology as one of thenewer Oriental disciplines.1 It is this "China as a special case" singularity thatgives Sinological Orientalism its particular and sometimes peculiar discursivecharacter, a character deeply colored by "liberalized" missionary concerns (andin the 1 9th century this was predominantly an evangelical Protestant episteme)combined with the newly emergent Western humanistic and comparative"sciences," both of which drew upon prevailing elite forms of native Chinese' See the English translation of Schwab's magnum opus, The Oriental Renaissance,urope'1 Rediscovery of India and the East 1680-1880, translated by Gene Patterson-Black

and Victor Reinking, with a foreword by Edward W. Said (New York: ColumbiaUniversity Press, 1984), p. 6: "China's linguistic instrument appeared in a formidablesolitude, bewildering the mental habits of the West, rendering the problem ofequivalences among languages almost absurd, and refusing to allow its closed system tobe drawn into the comparative school."


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The Victorian Text of Chinese Religion 25cultural mythology and attitudes toward its Western interlopers (i.e., a kind ofChinese Occidentalism). When evaluating the checkered legacy of Orientalismin the sense articulated by Edward Said (and this is especially the case forChina), it is always necessary, as Donald Lopez has said, to "consider thenetworks of exchange that existed between Orientalizer and the Orientalized, ofthe back and forth that occurred between Europeans and Asians in which Asianswere also the agents."2During this same period from the mid to late 19th century, the old theologicalcertitude in the absolute exclusivity, superiority, and finality of the Christiantradition was undergoing dramatic changes that would lead both to the creationof a new "science of comparative religions" (epitomized by Max Miiller'svoluminous scholarly productions) and, after the turn of the century and the FirstWorld War, to this fledgling discipline's mostly diminished and contested statuswithin the more fully secularized academy. An important, though neglected,aspect of these developments as related to Sinology and its often contradictoryconceptions of Chinese religion concerns the intimate relationship of missionarytradition with both Orientalistic disciplines and the new comparative approachesto the study of non-Christian religions (whether of the "classical," "civilized," orliterate variety studied by Miiller's comparative religions or the "savage" and"primitive" forms analyzed by Edward Tylor's new science of anthropology).Thus an analysis of the close yet ambiguous interrelationship of SinologicalOrientalism and the comparative science of religions with a certain kind ofevolving "Protestant paradigm" of interpretation associated with the 1 9th-centurymissionary movement becomes a particularly important way of getting at some ofthe ruling aspects of the Western discourse about China.3

For purposes of the discussion at hand, it may be said that thesedevelopments are especially exemplified by the transformative life and work ofJames Legge (1815-1897), the great missionary translator of the Chinese Classics(1861-1872, revised in 1893-1895) and at Oxford University from 1876 to 1897a collaborator with Max Miiller (1823-1900) in the production of the SacredBooks of the East (1879-1910). In this short presentation it will not be possible to

2 See Donald S. Lopez's "Introduction," p. 12, in Donald S. Lopez, Jr., Curators ofthe Buddha, The Study of Buddhism under Colonialism (Chicago and London: University ofChicago Press, 1995).3 The idea of a kind of liberal evangelical "Protestant paradigm" found at the heartof various Oriental disciplines and the comparative study of religions is seen in the workof Gregory Schopen, "Archaeology and Protestant Presuppositions in the study ofIndian Buddhism," History of Religions 31 (1991) and P. Cabanel, "L'institutionnalisationdes 'sciences religieuses' en France (1879-1908), Une entreprise protestante ?," Bulletinde la Socit de l'Histoire du Protestantisme franais 140 (1994), pp. 33-80. Most importantis Jonathan Z. Smith's Drudgery Divine: On the Comparison of Early Christianities and theReligions ofLate Antiquity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).


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26 Norman J. Girardotconsider all of this legacy.4 Rather I will focus here on only one representativeexample of Legge's scholarly production that reveals some important aspects ofhis underlying interpretive paradigm as it relates both to his increasingly liberalevangelical convictions and the ostensibly more scientific and secular scholarlyobjectives of Muller's new discipline of comparative religion. The work inquestion is Legge's only extended synthetic discussion of Chinese religioustradition: The Religions of China. Confucianism and Taoism Described and ComparedWith Christianity (1880), a work that may legitimately be thought of as the firstcomparative "textbook" of Chinese religions.5II. James Legge's The Religions of China: Confucianism and Taoism

Described and Compared With Christianity (1880)It is indeed a wonderful fact to think of , that a worship of the one Godhas been maintained in the vicinity of their capitals by the sovereigns ofChina almost continuously for more than four thousand years. I feltthis fact profoundly when I stood early one morning by the altar ofHeaven, in the southern suburb of Peking. It was without my shoes thatI went up to the top of it ; and there around the central slab of themarble with which it was paved, free of flaw as the coerulean vaultabove, hand in hand with the friends who accompanied me, I joined insinging the doxology. James Legge, Religions of China, 1880As suggested by the above epigraph, many of the controversies surroundingLegge's work made reference to his fateful 1873 pilgrimage to the Altar ofHeaven in Peking when, after more than thirty years of missionary service, heforever left China. Never very successful in fulfilling the conventional charge ofthe London Missionary Society to convert the heathen, he had himselfundergone a kind of religious, intellectual, and ethical transformation duringhis many long and eventful years of service and labor in China. His provocativeaction in Peking dramatically signaled these changes and was, therefore,

something that Legge continually, and almost liturgically, invoked as atouchstone experience validating the maverick scholarly direction of his earlymissionary life (going back particularly to his philological and textual4 See my forthcoming The Victorian Translation of China: James Legge's OrientalPilgrimage (Berkeley and London: University of California Press). Portions of this paperare adapted from this much longer work.

5 On the role of textbooks in the discourse about Chinese religions see my "'VerySmall Books about Very Large Subjects': A Prefatory Appreciation of the EnduringLegacy of Laurence G. Thompson's Chinese Religion. An Introduction" Journal of ChineseReligions 20 (Fall 1992), pp. 9-15.


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The Victorian Text of Chinese Religion 27discoveries in the Chinese "classics" where he maintained that the ancientfigure of the "Lord on High" or Shangdi/Tian was the conceptual equivalent ofthe Hebrew and Christian God) and also giving sanction to his latter-daymission as a professional academic and Sinological Orientalist.6 Much ofLegge's culminating later work associated with Max Millier and the Sacred Booksof the East, particularly his interpretive evaluations of Chinese religion, flow outof that epiphanic experience at the Altar of Heaven in northern China. It wasthat daring act at the open air sanctuary in the imperial capital of Qing China(and his revery on the grave of Confucius in Qufu)actions which rituallyacknowledged a Chinese religiosity that was more than demonicallyheathen that most rankled the theological sensibilities of conservativemissionaries in China and London. Moreover, the comparativist attitudesimplied by these events were also at the heart of Legge's progressiveidentification with Max Miiller's revolutionary new "science of religion" andthe delineation of the six Oriental "book religions" (Hinduism, Buddhism,Jainism, Parsi-ism, Confucianism, and Daoism) in the monumental Sacred Booksproject fo r the Oxford University Press.It was, in fact, the Religions of China, a work that was originally given as aseries of lectures during the spring of 1 880 and then published in book formlater that same year, that popularly crystallized a certain classification andunderstanding of the "three religions" of China (the two indigenous religions of"Confucianism" and "Taoism" and the imported "Buddhism").7 No longer anabbreviated and cautiously labeled "relational" essay as was his "heretical" 1877Shanghai paper or a series of sporadic and submerged suggestions as seen in theearly volumes of the Chinese Classics (and the reworking of the Books ofDocuments and Poetry fo r the Sacred Books in 1879), this much fuller work wasnow subtitled ("described and compared") in a way that indicated Legge'sstraightforward intent to understand Confucianism and Daoism in what he nowthought of as a Mullerian-style scientific "comparison" with Christianity. TheReligions of China n book form more than three hundred pages in lengthwasnothing less than Legge's one and only attempt to work out a general

6 See also Legge's reference to the Altar of Heaven in his important 1883 pamphletChristianity and Confucianism Compared in Their Teaching of the Whole Duty of Man(London: Religious Tract Society, 1883), p. 17 .7 It seems that the Chinese idea ojiao as a "teaching" or "tradition" is closer to theancient Roman idea of religio as "the lore of the ritual of one's ancestors" than it is to theChristianized redefinition of the term as the "binding" of theistic belief. On thesecontroversial etymological issues involving the word "religion" see Richard King,Orientalism and Religion Postcolonial Theory, India and the 'Mystic East' (London and New

York: Routledge, 1999), pp. 35-41. See also Jonathan Z. Smith's "Religion, Religions,eligious," pp. 269-284 in Mark C. Taylor, d., Critical Terms for Religious Studies(Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998).


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28 Norman J. Girardotdescription and theory of indigenous Chinese religious traditions theembryonic implications of which were only hinted at in his previous actions atthe altar of heaven in China and in his earlier translations.8 This monographtherefore includes an especially detailed analysis of a kind of primordiallytheistic "Confucianism" roughly comparable to Hebrew tradition, its partiallyabortive "reformation" by the truly "great" sage Confucius, along with asurprisingly sympathetic discussion of the "pure" spiritual "philosophy" ofcertain ancient "classics" and the later ritualistic and materialistic corruptions(in the manner of the Papist degradation of the originally pure Christianity asembedded in the "New Testament") of the tradition now collectively called"Taoism."9 Both Confucianism and Buddhism had already been generallyrecognized as specific types of Oriental religion (and as ratified by the SacredBooks, as "world religions"), but it was only with this work, and because ofLegge's later translations of the "Sacred Books of Taoism" in the 1890s, thatDaoism entered into Western consciousness as a textual object and a carefullycircumscribed religious tradition.Though displaying what seems to us to be more of a Christian theologicalapologetic than a "scientific" or academic agenda (as well as providingdiscouraging confirmation of Legge's often dogged analytical skills and stolidstyle), our failure to appreciate the significance of this work is really indicativeof the betwixt and between nature of Legge's book. Neither traditionallyapologetic in the typical conservative or "antagonistic" Protestant missionarymold of the 19th century nor yet fully disinterested, skeptical, scientific, orcritical in the increasingly professionalized sense of the newly conceived"research" universities, the Religions of China nevertheless represents apioneering step in the evolving and progressively secularized Western study ofChinese tradition. This is a work, therefore, that deserves our carefulattention both for what it says, and does not say, comparatively anddescriptively about Chinese religions, as well as for its particular rhetoricaldemeanor and theological epistemology. Indeed, this broadly influential workputs forward many of the ideas and emotions about the so-called "threereligions" that achieve the status of a kind of received wisdom in the Westabout Chinese tradition. Moreover, it is this discursive tradition that hasremained largely intact (though often disguised and transposed into moresecular and naturalistic terms) till the scholarly revolutions during the last fewdecades of this century. It may be said, therefore, that this work represents themost important compendium of 19th-century interpretive tropes associatedwith what can be called the ruling "Protestant paradigm" in the fledgling 1 9th-

s A long section of the first part of the book is devoted to a detailed study of thesolstitial practices associated with the Altar of Heaven. See JL, RC/ 1880, pp . 43-58.9 Legge simply had not yet seriously studied Chinese Buddhist literature.


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The Victorian Text of Chinese Religion 29century "science of religions"an academic discourse that in Britain is mostfully identified with Max Miiller's entrepreneurial comparativism.Some of the specific traits of this disciplinary paradigm are enumerated byMiiller (see the head quotation to this paper) as an "intuition of God, a sense ofhuman weakness and dependence, a belief in a Divine government of the world,a distinction between good and evil, and a hope of a better life." These are,claims Miiller, "the radical elements of all religions" whether of the past orpresent. Never fully manifest (even in Protestant Christianity, though it comesclosest as a "reform" of earlier distortions) and always subject to extremedistortion, these traits are said to be the "original dowry of the human soul"which in all cultures naturally "tend again and again to their perfect form." It isevident, however, that Miiller's inventory is not exactly very radical or natural.Rather it constitutes a kind of romanticized catechismal list of somefundamental theistic and moralistic beliefs in evangelical Protestant theologydivorced from any concern for the possible "naturalness" or "universality" ofritual practices and communal tradition. In addition to the original "intuition"of the divine and humanity's intrinsic moral endowment ("a distinction betweengood and evil"), the accent is given to the Calvinistic sense of "human weaknessand dependence" and the affirmation that divine governance requires nomediating body of priests. This kind of reified Protestant belief and pietisticindividualism (it all has to do with "intuition, sense, belief, distinction,hope" "faith alone" over any mediated corporate works) was coupled withMiiller's relentlessly textual emphasis (somewhat in the sense of the principle ofsola scriptura) on the special "surfacing" of these perfected traits in a world-widecorpus of "sacred books." Needless to say, Oriental scholars are the privileged"decipherers" of the often "hidden" scriptural manifestations of the "originaldowry of the human soul." Moreover, Miiller's reference to the frequent(clerical) "distortions" of the original, radical, or "root" sense of religion(determined by "comparative" analysis; and the connection with linguisticroots" and philological comparison was obviously intended) also indirectlyalludes to the endemic anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic polemic that was so mucha part of Protestant theology and new "human sciences" in the 19thcenturyespecially in missionary circles, biblical "higher criticism," andacademic Orientalism.10A Difference in Kind?

The Religions of China was originally presented as the "Spring Lecture" forthe Presbyterian Church of England and was delivered at the PresbyterianCollege, London. The traditional Protestant evangelical expectations fo r these10 For the anti-Catholicism in much of the 19th and early 20th century study ofreligion see especially Smith, Drudgery Divine, passim.


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30 Norman J. Girardotlectures were, in other words, considerably different than, for example, theexpectations for the pointedly iconoclastic "scientific theology" and "naturalreligion" of Mller's groundbreaking lectures on the "science of religion." It isin this churchly context that Mller's more liberal and scientific concerns as theOxonian high priest of comparativism (especially the comparative and historicalprinciple of "no difference in kind") is amended in favor of Legge's own moreplainly evangelical apologetic and theological stance on these matters." AsLegge asks toward the end of his analysis in the Religions of China: "And now thetrain of my reasoning has brought us face to face with the question: s thedifference between Christianity and the religions of China in kind and notmerely in degree? Is it THE religion while each of them is merely a religion?"12The necessary answer to such a rhetorical question would be obvious toLegge's Presbyterian audience and, for all of his growing "sympatheticcomprehensiveness" toward Chinese religion, he does not hesitate to give themthe "foregone conclusion" they wanted to hear.13 Given the nature of hisaudience and his own evangelically liberal, though "still reverent," religiousconvictions, we should not be surprised to discover that part of his "comparative"analysis is basically a triumphalistic inventory of how Christianity is"incomparably greater" than the religions of China.Nevertheless Legge at times seems, almost wilfully, to compromise some ofthe hard exclusivity of his answers to various catechismal queries about thekindred similarities and defining differences among Oriental religions andChristianity. Close scrutiny of this section of the book shows that he actuallysoftens the need to reject Mller's comparative principle of "no difference inkind." Thus Legge only modestly affirms, in the course of a long and somewhatconvoluted discussion of the supernatural and miracles, the safe andconventional response that everything hinges on the total uniqueness of theChristian miracle of resurrection. In the wake of his roundabout profession of a

" As Louis Jordan {Comparative Religion: Its Genesis and Growth [Edinburgh: T. &T. Clark, 1905], pp. x-xii) makes clear, there was nothing unusual in the apologeticapplication of comparativism. Jordan maintains, however, that the comparative study ofreligions should not try to elevate "one Faith at the expense of another." In a touchinglydisingenuous expression of classic Orientalist parochialism and mock impartiality, J ordangoes on to say that (pp. xi-xii): "Unlike Christian apologetics of the older type,Comparative Religion holds no brief for the defense of Christianity. If, as the result ofan unbiased comparison between that Faith and one or more other Religions, it shouldbecome manifest that the former must be pronounced more worthy than any of itscompetitors, that fact (and the proofs of it) will certainly be welcomed and recorded...The demands of truth are paramount, and they must at all costs be respected." Needlessto say, it just so happened that the "facts" most often proved the superiority ofChristianity.

12 JL, flC/1880, p. 278.13 JL, i?C/1880,pp. 278, 242.


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The Victorian Text of Chinese Religion 31traditional faith in the singularity of Christ, he also manages to stake out theunexpectedly provocative position that both Confucianism and Daoism, in thespecial purity of their foundational "classical" forms if not in their corrupt latermanifestations, share some essential kinship, some "divine stamp," withChristianity (and the inscribed or written sense of a "stamp" is certainlyintended here). One of the really distinctive aspects of the Religions of China,when compared to Legge's earlier writings, is its explicit, and repeated,comparison of Confucianism and the Israelite religion as inscribed anddescribed in the Hebrew sacred books or "Old Testament." Legge had hintedat such a troubling analogy before (originally in his 1852 Notions of God and theSpirits, a work which first signaled some of his Jesuitical leanings toward a kindof Protestant-style "accommodationism"), but never had the correlation been sooutspoken and exact, even to the extent, in some ways, of favoring the Chineseclassical "Old Testament" to the Hebrew scriptural dispensation. As Leggedeclares, "all" of themthat is, "Christianity, Confucianism, and Taoism" "allow the element of the supernatural, all assert the fact of revelation, allacknowledge the existence of God." No matter how it is qualified, this assertiondoes, then, suggest a similarity of "kind" that is intrinsically related to thehistorical question of the "purity" and "degree" of the "divine stamp" on theancient Chinese classical texts.Of Men and By Man

Legge's views are really more subversive than they might first appear. Onthe one hand, there is the seemingly bald finality of Legge's claim that the"record" of the Sacred Books shows us the "most important distinction" betweenChristianity and the Chinese religions. This distinction is simply that:THEY [the Chinese religions of Confucianism and Daoism] are of menand by man,not without God indeed, but with Him only as all thingsare included in the circle of His knowledge and ordination; IT[Christianity] is of God, and by God, specially revealed to make knownthe path of duty and the way of life.14

The problem with this formulation of a natural and special revelation isapparent and goes to the heart of the dilemma that gnawed at Legge'sconscience as a Christian missionary and as a comparativist scholar. It is finallythe human moral issue, or what might be thought of as the humanistic orConfucian issue of the social transactions "of men and by man," that is always atstake. At the very end of his lectures, Legge raises two "practical issues" thatrefer to the moral matter and are clearly related to his rejection of the strictCalvinistic theology of the Shorter Catechism. The first of these practicalJL, flC/1880,p. 277.


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32 Norman J. Girardotethical issues is the presumptive conclusion, granting that the "true Christian isthe highest style of man," that "only" the Chinese "adoption of Christianity . . .will enable the people to hold their own, and lift them up in the social scale."Even though he says that he has come to "think highly" of the "actual morality"and "intellectual capacity" of the Chinese ndeed, "more highly . . . than manyof our countrymen do"he declares that "their best attainments in moralexcellence . . . are not to be compared with those made by docile learners in theschool of Christ."15

The second "practical" moral issue undercuts the inevitability of theconclusions Legge had just drawn about the superior moral excellence practicedby the "docile learners in the school of Christ." This second issue is the crucialevangelical issue of embodied moral character and the actual behavior of menand women in the everyday world. Although Legge does not make theconnection here, this is also the crucial Confucian issue as well. It is thisproblem that raises the increasingly heated missionary question of whyChristianity had not triumphed in China. From Legge's liberal evangelical andpostmillennialist theological perspective and equally from a Miilleriancomparativist standpoint the answer cannot be that "God's purposeslumbers," but rather that the current failure has to do with the moraldeficiencies of individual not so docile Christians and "so-called Christiannations."16 The tragic dilemma is that n relation to the "divisions" amongchurches, the "inconsistencies and unrighteousness" of missionaries, and the"selfishness and greed" of the commerce and policy of ChristiannationsChristians "must blame themselves" for the failure of Christianity inthe Orient. The ultimate practical issue can consequently only be one that is a"path of duty of men and by man." It is this most human of issuesand thedifficulty, if not the impossibility, of definitively weighing the relative moralworth and ethical "progress" of different "persons," "religions," and"nations"that gives pause to Legge's deliberations about the justifications fo ra religious and scholarly mission to the Orient.

Thus the Religions of China ends with Legge retelling the story of his"conversation with His Excellency Guo Songtao, the Chinese ambassador toEngland, soon after he arrived in London in 1877." The crux of the conversationwas, according to Legge, the Chinese ambassador's insistent question aboutwhich of the two countries, England and China, was "better" from a "moralstandpoint" of "benevolence, righteousness, and propriety?" "After some demurand fencing," Legge says that he replied, "England" n answer that amazed15 JL,C/1880,p. 308.16 JL, /?C/1880, p. 310. "So-called Christians" referred to divisions among thepopulace (a s suggested by the newly administered censuses of the Victorian era) as much

as it characterized different countries.


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The Victorian Text of Chinese Religion 33and befuddled Guo. As Legge says:

I never saw a man more surprised. He pushed his chair back, got on hisfeet, took a turn across the room, and cried out, "You say that, looked atfrom the moral standpoint, England is better than China! Then how is itthat England insists on our taking her opium?17

The fact that these are the very last words in the Religions of China and thatLegge chooses to conclude his comparative analysis with a story of a finalunanswered question about the relative morality of different traditions is surelynoteworthy. At the end of the comparative enterprise is not catechismalcertitude, or more evidence for the "foregone conclusion" of Christiansuperiority, but the question of relative moral practice.Legge resolutely brings the comparative question back to the practical andexperiential issue of reforming human nature, building moral character, andfulfilling one's theological and ethical duty in the quotidian intercourse of sociallife. Legge's practical and ethical bent is also suggested by his preference, afterhis apologetic and philosophical resources were exhausted in his scholarlyworks, for invoking the anecdotal testimony of his own life and answeringunresolved questions with other difficult questions. This unusual toleration andrespect for the ambiguity engendered by a dialogical encounter with theheathen otherness of a person, text, or tradition is a scholarly duty that comes todefine the comparative method for Legge.Confucianism Before Confucius

Legge begins his investigation of Chinese religion by making it clear thatthe sage known as Confucius must be considered to have been a "religiousteacher" and that the tradition associated by the West with his name has someof the primary characteristics of a revealed religion, especially with regard to itsancient monotheistic belief and worship. Most important here is his explicationof ideas that were only vaguely alluded to previously one of the mostimportant of these being the more precise definition of "Confucianism" as,firstly, the "ancient religion of China" and, only secondarily, as "the views ofthe great philosopher himself, in illustration or modification of it." For the firsttime, Legge makes it explicit that, in this respect, Confucianism is "pretty muchas when we comprehend under Christianity the records and teachings of theOld Testament as well as those of the New."18Responding to various articles in specialized Oriental journals like the ChinaReview that argued for the non-religious and skeptical nature of both Confuciusand Confucianism, Legge enters into an elaborate descriptive presentation of

17 JL, tfC/1880, p. 310.'* JL, tfC/1880, p. 4.


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34 Norman J. Girardotthe evidence for an ancient Chinese "doctrine and worship of God." In fact, thewhole first section of Religions of China is taken up with an elaborate defense ofthis proposition, many of the particulars of which were already present in hisearlier writings going back to the 1850s. Up unto the time of his appointmentas an Oxford professor, Legge's views were largely identified with the positionthat found the Chinese sage Confucius, and the Confucian tradition, to bebasically non-religious or a-religious, if not skeptical, agnostic, or anti-religious."Religion," after all, had to do with the "relation between man and a livingod" and was not just a "system of morals intended fo r the government ofhuman society"although it was clearly that also.19 Based on this understanding,most of the first two lectures were devoted to his explication of the ancientChinese belief in a monotheistic God and in the practices of "worship" and"prayer" that, despite corrupting factors, maintained the "relation between manand a living God." None of this was completely new to Legge, but it isinteresting to see how he now develops these ideas in relation to the explicitacademic "methods" of comparative philology and religion.20For the first time, Legge specifically appeals to the Miillerian evidence ofphilological "roots" that go back "to a period long anterior to the compositionof the most ancient Chinese books." Legge says that he is attempting todetermine some of the foundational ideas of the "fathers of the Chinese people"by studying Chinese "primitive characters" in the same way that "Aryanphilologists" tried "to give us pictures of the earliest Aryan life" based onSanskrit root-words. Despite his caution concerning the "difficult anduncertain" quest fo r roots, it is clear that Legge has decided finally to try hishand at a comparative philological analysis of the Chinese language.21 He iseven bold enough to suggest that an analysis of Chinese roots in relation to the"pictures and ideagrams" of the "primitive written characters" has a distinctadvantage over the more phonetically dependent Sanskrit. The hidden"meaning" of the Chinese "primitive characters" can consequently bedeciphered without any "reference to the names by which they have been

19 JL , #C/1880,p. 5.20 Regardless of the popular nature of these lectures, Legge is not reluctant todisplay his awareness of the key methodological issues and to show that he has read themost important authors in the comparative sciences (especially Max Miiller, but alsoCharles Hardwick, Samuel Johnson, James Freeman Clarke, Cornelius Tiele, and byway of inference, Edward Tylor). In the published version of the lectures, Legge addselaborate notes that inform his readers of his understandably broad acquaintance withscholars in Sinological Orientalism (e.g., Regis, Edkins, M'Clatchie, Morrison,Williams, Callery, Chalmers, Eitel, Doolittle, Douglas, Rmusat, Julien, Giles), and inthe native Chinese commentarial tradition (e.g., Xu Shan/Hsu Shan, Dai Dong/TaiTung, Liu Mi, Zhu Xi/Chu Hsi, Han Shan).21 JL, RC/1880, pp. 6-7. Legge makes specific reference to Miiller's "Essay onComparative Mythology" here.


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The Victorian Text of Chinese Religion 35called." And, as Legge adds, "according to the sentiment of the line in whichTennyson condenses two well-known lines of Horace: 'Things seen areweightier than things heard.'"22 Legge is remarkably enthusiastic about thepossibility that this mostly untested, and increasingly ridiculed, method ofanalyzing the Chinese language will "put us en rapport with the Chinese fathersfully five thousand years ago." Indicating that the results obtained may in thelong run be even more important that those derived from the study of Sanskrit,Legge indulges in an uncharacteristically overwrought and typically Miillerianspeculation that "from no other source do we obtain information so importantand reliable concerning what we may call the religion of infant man."23After all of this dramatic buildup, it is disappointing to discover that whatLegge sees hidden, after "some toilsome digging," in a select group of"primitive written characters" (not surprisingly, tian for "heaven or sky" and difor "God," but also shen fo r "spirits," shi for "revelation," gui for "manes of thedeparted," and bu/gua/kau as three interrelated terms for "divination") isnothing very new or astonishing. In many ways, it is only the old Protestant"term question" revisited (revolving around the best Chinese characters fortranslating the biblical term for "god"), only now gussied up with some"comparative philological" nomenclature. In this sense, the conclusion fromLegge's philological quest mostly tends to corroborate what he already knewfrom the classics as early as the 1850s: that the primordial religion of theancient Chinese people was an amazingly pure monotheism.24 But there areseveral new interpretive twists that Legge gives to his subject based on the"results derived from the primitive characters." One of these findings is simplythat the ancient Chinese monotheism could be extended as far back as "fivethousand years ago" and that this original monotheistic religion did not appearto have been "henotheistic" in the way that Muller described the ancient Vedicreligion (henotheism referred to the practice of periodically singling out acertain god for special acknowledgment and worship while not denying theexistence of other deities). This fundamentally pure monotheism was,nonetheless, subject to the corrupting influence of "nature worship" and"superstitious divination."25

22 JL,C/1880,p. 7.23 JL,C/1880,p. 8.24 JL,RC/ 1880, pp. 8-16.25 JL, Jf?C/1880, p. 18 . Here Legge is particularly exercised to counter CorneliusTide's classification of the "old religion of China" as an "animistic religion" having a"fetishist tendency" (which was "combined into a system before it was possible for aregular mythology to develop out of it"). For Legge, animistic spirits in ancient Chinawere only worshiped because of "the relation that they are supposed to sustain to theworshippers, and to the Supreme Spirit, or God." Throughout this section of his

discussion of Tiele, Legge makes the point that the strong monotheistic convictions in


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36 Norman J. GirardotBased on his study of the oldest of the classics (especially the Documents,Poetry, and Changes), Legge had already come to the conclusion that the earlyhistorical development of the ancient religion, particularly from the period ofthe primitive characters down to the "twenty-third century B.C.," shows theemergence of a kind of "twofold worship" traditionthat is, worship of theHigh God (Shangdi/Tian) by the ruler of the State and the worship of theancestors by the heads of families. Much of his historical discussion especiallyconcerning the period of Yao, Shun, and Yu recounted in the Book ofDocumentsand the Book ofPoetry s only a more elaborate presentation of this basic thesis,now fleshed out with additional classical quotations and fashionablemethodological observations concerning "henotheism," "animism," "fetishism,"and a kind of Mullerian "disease of language" problem involving the Zhou

period usage of the dualistic (or seemingly "polytheistic") expression "Heavenand Earth."26 Legge declares that one of Confucius' primary contributionstoward maintaining the purity of the ancient religion was to have clearlydeclared that the solstitial sacrifices to Heaven and Earth were "those by whichwe serve Shang Ti."27 Even though the "dualistic name" of Heaven and Earth"unfortunately" continued throughout the rest of Chinese history, the imperialtraditions of prayer preserved the purer reforming spirit enunciated byConfucius. This was a tradition of prayerful thanksgiving that was, according toLegge, found in the solstitial ceremonies of the Ming and Qing emperors.The Remarkable Protestant Proclivities of Solstitial WorshipWhatever "uncertain polytheism" might have emerged at various times inthe long course of Chinese history was "swept away from the imperial worshipsoon after the middle of our fourteenth century, immediately on the rise of theancient China "prevented the spiritual potencies" from "being regarded as independentand being elevated to the place of gods." Moreover, the wooden spirit tablets of Chineseancestor worship could not be considered as fetishism or idolatry: "The table is notregarded as in itself either supernatural or sacred; and it has operated to prevent the riseof idolatry in the Confucian religion of China" (p. 22). Later on Legge observes that theinferior worship of nature spirits was "subordinate to the homage due to God," but nodoubt "resulted from a mistaken idea of His government in creation" (p. 26).

26 Legge, in fact, notes that much of his discussion in this section (i.e., pp . 27-29,RC/1880) was "taken almost verbatim" from his prolegomena to the Chinese Classics(CC/II/1861, pp. 193-194; CC/III/1865, p. 152). According to Legge, the expression"Heaven and Earth" was only a "new style of speech" that arose after the 12 thcentury B.C. Zhou Dynasty. It was not, however, originally a reference to dualistic deitiesbut to the "two places" (i.e., the altars of heaven and earth) of worship of the one God.The danger was that such language could lead "to serious misconception concerning theoldest religious ideas and worship of the nation." As Legge was pleased to report, this wasa danger which "Confucius himself happily came to avert." See RC/ISSO, pp. 30-3 1.27 JL,flC/1880,p. 31.


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The Victorian Text of Chinese Religion 37Ming dynasty, whose statutes have supplied us with a series of such remarkableprayers" (in his 1852 Notions of God and the Spirits, he referred to these changesas the Ming "reform"). Equally remarkable is the obvious inference that theMing imperial purification of Chinese worship, no matter what continued at themore vulgar levels of society, was tantamount to a kind of Protestantpurification of the Chinese state religion two centuries before a similartransformation of Christianity in Europe. Implying that the Chinese religionhad suffered degradation in the same way that Christianity had suffered thecorruptions of Roman Catholicism, this view also suggested that China, whichhad experienced a self-generated reformation, was capable with a littleconcerted help from its Western friends and mentors of religious andcivilizational progress.28 A second conclusion is that, for Legge, the solstitialservices had to be understood as prayerful "oblations," or freely given burntofferings, rather than as any type of ritualistic "propitiatory sacrifices" expectingsome kind of certain return on one's ritual investment. The offerings at thealtars were, according to Legge, "tributes of duty and gratitude" and notexpressions of a crass "sense of guilt." Most of all, and even though they did notharbor the "idea of substitution," these sacrificial practices expressed an almostEvangelical "feeling of dependence" over and against any indulgent sense of aritualized Catholic contrition by "works" or priestly mediation.29Legge s third major conclusion is that the Chinese emperor, in the course ofpracticing the solstitial ceremonies, expressed the collective obligations to Godof his dynastic line and of "all the millions of his subjects." While performingthe "highest act of worship in the religion of China," the emperor should not beconsidered as a "High Priest." Moreover from the earliest periods in Chinesehistory on down to the present, there was never any priestly class or specialcategory of ritual specialists like the Indian Brahmins. In China, the closestapproximation of a "clerical body" were the literati the Ruist class orcomposite group of "Confucian" scholar-bureaucratsan elite body that wasmore ministerially concerned with the educational, moral, and civicimplications of ritual forms than with the superstitious efficaciousness of ritual.In Legge's estimation, the emperor, when presiding at the state worship at thealtars of heaven and earth, was acting very much like a Protestant "minister ofreligion" who expresses the "highest ideas of God" and acknowledges "thedependence of all upon Him." A "minister of religion" obligatorily acts "as theparent and representative of the people, and not as a priest."30 There is even a

28 On the Ming reforms see Jeffrey Meyer, Dragons of Tiananmen Beijing as a SacredCity (Columbia SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1991), pp. 21-24.29 JL, RC/ISSO, pp. 53-55. In the 1852 Notions of God and Spirits, Legge comparedthese rituals to the Solomonic temple rites and sacrifices, but did not distinguish thepropitiatory sacrifices from other kinds.30 JL, i?C/1880, p. 58. Cf. "Confucius the Sage," pp. 69-70. In this essay Legge


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38 Norman J. Girardotsuggestion that the Chinese state religion was actually purer than Hinduism,Roman Catholicism, and perhaps the ancient Israelite religion, each of whichrelied on the ritual practices of priests. The Chinese "religion" (meaningprimarily for Legge, the theistic primordial "Confucianism"), despite itsdeficiencies, had basically avoided the abominations of priests and, asexemplified by the purified religion of the Ming Dynasty, was remarkablyProtestant and ministerial in spirit.Ancestor Worship and the Doctrine of Human Nature

In the second major section of the Religions of China, Legge took up the"worship of the dead" as the other, and more generally popular, aspect of the"bifurcated" Chinese religion of Confucianism. Whereas the "worship of God"was the exclusive ministerial responsibility of the Emperor, ancestor worshiphad "always been the practice of all the Chinese people." What is worth notingis Legge's rudimentary effort to frame his discussion of ancestor worship inrelation to a Babel-like story of religious devolution. Thus in the beginningtime, as "testified to by the primitive written characters," the worship of Godwas "the first, and fo r a time, probably, the only worship."31 "By-and-by" thingschanged in the sense that people began to worship individual spirits associatedwith the multiple dimensions of the natural world collectively "conceived to bethe manifestation of God." Then "it came about" that the worship of God andthe subordinate nature spirits became the sole prerogative of the king oremperor. While all of the people recognized the one God, they were "debarredfrom the worship of Him." Their instincts for worship thwarted, they soughtout the only available alternative: "there remained for them the worship of theirancestors."32 The causal linkages in this narrative are vague to say the least, butit was this sort of "just-so" theorizing, rooted in the metaphors of the degradedtransformation of some primordial monotheism or obversely in the images of agradual and "natural" devolution/evolution of monotheistic belief, that was atthe heart of the comparative enterprise promoted either by Miiller's science ofreligion or Edward Tylor's cultural anthropology.33makes the interesting observation that whatever the shortcomings of a religious worshiprestricted to the Chinese emperor, it was not as bad as the "separation [between men andGod]" inherent in the Roman Catholic system of priests (p. 70).

31 JL,RC/ 1880, pp. 69-70.32 JL,flC/1880,p. 70.33 Legge's sketchy account of the "by-and-by" emergence of ancestor worship is notany less convincing than many of the other 19th-century versions of the early history ofheathen religions although it must be said that Legge's very tentative grasp of thesocial dynamics and ritual significance of ancestor worship would have profited from themore descriptively elaborate and conceptually sophisticated, if not necessarily moreaccurate, "totemistic" views by early sociological pioneers like his fellow ScotsmenRobertson Smith and John McLennan.


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The Victorian Text of Chinese Religion 39Entering into a long discourse on the nature and importance of "filial piety"in the ancient tradition, especially as valorized by Confucius, Legge makes thepoint (in line with common interpretations of the ancestral rites by the Chineseliterati class) that the ongoing tradition of ancestor worship is best thought of asan expression of the "fundamental duty" of the virtue of filiality. It is this basicmoral principle that, as Legge concludes from his study of the Book ofDocumentsand Book of Poetry, is the primary motivation for the emergence, powerfulemotional appeal, and social functionality, of the worship of the dead inChinese tradition.34 Believing that there was much that was "pleasing" about thepractice of filial worship, Legge also concluded that, as the only "channel" forthe "flow of religious feeling" among the people, it was made into a "religion"that stood "side by side" with the "higher worship" of God. In this way, the

influence of ancestor worship was "injurious" since it "tended to produce thesuperstition of tutelary spirits" with its accompanying "defect" of the inability ofthe common people to maintain the elaborate rites. It was this defect, saysLegge, that eventually drove the people "into the arms of the Taoists andBuddhists, becoming the victims especially of Taoist superstition." The "goodand admirable" feelings of filial piety originally associated with the practice ofancestor worship were then corrupted by the Daoist priests who, in a way againremarkably similar to the practices of Roman Catholic priests, demandedpayment fo r the deliverance of the dead trapped in "a sort of purgatory."35The Whole Duty of ManLegge then turned to a more positive appreciation of filial pietythat is, theoriginal motivation and abiding justification fo r the practice. Contrary to muchtraditional Protestant missionary opinion on this matter, he finds that the virtueof filial piety in China expresses the spirit of Moses' fifth commandment:"Honour thy father and mother, that thy days may be long in the land whichJehovah thy God giveth thee."36 The whole issue comes down to the evaluationof one's practical experience with the Chinese people.37 In the end, the question

34 JL, RC/ISSO, pp. 73-80. It is worth noting that at one point Legge compares thepractice of the ancient Chinese kings carrying the tablets of the ancestors and spirits ofthe land with the "army of Israel" carrying around the "Ark of God" (p. 76).35 JL, i?C/1880, p. 87. Legge, it should be noted, altered his earlier view(CC/I/1861) that the ceremonies to Master Kong at the ubiquitous "Confucian temples"were but another example of the corrupt elevation of ancestral figures or sages to thestatus of tutelary deities. He says that such practices concerning Confucius displayed an"homage of gratitude" and "not" the more compromising "worship of adoration."36 JL, Z?C71880, p. 88. In his concluding section, Legge notes that the Christian"honour" of parents is "higher" than the mere Confucian "support" of parents (p. 256).37 Legge therefore remarks that his old missionary antagonist, M.T. Yates, who hadwritten the position paper on ancestor worship for the Shanghai conference, found the

Chinese to be the "most unfilial" and "disobedient to parents" of "all the people of


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40 Norman J. Girardotfor Legge becomes whether or not there is "reason to think that the worship ofthe spirits ... had or has now a beneficial, a moral and religious influence?" Hefirst of all admits that, as a good evangelical Christian, he can only "smile" atthe magical and quasi-Catholic "idea of the service having power to bring thespirits to the tablets from wherever they are." Regardless of this reservation, theessential meaning of ancestor worship, as shown by philological and historicalanalysis, is the activity of a "sincere worshipper striving to recall his fathers, anddwelling on their virtues, till he feels the glow of affection, and resolves to begood as they were." The comparison remains unstated, but there is an obviousparallel here between the "glow of affection" and moral motivation broughtabout by Chinese ancestor worship at its best and the Victorian evangelicalunderstanding of personal piety and familial obligations.38

Legge reinforced these conclusions by reiterating an interpretive theme thathad preoccupied him from the very beginning of his translations of the classicalFour Books. This is the issue of the Chinese "doctrine of man""especially asto his nature, his duty, and his destiny." According to Legge's understanding ofChinese tradition, it is the basic "duty" of all human beings, as intelligentcreatures of God and as assisted by the government of kings and the teaching ofsages, to comply with their inner moral nature.39 The fullest exposition of theideal goodness of human nature and its proneness to go astray is to be found inthe works of Mencius which Legge discusses in relation to how this sage's viewsanticipate "every important point" insisted upon by the famed 18th-centuryChristian theologian, Bishop Butler.40 Here Legge introduces an extendedinvestigation of the practical "course of human duty as laid down by the sagesraised up by Heaven."41whom we have any knowledge." Legge pointedly says that his experience in China wasdecidedly otherwise: "I am thankful I have not to endorse this representation."

38 In the "Whole Duty of Man" (p. 22) Legge says that die lack of any "glow ofpiety" in Confucius' utterances is one of the severe defects in Confucianism.39 It may be noted that both of Legge's later comparative writings .e., the essays"The Whole Duty of Man" 1883 and "Confucius the Sage" 1 889 ndicate that thebedrock comparative issue in both an Evangelical and Confucian sense is the moralquestion of "duty" (which includes ideas of sacrifice).40 This is an abbreviated version of the discussion of Mencius/Mengzi in theprolegomena to CC/I/1861.41 JL, RC/ISSO, pp. 103-104. Most important in Legge's analysis of the "whole dutyof man in the religion of China" are the sagely teachings about the "five constituentrelationships of society" (i.e., the relations of ruler to subject, father to son, husband towife, elder brother to younger brother, friend to friend). The chief defect with thismostly admirable teaching (particularly the Confucian ideas about "friendship" andmutual helpfulness) is the failure to say anything about the human duty to worship God.According to Legge, the other major problem with traditional social life in China wasthe relative inferiority of women, a situation sadly dramatized by the continuingpractices of concubinage, female infanticide, and foot-binding. Moving on to anothertopic in this section of Religions of China, Legge next takes up the seeming paradox that,


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The Victorian Text of Chinese Religion 41Confucius as a Great and Wonderful Reformer

In the concluding pages to his discussion of the "Confucian religion" Leggeturns to the question of the life and influence of the ancient Chinese masterknown in the West as Confucius. As suggested by his earlier investigations ofthe prehistoric religion of "twofold worship" and its "rules of social duty,"Legge believed that Confucius "did not originate the religion of his country."Legge even concludes that the Chinese Master Kong himself made very fewchanges in the essence of the ancient religion and did not "modif[y] its records"very significantly.42 Legge did not seem to believe that Kong's role inestablishing the "Confucian religion" was as creatively formative as otherreligious founders like Buddha, Mohammed, or especially and uniquely JesusChrist. Rather in the "reformation" spirit of Protestantism, Confucius was bestunderstood as a kind of prophetic-inheritor, reforming-transmitter, orpurifying-moralist of the archaic religion. He was, says Legge, a "messengerfrom God to his countrymen for good."43 No matter how "great and wonderful"Confucius was in the Carlylian sense of the heroic "great man," it is theancientpre-Confuciusreligion of China that was "still greater and moreremarkable."44 For all of Legge's trust in experience over abstraction, hismethod of analysis, as now influenced by Miiller's idealistic comparativescience, privileges the purity of the original scriptural or doctrinal meaning ofthe tradition over any later textual accretions, interpretive contradictions, andmoral confusions introduced by later historical developments.This biographical portrait of Confucius as a "great and wonderful" reformerof the ancient tradition represents a decisive alteration of Legge's earlierassessment of the Chinese master's religious and moral deficiencies (as seen inthe prolegomenon to his famous 1861 translation of the Analects, found in thefirst volume of his Chinese Classics).45 Examples of these ameliorative changes arenumerous, but let me only cite Legge's revised opinion Concerning thewhile the Chinese practice of ancestor worship obviously affirmed the afterlife existenceof the dead, the "Confucian religion" generally said "very little, and nothing definite, asto the conditions of ... future existence." Related to this is the problem of the apparentabsence of any idea of future retribution in the afterlife and the eventual emergence ofthe theory of a retribution visited upon one's posterity. In this case Confucius himselfonly confirms "the existence of the soul after death" but says "nothing of the character ofthat existence." RC/ISSO, pp. 121-122.42 JL,C/1880,p. 123.

43 JL , #C/1880,p. 262.44 JL , C/1880, p. 149.45 The ordinary charges against the Chinese master were that his moral system wasatheistically based and that his ceremonialism and social etiquette were fundamentallyinsincere and coldly formalistic. While Legge found Confucius at least partially guilty ofsome of these charges in 1861, here he presents us with a brief biographical portrait ofthe Master as a basically "great and wonderful" religious, moral, and scholarly figure.


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42 Norman J. Girardot"memorabilia" of the Master's personal characteristics. "At one time" when he"compared" these Chinese accounts with "the different style of [the] gospels,"Legge says that he "was offended by them." Now he reports that he has "longearned" to "welcome" rather than to condemn them even though theChinese portraits of Confucius (found both in the Analects and the Record ofRites) were fo r the Victorian literary sensibility not as effective or felicitous asthe narrative style of the Christian gospels.46 Legge makes it clear that he haslearned to be more scientifically "dispassionate" and comparatively equitable inhis evaluations of heathen individuals and traditions. Another example ofLegge's revisionary state of mind is his discovery that Confucius' "greatestachievement" in morality was his formulation of the "golden rule" of positivereciprocitynot just the comparatively less enlightened "negative" or "silver"principle of earlier evaluations.47 Likewise concerning his earlier views aboutthe Chinese Master's "coldness" of religious temperament in "the avoiding ofthe personal name of Ti, or God," Legge is now willing to give Confucius thebenefit of doubt. So therefore in a curious, but typical, coupling of Evangelicalrighteousness and Victorian authoritarianism, Legge here allows for thepossibility that, since "the public worship of God was restricted to thesovereign," Confucius must have "felt himself fettered and did not care to usethe personal name."48 Legge also surmises that the most famous of all passagesused to document Kongzi's non-religious nature ("To give one's self to theduties due to men, and while respecting spiritual beings, to keep aloof fromthem, may be called wisdom," Analects 6:22) may mean nothing more than hiswarning to his disciples about the "superstitions" to which spirit worship maylead.49 Legge concludes that "K'ung was a great and wonderful man," but alsoemphasizes that the ancient religion was more important than the man.50

4h JL , /?C/1880,p. 136.47 See also JL, "Confucius the Sage," p. 66, where it is also noted that Confucius'"greatest achievement" in his moral teaching was "his inculcation of the Golden Rulewhich he delivered at least five separate times" (referring to the principle of shu orreciprocity: "what you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others"). He adds that,despite this, Confucius "did not, or would not, appreciate the still higher rule" ofreturning kindness for hatred.48 JL, #C/1880,pp. 139-140.49 Lest he appear to be overly forgiving of Confucius, Legge makes a point towardthe end of this section (as well as throughout the fourth, and most overtly apologetic,section of the book) of reiterating two factors that lower his estimation of the ancientsage. The first of these is that Laozi actually bettered Confucius in the realm of moralityby stressing the supererogated and Christ-like "return of good for evil" rather than theother sage's "return of justice." The second issue is the disturbing question of Confucius'"concealment" of historical truth in his scholarly work on the Spring and Autumn Annals.These issues are discussed in CC/V/1872, prolegomena, pp. 12-16, 22 , 38-49, 49-51.

50 JL, C/1880, p. 149. Even in 1893 in the Oxford edition of the first volume of theClassics, Legge does not stop in charging Confucius with a lack of religious zeal whichtended to lead others into an a-religious and even irreligious life-style.


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The Victorian Text of Chinese Religion 43What is Taoism?: The Pure and the Corrupt

Section three of Legge's Religions of China opened with a query: "What isTaoism?" As he put the matter:Taoism is the name both of a religion and a philosophy. The author ofthe philosophy [Laozi] is the chief god, or one at least of the chief gods,of the religion; but there is no evidence that the religion grew out of hisbook [the Daodejing]. It was impossible, indeed ... for it to do so in manyof its aspects. Any relation between the two things is merely external, forin spirit and tendency they are antagonistic.51

A full scholarly awareness of Daoism, and its apparent "antagonistic" nature,came late to the overall enterprise of Sinological Orientalism. Thus thedifficult definitional and historical question of "what is Taoism" was onlydimly coming into Victorian consciousness in the 1870s and 1880s. Thisattention came about both because of a wave of new translations, especially of"classics" like the Daodejing [translated by Legge as the Book of the Dao and itsCharacteristics] and Zhuangzi [(Book of the) Master Zhuang], and the emergence offresh interpretations that went beyond early Jesuit and French enlightenmentefforts to define Daoism as the "Rationalist" tradition.52The question to be asked about the perennial quandary of "what is Taoism"really comes down to asking how Sinologists (with the important exception ofseveral French scholars in the first half of the 20th century who availedthemselves of the Daozang or Daoist canon) could have gotten the answer sohorribly distorted and lopsided. The answer to this question about questions islargely a matter of the persuasive interpretive framework about Daoism thatemerged in 19th-century Sinological discourse. Furthermore since Legge wasthe dominant voice of professionalized Sinological Orientalism in the late 1 9thcenturyprecisely when "Taoism" was first being authoritatively named,defined, and explained fo r a Victorian audiencewe may assume that Legge'sway of translating and interpreting the hidden meaning of the tersely enigmaticBook of the Dao and Its Characteristics and the later popular tradition will loomlarge in the development of a particular kind of Protestant and Orientalisticlogic about the antagonistic "pure" and "corrupt" forms of Daoism. Thedefinitive moment fo r the creation of this amazingly ubiquitous logic can evenbe rather precisely dated to the appearance of Legge's 1891 translations of the

51 JL , 671880, pp. 159-160.52 As Legge notes, the earlier name of "Rationalism" for the Daoist tradition was"admirably calculated to lead the mind astray as to what the religion is." "Rationality" isprimarily to be faulted for the suggestion that the Dao is some kind of conscious beingwith the quality or faculty of reason. See #671880, p. 160.


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44 Norman J. GirardotDaoist "sacred books." But the Religions of China is a kind of trial run of Legge'sgrowing interest in "philosophical" and "religious" Daoism, a concern thatalong with his work on Buddhism will occupy much of his attention throughoutthe decade of the 1880s.53Gross and Superstitious

In the Religions of China, Legge first takes up the popular, but "gross,"religious forms of Daoism. By so doing, he leaves the impression that he ispurposely saving the best for the last. He begins with a description of the mostlyrepugnant "superstitions" of the later religious tradition and concludes with anexposition of the original philosophy concerned with the cultivation of the"highest and purest" aspects of human nature.54 Acknowledging that the Daoistreligion, though considered a "heterodox tradition" by the Qing government,was legally tolerated and officially regulated, Legge gives us a clue to his overallinterpretation of the tradition when he opens his discussion with a reference tothe "popes of Taoism" (referring to a kind of apostolic succession from the firsttianshi or "Heavenly Master," Zhang Daoling, in the 1st century C.E.) and itspriestly system of "ecclesiastical gradations of rank and authority."55 Theselocutions concerning "popes," "grossness," and "corruption"along with thehostile rhetorical structure of the overall discussiondraw attention to theunderlying anti-Papist bias seen in much of the 19th and early 20th-centuryOrientalist discussion of Daoism.56 The 19th-century comparative analysis of

53 For a fuller account of these issues see my "Finding the Way": James Legge anddie Victorian Invention of Taoism," Religion 29 (1999), pp. 107-121.54 The description of philosophical Daoism is found in RC/ISSO, p. 229. For diediscussion of die "corrupt" Daoist religion, see JL , RC/ 1880, pp . 160-202. It is wordinoting diat, in addition to his own experience and die accounts of Western scholars likeEdkins, Eitel, and Chalmers, Legge primarily relies upon the Tungjian gangmu or the"General Mirror of History" for his information.55 The use of die expression "pope" to refer to die head of die Heavenly Master'ssect of Daoism in China does not derive from Legge, but I have not tried to documentdie very first English usage (perhaps eidier Giitzlaff or Edkins). Regardless of die anti-Catholic bias, it is clear that Legge perceived the nature and history of the "popes ofTaoism" to be a serious issue that deserved furdier study. See RC/IHS0, pp. 233-236.56 Buddhism, especially the later more "corrupt" Mahayana Buddhism of China andJapan, was often equated with Roman Catholicism. Early Buddhism could also be seen as a"reformation" of Hinduism and the Buddha comparable to Luther's protestantreformation. See, for example, Almond, British Discovery of Buddhism, pp. 73-76, 123-126.Virulent anti-Catholicism was a problem diroughout most of the Victorian period in GreatBritain and America. See D. G. Paz, Popular Anti-Catholicism in Mid-Victorian England(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992); J. H. S. Burleigh, A Church History of Scotland(1 960), p. 36 2 (on the 1 840-50s anti-Papist movement); and Gerald Parsons, d., Religion inVictorian England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), pp. 146-183.


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The Victorian Text of Chinese Religion 45Oriental religious history often mirrored the Reformation myth thatProtestantism was primarily a profound cleansing of Roman Catholic ritualcorruption and a return to the cognitive purity, elevated spirituality, and "goldenrule" morality of the original religion of Christ.57 This interpretive perspectiveespecially applies to the dangerous problem of syncreticism and, as Legge sayshere, the freedom of Protestant Christianity from any "depraving admixture" ofinferior worship such as that found in Romanism.58In keeping with his concern for the origins and developmental history of theChinese religions, Legge suggests that the inception of Daoist superstitionasdistinct from "the Tao Teh King, of the sixth century B.C.," that savors neither"of superstition or religion"cannot be precisely determined. He neverthelesslinks the emergence of the superstitious religion to the corruptions of theprimordial monotheism that, after the abortive reforms of Confucius andMencius, became pervasive during the degenerate reign of the first emperor, ShiHuangdi fM^. For the most part, these "tendencies to superstition" werepromoted, as with the case of ancestor worship, by the fact that the people wereofficially "debarred from communion" with the High God by the emperor andhis minions and therefore sought solace in inferior, and often dangerous, beliefsand practices.59 Becoming even more bizarre and diffuse in the later Han dynasty(especially involving the emperor Wudi and magical beliefs in immortality andvarious alchemical practices), these materialistic and magical superstitions wereeventually organized into a religious system involving an ecclesiasticalorganization, popes, priests, iconography, liturgy, occult practices, and multiple

57 One of the problems associated with Catholicism was the tendency to compromisesyncretistically with heathenism. This was a recurrent theme in Protestant missionarywriting e.g., W. S. Ament, "Romanism in China," ChR 14 (January-February 1883),pp . 47-55. For a general discussion of the element of anti-Catholicism in the rise of thecomparative study of religions see especially Smith, Divine Drudgery, passim.58 JL, i?C/1880, p. 255. From a native Chinese comparativist perspective it couldjust as well be argued that Protestantism was hardly a revival of some originally pureChristianity. Rather it represented the emergence of a new, and strangely heterodox,

tradition (Jidujiao M1$k in Chinese) that had been syncretistically influenced by varioussocial and political developments in 16th- and 17th-century Europe. At the very least itcould be seen to be a grossly denatured transformation of the ancient "classic" Christianreligion {Tianzhu jiao ^Ztfc) bifurcated (in a way amazingly similar to Legge'sunderstanding of archaic "Confucianism") into the imperial-papal worship of the HighGod-Ancestor (Tianzhu ^.., Shangdi _h$j, Tian 5) and the popular worship ofancestors and spirits.59 JL, /?C/1880, p. 176. This stands in opposition to the claim made by Legge in1850/1852 that the imperial sacrifices were the monopoly of the emperor, but thatworship and respect of Tian and Shangdi was common among the people. Part of theproblem here with Daoism is that Legge identified the Sanqing -.if (Three Pure Ones)and multiple Shangdi figures in the Daoist religion as a "proper polytheism" whichopposed the "original monotheism" of "Confucianism."


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46 Norman J. Girardotscriptures. This primarily came about through the "overmastering influence" ofBuddhism which entered China from India in the 1st century C.E.60

The only redeeming quality of the Daoist religion was its moral teaching asexpressed by extremely popular tracts like the "Book of Actions and theirRetributions." Although often "queer and grotesque," these works contain muchgood practical advice blending basic moral precepts from all three of thetraditional teachings. There is, nevertheless, an unfortunately distorted aspect ofthe moral system which Legge identifies as a "recent development." This is thebelief, syncretistically shared with Buddhism and based on the Indian idea of"metempsychosis or transmigration," in an afterlife retribution. Sadly these ideasinclude a purgatorial system (the "Ten Courts ofJustice") that is manipulated bythe "mercenary purposes" of the priests in the flagrantly indulgent manner of theRoman Catholic clergy.61The Text-Book of Daoist Philosophy

The Religions ofChina is remarkable for Legge's overwhelming identificationof the early Daoist philosophy with its "only text-book" the ancient Daodejing60 JL, RC/ISSO, pp. 164-167. There is, however, one difference from the Buddhistclergy that Legge is pleased to notice hat the Daoists have always refused "to submitto the yoke of celibacy." See JL, RC/ 1880, p. 181. As a matter of fact, there are some

celibate Daoist sects. See Isabelle Robinet, Uhistoire du taosme des origines au XIV sicle(Paris: ditions du Cerf, 1991). Legge's discussion of religious Daoism really pertains toonly one sectarian movement within a complex and diverse tradition that is, theHeavenly Masters school. On the overall issue of the presence of "chaos" in Daoisttradition see N.J. Girardot, Myth and Meaning in Early Taoism (Berkeley and LosAngeles: University of California Press, 1983). Legge also blames the increasing idolatryof the Confucian state religion on the Buddhist and Daoist tendency "to multiply idol-deities indefinitely." Especially disturbing for Legge is that his revered "personal name"for God, Di iff, is actually "given to scores of the Taoist deities." One can only conclude,says Legge, that "no polytheism could be more pronounced, or more grotesque, withhardly a single feature of poetic fancy or aesthetical beauty." JL, /?C/1880, p. 170.61 Legge presents his discussion of the courts of purgatory as a new discovery ofSinological scholarship based on the translation and work of the young councilor scholarand later Sinological nemesis, Herbert Giles. After a final inventory of other "grotesque"practices (demonology, magical exorcism, and geomancy), Legge concludes by honestlyadmitting that "much research" on the religion was still required. He believed, however,that popular Daoism was clearly a crudely degenerate religion "begotten by Buddhismout of the old Chinese superstitions." Though it thrived in the face of opposition fromstate Confucianism, Legge felt certain that it was destined to collapse in the face of theprogress of "real science" and Christianity. This progressive improvement andregeneration of China will come about only if the Western representatives of realscience and Christianity "act according to the golden rule of Confucius, and do to theChinese as we would have them do to us, and according to the still grander maxim ofLao-tsze, overcome their evil by our good." JL , "Confucius the Sage," 1889, p. 78.


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The Victorian Text of Chinese Religion 47or Book of the Dao and Its Characteristics which has "come down to us from thepencil of Lao-tsze, its author." From a realm of grotesque material darkness andpriestly manipulation we enter into a region of the purer and more etherealspiritual light of the "classics" and "sacred books" of old, that territory ofmeaning so effectively colonized by Miiller's Orientalist science of comparisonand its concern for the higher textuality and beliefs of the "world religions."62Legge begins his discussion of the early tradition with an "historical account" ofthe "old mystic and moralist" Laozi, the "author" of the Book of the Tao and ItsCharacteristics and the reputed older contemporary of Confucius. Legge evincessome hesitation over various fantastic hagiographical elements and compositedetails in his assessment of the extant reports about the shadowy "Old Boy"(such as the reputed meeting between him and Confucius). Nonetheless, heaffirms the traditional Chinese view of Laozi s authorship of the Book of the Taoand Its Characteristics ("There is no reason fo r us to doubt that the book whichhe wrote at the request of Yin Hsi . . . was the Tao Teh King which we stillpossess.") and the dating of the text to the 6th century B.C.E.On the key issue of the difficult meaning and translation of "Lao-tsze'sgrand theme" of Dao, Legge in 1880 adopts the sensible position that as amysterious power, attribute, or "way" of acting rather than a personal beingthe term was best left untranslated. As to the "things that are taught in thebook" about the Dao and its power, Legge remarks that he is not quiteconfident that he had completely "cracked the shell" of meaning. Remindinghis listeners of his method of repeatedly "translating afresh" a text and"transcribing at the same time the original and the happiest portions of Chinesecommentary on it," he says that he always works in a way that allows the"meaning and spirit [to] soak gradually into the mind." Despite the fact he wasthen working on his third translation of the Book of the Tao and Its Characteristics,he says that he was "still waiting for more light on many chapters."It will take Legge another decade of careful reiterative .translation and

62 This movement back in time to the purity of the Book of the Dao and Its Characteristics is also for Legge a remembrance of experiences he had more than thirtyyears earlier as a missionary in China. Here he remembers the "case of one Taoistdignitary who visited him" in Hong Kong: "He told me that his study of the tao of Lao-tsze for fifty years had convinced him of his impotency to attain to its ideal, and he hadalmost resigned himself to despair, hopeless of finding some truth for which his heartyearned." Only after reading some Christian tracts did the scales fall from his eyes andhe accept the "revelation of God in Christ." JL, RC/ISSO, pp. 296-297. See also hisdiscussion of the Daoist woman who became a convert to Christianity, pp. 275-276.Because of experiences like this, Legge concludes that when the "professors" (rather thanthe "priests" or "popes") of religious Daoism "confine themselves to the study of theTao Teh King, and cultivate the humility and abnegation of self which are there sostrongly inculcated, they are more prepared than the Confucian literati to receive themessage of the gospel."


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48 Norman J. Girardotcommentarial reflection to illuminate more fully the meaning of this text.Nevertheless in the Religions of China, he pragmatically proceeds with a partialexplication based on his belief that he has "attained to the practical drift andaim" of the text. He briefly enumerates seven key ideas of which I need onlymention his evident intellectual and emotional resonance with the moralimplications of themes like "emptiness" and "receptivity" as "freedom frompreoccupation"; "unselfish usefulness"; the "three precious things" ofcompassion, economy, and especially humility; and "returning good for evil,"an elevated moral sentiment that was "new to China and originated with Lao-tsze."63 The only negative note in this litany of virtue is Legge's frustration overthe hermit-like rejection of "the progress of knowledge and society." For agood Victorian dedicated to the progressive social missions of Christianity,civilization, and education, this shows that Laozi, for all the partial but"glorious" appeal of some of his ideas, was "after all only a dreamer."64 Theoverall conclusion that he draws about the classical Daoism of the Book of theTao and Its Characteristics is that, "while the existence of God is not denied,"there is "no inculcation of religion in the book" .e., no regular prayerfulacknowledgment and "worship" of the divine. For all of its terse perplexity, thistext has primarily a philosophical focus on the cultivation of the "highest andpurest" aspects of human nature without any expressed dependence on, orconcern for, the "worship" of some supernatural powerwhether God, Dao, orspirits. The real "mystery" is how the later incredibly "base religion" could inany way be identified with Laozi and his "system of thought."65The Whole Duty of Comparative Understanding

The last section of the Religions of China is devoted to an extendedcomparison of Confucianism and Daoism with Christianity. This is an exercisethat takes the form of a largely apologetic dissertation on the human "defects"of the Chinese religions and the necessity for their completion in thesupernaturally based religion of Christ.66 Regarding the "dispassionate" butultimately judgmental nature of his general procedure, Legge says simply: "Icannot make my mind a tabula rasa in regard to the faith in which I was brought

63 JL , C/1 880, pp. 216-224.M JL,#C/1880,p. 226.65 JL,i?C/1880, p. 229.66 In the best sense of the Reformation interpretation of Paul's Epistle to the Romans,the special genius of Christianity is found in its doctrines of the "propitiatory sacrifice"of Christ's atoning death for all humankind and in Christ's supernatural resurrection.On the doctrinal significance of "propitiatory sacrifice" and its supposed absence inChinese religion, see RC/ISSO, pp . 288-297. As Legge says (p. 297), "the sacrificial death

of Christ is of the essence of Christianity."


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The Victorian Text ofChinese Religion 49up, and which, in mature years, after not a little speculation and hesitancy, Iembraced for myself, with an entire conviction of its truth." This "impartial butnot neutral" principle, arrived at after "not a little speculation and hesitancy,"can be said to be Legge's particular application of Bishop Beveridge's axiom of a"diligent and impartial enquiry into all religions" used as Miiller's motto for theSacred Books. This principle is complemented by a variation on a theme struck inLegge's sermons during his last days in Hong Kong. It is simply that the more"a man possesses the Christian spirit, and is governed by Christian principle,the more anxious will he be to do justice to every other system of religion, andto hold his own without taint or fetter of bigotry."67 For Legge, reared in theScottish familial wisdom of the Bible and the catechismal beliefs of theWestminster Confession, it is above all the Ninth Commandment that qualifiedall efforts at an honest Christian approach to the understanding of, andintercourse with, other people and nations: "Thou shalt not bear false witnessagainst thy neighbor."What, then, was the fuller content of the Christian spirit and principle? Itwas basically, as Legge most clearly articulates in a later essay, the "whole duty"of Ecclesiastes (XII. 13) to "fear God and keep his commandments." Central tothe comparative enterprise were the Old and New Testament rule to "love thyneighbour as thyself and especially Christ's (and Laozi's!) golden command tolove one's enemies.68 As always, it was Paul who expressed most poignantly thewhole duty of the comparativist when, "looking abroad on the various forms ofbelief in the world," he counseled Christians to "prove all things and hold fastthat which is good."69 The duty of holding fast to the moral implications of anycomparative situation involving inter-cultural intercourse is finally moreimportant than the individual terms of the comparison.

This comparativist principle translates into Legge's own personal "griefover the "ignorant" and "incautious assertions of writers who think that apartfrom [the] Christian Scriptures there are no lessons for men about their duties,and that heathendom has in consequence never been anything but a slough ofimmoral filth and outrageous crime." For Legge this betrays not only aprofound ignorance of heathen tradition, but also an obliviousness to thecentral commandments preached by the Bible and Christianity especiallyloving one's neighbor and not bearing false witness.70 Legge's strongeststatement of "pain" in this regard is his incredible, but understandable,admission in 1886 that because of the "misrepresentations" and blatant "falsewitness" about Confucianism by missionaries, he was mostly "content" to avoid67 JL, flC/1880, pp. 242-243.68 JL, "Whole Duty of Man," pp. 4-7.69 JL,#C/1880, pp. 242-243.70 JL, "Whole Duty of Man," p. 23.


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50 Norman J. Girardot"missionary meetings and run the risk of being stigmatized as having lost [his]interest in the great missionary work."71

III. Paradigms Lost and TransformedIt is the presuppositions of Christian theology that have predominated inthe construction of discourses about the 'Other' (in this case the other'world religions'). Within an overarching Christian paradigm, completewith its textualist, Salvationist and universalistic presuppositions, all otherforms of religious expression are discussed (one might even say'constructed') in terms of the prevailing theological paradigm. ...Theessentialism endemic in such an approach involves the construction ofabstract notions of 'religion' that can then be extrapolated from theirlocal, cultural context. In this sense, religions become divorced fromtheir actual historical circumstances and manifestations.

Richard King, Orientalism and Religion, pp. 67, 69By the end of the First World War, James Legge and Max Miiller wereforgotten Victorian sages. Both had passed behind the dark clouds of physicaland intellectual conflict that had arisen so suddenly after the turn of the century.Academic life had become aggressively

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