extra information:taken from: chapter 7 of 'the spiritual teachings of the tao'original text:'[...] This made me ashamed and I finally placed the government in his hands. But before I knew it, he left me and went away. I felt crushed, as if I had sustained a great loss, and had no one to enjoy the kingdom with. Tell me, what sort of a man is he?Confucius said, "Once, when I was on a mission, I saw some piglets sucking on their dead mother's nipples. After a while they raised their heads, looked at her, and then ran away, leaving her body. They sensed that she did not see them, and that in some way she was no longer like themselves. What they had loved in their mother was not her body, but what had given life to her body. [...]'about the quoted person:Chinese sage, born June 19th, 551 B.

C. at Shang-ping, in the country of Lu. His own name was Kong, but his disciples called him Kong-fu-tse, (i.e. Kong the Master, or Teacher,) which the Jesuit missionaries Latinized into Confucius. The death of his mother, which occurred in his 23rd year, gave occasion to the first solemn and important act of Confucius as a moral reformer. The solemnity and splendor of the burial ceremony with which he honored her remains struck his fellow citizens with astonishment, and they determined for the future to bury their dead with the ancient honors. Confucius did not end here. He shut himself up in his house to pass in solitude the three years of mourning for his mother, the whole of which time he dedicated to philosophical study.

We are told that he reflected deeply on the eternal laws of morality, traced them to their source, imbued his mind with a sense of the duties they impose indiscriminately on all men, and determined to make them the immutable rule of all his actions. Henceforth his career is only an illustration of his ethical system. He commenced to instruct his countrymen in the precepts of morality, exhibiting in his own person all the virtues he inculcated in others. Gradually his disciples increased, as the practical character of his philosophy became more apparent. his philosophy was moral, not religious, and aimed exclusively at fitting men for conducting themselves honorably and prudently in this life. He was in some instances persecuted; once he was imprisoned and nearly starved, and finally seeing no hope of securing the favorable attention of the mass of his countrymen while alive, he returned in extreme poverty to his native state, and spent his last years in the composition of literary works, by which posterity at least might be instructed. He died 479 B.

C., in the 70th year of his age. Immediately after his death, Confucius began to be venerated and his family was distinguished by various honors and privileges.

While Confucius' system is termed a religion, it ought rather to be regarded as a method of political and social life, built upon a slight foundation of philosophy. It contains no trace of a personal God, though there are indeed a number of allusions to a certain heavenly agency or power, Shang-te, whose outward emblem is Tien, or the visible firmament.