But perhaps the most crucial development is one that is less easy to isolate, for demographic change, like climate change, may be almost as imperceptible as it is decisive. The most compelling evidence comes from a recent statistical study of the Zuozhuan.19 This revealed that, whereas at the beginning of the ‘Spring and Autumn’ period all the most active participants mentioned in the text were the sons of rulers, during the middle of the period they were mostly ministers or members of the ministerial nobility, and by the end of the period they were overwhelmingly shi, a term that originally meant something like ‘knight’ but was now applied to all educated Xia ‘gentlemen’ without much regard to descent or profession. Thanks to natural fertility and higher agricultural yields the population had expanded and with it the whole demographic base of Xia society.
The shi, later burdened in English translation with functional descriptions such as ‘the literati’, ‘the governing class’, ‘the guardians of Chinese tradition’ and ‘the backbone of the bureaucracy’, were still seeking a role in the ‘Spring and Autumn’ period. Birth conferred on them more in the way of expectation than privilege. The younger sons of younger sons, collaterals or commoners who had acquired an education, they coveted employment and to that end cultivated professional expertise. As policy advisers, literary authorities, moral guardians, diplomatic go-betweens, bureaucratic reformers and interpreters of omens, they represent a distinct phenomenon of the age and would become a feature of later imperial government. Though once ‘knights’, only a few shi now saw active military service; fewer still engaged in agriculture or trade. Their worth lay in words, their skills in debate, and their value in a potent mix of high-mindedness and ingenuity.
Not all shi embraced the competitive job market. China too had its renunciates; their teachings in favour of personal detachment, emotional vacuity, various physical disciplines and a back-to-nature primitivism would be compounded into such works as the famously demanding Daodejing (‘The Way and Integrity Classic’, Tao-te ching). Though compiled in the third century BC, it is attributed to one Laozi (‘Old Master’, Lao-tzu), who, if he existed, may have lived 200 years earlier. The more rewarding Zhuangzi (Chuang-tzu) of perhaps the fourth century BC is another such compilation named for its supposed author but containing many interpolations. Both works as finally put together would be in part a reaction against the teachings of Confucius, a man with ‘brambles for brains’, according to the Zhuangzi. Much later, both works would become central to the canon of Daoism (Taoism) when it emerged as a not exactly coherent school of thought in the first century AD.
Other shi, while welcoming the opportunity of employment, were not very successful in obtaining it. From the little state of Lu in Shandong, a bastion of conservatism once ruled by the now sidelined descendants of the Duke of Zhou, one such son of a ‘gentleman’ set off to make his name around 500 BC. Like his father, a military man of legendary strength who was supposed to have held a portcullis aloft, this Kong Qiu seems to have had a sturdy presence and is further credited with a physical peculiarity – always an indication of future distinction – consisting of a lump on the head; perhaps it was just a very high forehead. He was not, though, interested in warfare like his father, and despite his distinctive appearance found recognition elusive. He was gone for thirteen years, travelling through many of ‘the central states’, by one of which he was briefly employed. But in a stressful age, finding a patron who met his lofty standards proved difficult, and finding one who would attend to his idealistic injunctions nigh impossible. Kong Qiu returned to Lu an admirable, if slightly ridiculous, failure.
‘Great indeed is Kong Qiu! He has wide learning but he has not made a name for himself in any field’ [scoffed a village wag].
The Master, on hearing this, said to his disciples, ‘What then should I make my speciality? Chariot-driving perhaps? Or archery? I think I should prefer driving.’20
Occasionally sarcastic but never resentful, the man known outside China as Confucius (a Latinisation of ‘Kong Fuzi’, ‘Master Kong’) would serve out the rest of his days as a poorly paid minor official in the irrelevant state of his birth. The Buddha found a large following in his lifetime; kings revered him and when (conventionally about 483 BC but probably later) he achieved nirvana, his relics were carefully preserved and piously distributed. But ‘the Master’, when he died in 479 BC, was mourned only by his small circle of disciples – and maybe Mrs Confucius, a lady so inconspicuous that nothing beyond her once having given birth is known. Nor was there any Confucian cult until several centuries later, by when the facts of his life had been decently obscured by legend, and a whole corpus of texts awarded to him, most of them erroneously. Seldom has posterity been so generous; seldom has such a dismal career ultimately been rewarded with such universal esteem.
That Confucius was a formidable scholar and an inspirational mentor with a well-defined mission is more relevant. In a thumbnail autobiography, his professional aspirations receive not a mention:
At fifteen my heart was set upon learning; at forty I was no longer perplexed; at fifty I understood Heaven’s Decree; at sixty I was attuned to wisdom; at seventy I could follow my heart’s desires without overstepping the mark.21
Like Socrates, who was born just a decade after Confucius’s death, he believed that morality and virtue would triumph if only men would study. Take a town of 10,000 households, he told his followers. It would surely contain many who were as loyal and trustworthy as he, but there would be none who cared as much about learning as he. In the course of his intellectual odyssey, he may actually have written the short ‘Spring and Autumn’ Annals (Chunqiu) – he was certainly familiar with them – and he may have contributed to the compilation of other works such as ‘The Book of Songs’ (Shijing), a particular favourite. But the authorship of all such texts is problematic; their compilation in the forms that survive today resulted from several ‘layers’ of scholarship, not to mention dollops of blatant fabrication, spread over many centuries.
The same is true of parts of his collected sayings, known as The Analects (Lunyu), and from which the quotations above are taken. But it is thought that other parts genuinely represent what the Master said in conversation with his disciples. They thus have an identity and an immediacy that are more akin to those of the Gospels than, say, the jataka stories on which the Buddha’s life is based. Here then is what Laozi might have called a proper ‘shoe’, not just ‘a footprint’, a recognisable voice, the first in China’s history and arguably the greatest, addressing and exhorting the listener directly. Sometimes combative like an out-of-sorts Dr Johnson, the Master belies his dry-as-dust reputation, endearing himself to the reader much as he did to his disciples.
Confucius himself always disclaimed originality. Although there is little consensus about many of his key concepts – and even less about which English words best represent them – the gist of his teaching seems not especially controversial. Sons must