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22 THE ANALECI_ : INTRODUCTION.
for instance, when he was passing by Mt T'ai he heard
the mournful wailing of a woman on the hillside. Sending
a disciple (Tz5 Lu) to enquire why she sat wailing
in so lonely a spot he was answered, " My husband's
father was killed here by a tiger, my husband also, and
now my son has met the same fate." Then why, asked
Confucius, did she dwell in so dreadful a place.
"Because " answered she, "here there is no oppressive
ruler." "Scholars," said he to his disciples, " remember
this : Oppressive rule is more cruel than a tiger."
Power amongst these barons bred luxury, luxury lust,
and lust unrelenting destruction. Princes there were who
set all morality at defiance and lived lives of open shame,
as witness the acceptance of the present of eighty geishas
by the Duke of Lu, an act which drove our Sage to
shake the dust of his native State offhis feet, and depart to
the life of an exile. Men of virtuous character, despairing
of reformation, left their portfolios and withdrew from
the world, becoming recluses amongst the mountains, or
far from the busy haunts of men, tilling a hard living
from an earth kinder and sweeter than the hearts of
princes. Some of these, embittered by their sorrows,
even poured scorn on Confucius, for his futile attempts
to stay the "disorder which like a swelling flood " rolled
in resistless torrent through the land.
It must be remembered that the China of that period
did not cover anything like half the territory included in
the China of to-day. On the north it was bounded by
a line running through tile northern half of Chihll, Shansi
and Shensi ; on the east by the Yellow Sea ; on the south