This is certainly very magnificent phraseology, but it will hardly convey any definite impression to the minds of those who are not acquainted with the life and teaching of the great Chinese sage. These may be studied now by all who can care for the history of human thought, in the excellent work of Dr. Legge. The first volume, just published, contains the Confucian Analects, the Great Learning, and the Doctrine of the Mean, or the First, Second, and Third Shoo's, and will, we hope, soon be followed by the other Chinese Classics.[93] We must here confine ourselves to giving a few of the sage's sayings, selected from thousands that are to be found in the Confucian Analects. Their interest is chiefly historical, as throwing light on the character of one of the most remarkable men in the history of the human race. But there is besides this a charm in the simple enunciation of simple truths; and such is the fear of truism in our modern writers that we must go to distant times and distant countries if we wish to listen to that simple Solomonic wisdom which is better than the merchandize of silver and the gain thereof than fine gold. [Footnote 93: Dr. Legge has since published: vol. ii. containing the works of Mencius; vol. iii. part 1. containing the first part of the Shoo King; vol. iii. part 2. containing the fifth part of the Shoo King.] Confucius shows his tolerant spirit when he says, 'The superior man is catholic, and no partisan. The mean man is a partisan, and not catholic' (p. 14). There is honest manliness in his saying, 'To see what is right, and not to do it, is want of courage' (p. 18). His definition of knowledge, though less profound than that of Socrates, is nevertheless full of good sense: 'The Master said, "Shall I teach you what knowledge is? When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it--this is knowledge"' (p. 15).