[Sidenote: Defects of the ideal: no duties to God, and the duties of parents to children not emphasized] Regarded from our point of view the Confucian ideal of moral character has serious limitations and defects. First, it omits practically all duties to God. In the words of Dr. Legge, “man’s duty to God is left to take care of itself.” God or Heaven was a subject of which Confucius seldom spoke, and the Chinese have in this matter followed the example of the Master. Heaven is not in all their thoughts. If we recall what an influence the conception of a supreme being as Creator and Father has exerted upon the morality of all the races that have accepted as their creed the ethical monotheism of the Hebrew teachers, we shall realize how fundamentally the Chinese ideal of excellence has been modified by the omission of all those duties which have entered into our own moral code as duties owed to God.[180] Second, while laying such stress upon the duties of children to their parents, Confucianism is almost silent regarding the duty of parents to their children. At this point there is a wide divergence between the Christian and the Chinese conception of duty. Commenting upon this matter, Dr. Legge says: “I never quoted in a circle of Chinese friends the words of Paul in Corinthians--‘The children ought not to lay up for the parents, but the parents for the children’--without their encountering a storm of opposition. When I tried to show that the sentiment was favorable to the progress of society, and would enable each generation to start from a higher standpoint, I found it difficult to obtain a hearing.”[181] The effects of the family ethics of Confucianism upon the moral practice of the Chinese in the domestic sphere will be noted in the following division of this chapter. III. EFFECTS OF THE IDEAL UPON CHINESE LIFE AND HISTORY [Sidenote: Degree of accordance between theory and practice; mandarin morality]