At the present day and for very many centuries past the cult of ancestors and the dutiful upkeep of the ancestral tombs have been regarded as inseparably combined: but it was not so always. If the ancient Book of Rites (_Li Chi_) is to be trusted, Confucius for many years of adult life did not know where his father's grave was, and apparently it was only on his mother's death that he took the trouble to find out. The same book, which dates from the first and second centuries B.C., also narrates a story of how Confucius's disciples reported to him that the tumulus over his mother's grave had collapsed owing to a heavy rainfall; yet he merely remarked, with emotion, that "people did not repair tombs in the good old times,"--an enigmatical remark that has been variously interpreted.[204] These stories probably originated from the well-ascertained fact that Confucius--like most of the Chinese philosophers and sages--was very strongly opposed to lavish expenditure on coffins, graves and funerals. Confucius's teaching on the subject seems to have been practical and reasonable. He taught that the bodies of the dead should be treated with every possible respect but that the material interests of the living must not be sacrificed in order to confer some unnecessary and doubtful boon upon the dead. Needless to say he was strenuously opposed to the barbarous customs of entombing the living with the dead and of widow-immolation, customs which seem to have been practised in China from the seventh century B.C. if not from much earlier times and which did not become altogether extinct till the seventeenth century of our era.[205] But if Confucius did not lay overmuch stress on funerals and the preservation of tombs, he was emphatic on the subject of filial piety. The connection between Confucianism and ancestral worship must be dealt with when we are considering the subject of Religion: it is therefore unnecessary to enlarge upon this important subject at present, beyond pointing out that filial piety--on which ancestral worship is based--was regarded by Confucius and his school as "the fountain from which all other virtues spring and the starting-point of all education."[206]