Meadows remarks that every consistent Confucianist ought to be a blank atheist, though probably he is using the word in the sense that used erroneously to be attached to it a good many years ago,[291] when "atheist" was the term applied to all persons who were outside the Christian fold. In that sense Confucius was an atheist, and inasmuch as he lived half a millennium before Christ was born it is obvious that he could not possibly have been anything else. Mr. Arthur H. Smith states that the mass of Confucian scholars are "thoroughly agnostic and atheistic,"[292] though if these terms are correctly used it is difficult to see how they could be both at the same time. Mr. W. E. Griffis thinks it "more than probable" that Confucius laid "unnecessary emphasis upon social and political duties, and may not have been sufficiently interested in the honour to be paid to Shang Ti or God. He practically ignored the Godward side of men's duties."[293] Confucius would probably have said that if people fully and completely discharge all their duties on the manward side they need have no fear that they are neglecting the Godward side. Griffis goes on to compare Confucianism with a child-headed giant, because it is exaggerated on its moral and ceremonial side as compared with its spiritual development. It must surely be clear to an unprejudiced mind that Confucius deserves no blame whatever for omitting to lay down the law on subjects about which he never professed to know anything. Men have existed on this planet for tens of thousands of years: if, as many occidental peoples hold, the Deity revealed Himself only nineteen centuries ago, it is absurd to find fault with an honest philosopher for not having known facts which had been preserved as a secret in the archives of heaven for countless ages in the past and were to remain undisclosed for another five hundred years in the future. Some of us, perhaps, may be inclined to the opinion that the great secret remains a secret still. "We are born to enquire after truth," said the wise Montaigne; "it belongs to a greater power to possess it." But supposing for the sake of argument that Truth, or a certain aspect of Truth, came to man's knowledge by a miraculous act on the part of a Divine Power nineteen centuries ago, one cannot blame Confucius for not having obtained it from heaven five hundred years sooner. One might as well blame St. Paul for not anticipating the astronomical discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo, or St. Augustine for not telling us how to deal with the modern Women's Suffrage problem, or the Founder of Christianity Himself for not explaining the mechanism of motor-omnibuses and aeroplanes. Prometheus is said to have succeeded in wrenching a valuable secret from heaven without divine permission, but Prometheus was a Titan and Confucius never pretended to be anything more than a humble-minded man.