It is obvious that until we are all agreed on what we mean by Religion it is useless to enquire whether the Confucian system is or is not entitled to the name. One might as well try to determine whether a given literary composition is a poem before we have agreed upon a definition of Poetry. Some writers have been apt to look for some quality that is common to all religion as the best basis for a definition; but, as Edward Caird has reminded us, "such a quality, if it could be found, would be something so vague and abstract that little or nothing could be made of it."[303] As nobody has yet invented a definition which will satisfy every one, we must perforce leave Confucianism unlabelled: though if we all agree that a religious attitude implies a deep sense of moral responsibility (either to our own higher selves or to an external Power) and a feeling that to do what we believe to be right--irrespective of how we come to have ideas of right and wrong at all--is "wisdom in the scorn of consequence," then we cannot go far astray in asserting that Confucianism is not an irreligious or unreligious system, but is merely an untheological one. If the word Religion may be said to have almost as many meanings as there are cultivated human minds, what is to be said of the word God? The Christian objection to Chinese ancestor-worship, of which Confucius approved, is that it is a form of idolatry, inasmuch as the deceased ancestors are worshipped as gods. Here again our concurrence or dissent must depend upon the exact shade of meaning to be attached to the word "god." A rough unhewn stone may be a "god" at one place and time--though probably, as in the case of the meteoric stone that is said to have been carried in the Ark of Jahveh, it is never regarded by "initiates" as more than a sacred emblem or representation. At another place and time God becomes an ineffable Spirit invisible to the human eye and only partially attainable by human thought. "Of Thee," said Hooker, "our fittest eloquence is silence, while we confess without confessing that Thy Glory is unsearchable and beyond our reach." Nor need it be supposed that the sublimer conception of Deity is the newly-won possession of Christians only. Perhaps no loftier idea of the Godhead has ever existed in man's mind than that of the composers of some of the Indian Vedas and Upanishads which were produced many hundreds if not thousands of years B.C.; indeed Hooker's prayer and many other Christian prayers grander and nobler would not seem at all out of place if they were put into the mouth of an Indian forest-sage or a prehistoric Brahman. [Illustration: HILLS NEAR AI-SHAN (see p. 388).] [Illustration: HILL, WOOD AND STREAM]