He dearly loved his disciples, and was homesick when away from them.--"My batch of boys, ambitious and hasty--I must go home to them! I must go home to them!" said he. Once when he was very ill, Tse Lu "moved the disciples to act as ministers":--to behave to him as if he were a king and they his ministers.--"I know, I know!" said Confucius; "Tse Lu has been making believe. This show of ministers, when I have none,--whom will it deceive? Will it deceive Heaven? I had rather die in your arms, my boys, than be a king and die in the arms of my ministers."--"Seeing the disciple Min standing at his side in winning strength, Tse Lu with warlike front, Jan Yu and Tse Kung fresh and strong, the Master's heart was glad," we read. He considered what he calls 'love' the highest state,--the condition of the Adept or Sage; but that other thing that goes by the same name,--of that he would not speak;--nor of crime,--nor of feats of strength, --nor of doom,--nor of ghosts and spirits. Anything that implied a forsaking of middle lines, a losing of the balance, extravagance,--he abhorred.--And now back to that other side of him again: the Man of Action. The task that lay before him was to reform the state of Lu. Something was rotten in it; it needed some reforming.--The rotten thing, to begin with, was Marquis Ting himself; who was of such stuff as Confucius referred to when he said: "You cannot carve rotten wood." But brittle and crumbling as it was, it would serve his turn for the moment; it would give him the chance to show twenty-five Chinese centuries the likeness of an Adept at the head of a state. So it should be proved to them that Such a One--they call him _Such a One_ generally, I believe, to avoid the light repetition of a name grown sacred--is no impractical idealist merely, but a Master of Splendid Successes here in this world: that the Way of Heaven is the way that succeeds on earth--if only it be honestly tried.