He expounded sage maxims for man's conduct towards his fellow-men, maxims not necessarily of his own invention but taken from wise men before him. "Do good," he enjoined, "not only to those who do good to you, but to those who do you injury." It had been said even before him. But to "do unto others as you would they should do unto you" may be taken as the principal basis of his own teaching, and the Christian goes no further, in respect of man's "duty to his neighbour." But about man's duty towards God Confucius had nothing to say. Obedience and piety of the son towards the father were, according to him, "the beginning of virtue, that which distinguishes man from the brutes." And this relation and piety he conceived ought to prevail all through the State. The Emperor ought to act as the father of his people, and the people ought to be obedient to him, like his sons. But he naïvely qualified this, in a way calculated to prevent the Emperor's acting as a tyrannical parent, by saying {21} that he forfeited his claim on this obedience if he governed wrongly. Confucius never claimed, as did Mahomet, for instance, to be divinely inspired. He came as a mere man, preaching unselfishness and filial piety and the duty of obedience and the beauty of goodness. Those to whom he preached accepted his words, and certainly in some large measure formed their conduct accordingly. It was a sermon advocating peace in a country distracted by disturbances; and its ultimate effect is that the Chinese even to-day are a peace-loving nation. For all that, the great empire has been the scene of very frequent war, both by invaders from without and rebels within; but unhappily that is the state which has been usual throughout man's history everywhere. Confucius put the highest value on education. In the second century B.C. competitive examinations began to be held for selecting ministers to posts in the Government--a curiously democratic measure, and perhaps possible in no other country than China. Some of the scientific inventions, which have made much difference in the story of the West, were known in China far earlier than elsewhere--the power and use of gunpowder, for instance, and the art and craft of printing. China discovered them early; but after their first discovery she did not develop them at all, as did the Western nations when they relearned them or took them from her.