Sun Yat-sen’s never-shaken belief in the applicability of the ancient Chinese ethical system, and in the wisdom of old China in social organization, is such that of itself it prevents his being regarded as a mere imitator of the West, a barbarized Chinese returning to barbarize his countrymen. His devotion to Confucianism was so great that Richard Wilhelm, the greatest of German sinologues, wrote of him: “The greatness of Sun Yat-sen rests, therefore, upon the fact that he has found a living synthesis between the fundamental principles of Confucianism and the demands of modern times, a synthesis which, beyond the borders of China, can again become significant to all humanity. Sun Yat-sen combined in himself the brazen consistency of a revolutionary and the great love of humanity of a renewer. Sun Yat-sen has been the kindest of all the revolutionaries of mankind. And this kindness was taken by him from the heritage of Confucius. Hence his intellectual work stands as a connecting bridge between the old and the modern ages. And it will be the salvation of China, if it determinedly treads that bridge.”(74) And Tai Chi-tao, one of Sun Yat-sen’s most respected followers, had said: “Sun Yat-sen was the only one among all the revolutionaries who was not an enemy to Confucius; Sun Yat-sen himself said that his ideas embodied China, and that they were derived from the ideas of Confucius.”(75) The invocation of authorities need not be relied upon to demonstrate the importance of Sun Yat-sen’s demand for ideological reconstruction upon the basis of a return to the traditional morality; he himself stated his position in his sixth lecture on nationalism: “If we now wish to restore to our nation its former position, besides uniting all of us into a national body, we must also first revive our own ancient morality; when we have achieved that, we can hope to give back to our nation the position which she once held.”(76) What are the chief elements of the old morality? These are: 1) loyalty and filial piety, 2) humanity and charity, 3) faithfulness and justice, and 4) peace. These four, however, are all expressions of _humanity_, to which _knowledge_ and _valor_ must be joined, and _sincerity_ employed in expressing them. The problem of loyalty was one very difficult to solve. Under the Empire it was easy enough to consider the Emperor as the father of the great society, and to teach loyalty to him. This was easy to grasp, even for the simplest mind. Sun Yat-sen urged loyalty to the people, and loyalty to duty, as successors to the loyalty once owed to the sovereign. He deplored the tendency, which appeared in Republican times, for the masses to assume that since there was no more Emperor, there was no more loyalty; and it has, since the passing of Sun Yat-sen, been one of the efforts of the Nationalists to build up a tradition of loyalty to the spirit of Sun Yat-sen as the timeless and undying leader of modern China.