The case with Confucius was different.[122-1] No speculative dreamer, but a practical man, bent on improving his fellows by teaching them self-reliance, industry, honesty, good feeling and the attainment of material comfort, he did not see in the religious systems and doctrines of his time any assistance to these ends. Therefore, like Socrates and many other men of ancient and modern times, without actually condemning the faiths around him, or absolutely neglecting some external respect to their usages, he taught his followers to turn away from religious topics and occupy themselves with subjects of immediate utility. For questions of duty, man, he taught, has a sufficient guide within himself. “What you do not like,” he said, “when done to yourself, do not to others.” The wishes, he adds, should be limited to the attainable; thus their disappointment can be avoided by a just estimate of one’s own powers. He used to compare a wise man to an archer: “When the archer misses the target, he seeks for the cause of his failure within himself.” He did not like to talk about spiritual beings. When asked whether the dead had knowledge, he replied: “There is no present urgency about the matter. If they have, you will know it for yourself in time.” He did not deny the existence of unseen powers; on the contrary, he said: “The _kwei shin_ (the most general term for supernatural beings) enter into all things, and there is nothing without them;” but he added, “We look for them and do not see them; we listen, but do not hear them.” In speaking of deity, he dropped the personal syllable (_te_) and only spoke of heaven, in the indefinite sense. Such was this extraordinary man. The utilitarian theory, what we call the common sense view of life, was never better taught. But his doctrine is not a religion. His followers erect temples, and from filial respect pay the usual honors to their ancestors, as Confucius himself did. But they ignore religious observances, strictly so-called. These examples, therefore, do not at all conflict with the general statement that no religion can exist without prayer. On the contrary, it is the native expression of the religious sentiment, that to which we must look for its most hidden meaning. The thoughtful Novalis, whose meditations are so rich in reflections on the religious nature of man, well said: “Prayer is to religion what thought is to philosophy. To pray is to make religion. The religious sense prays with like necessity that the reason thinks.” Whatever the form of the prayer, it has direct or indirect relation to the accomplishment of a wish. David prays to the Lord as the one who “satisfies the desire of every living thing,” who “will fulfil the desire of them that fear him,” and it is with the like faith that the heart of every votary is stirred when he approaches in prayer the divinity he adores.