Confucius was born and died in the state of Lu. He spent much of his life in government service while, at the same time, devoting a great deal of time to his studies.

At the age of fifty-one he became minister of justice and finally prime minister of Lu. After four years of brilliant activity, Confucius gave up his position and left the country, traveling slowly, with interruptions, always in the hope of being called back.

He wandered about for twelve years, traveling from state to state in the hope that somewhere he would be enabled to put his political doctrine into practice. In all the years he never lost confidence in his calling as political mentor and orderer of the Empire, though occasionally he cried out: "Let me go home, let me go home." When finally, at the age of sixty-eight, he returned to his native state, he lamented in a poem that after all his wanderings in nine provinces there was still no goal in sight for him: "men are without insight, quickly the years pass."

He spent his last years quietly in Lu. He accepted no government position. A profound change is said to have taken place within him. Once a hermit had said of him: "Is that not the man who knows that striving is without hope and yet goes on?" All through the years this had been Confucius’ greatness. But now he was old and strove no more. He studied the I, Ching so rich in secrets, and completed his systematic groundwork for a new mode of education by committing traditions to writing and by instructing a group of young men.

Human interaction:

For Confucius human intercourse was the life element. "The superior man does not neglect his neighbors."
Human relations are governed by the following fundamental attitudes.

• Toward the ages of life: "let me respect the tranquility of the ages; let me be loyal to my friends; let me love children tenderly."
• The right conduct toward parents: Serve them in life, bury them properly after death, thereafter sacrifice to them. It is not enough to feed your parents; "if respect is absent, wherein should we differ from the beasts?" In case they seem to be mistaken, we may remonstrate, but respectfully, and we must obey them. A son must cover up his father’s mistakes.
• Toward friends: Take no friends that are not at least as good as yourself. Loyalty is the foundation. Friends should "loyally admonish one another and tactfully set one another right." Friends can be relied on: "Even if the season be cold, we know that pines and cypress are evergreen."
• Toward the authorities: "A good official serves his prince in the right way; if that is impossible, he withdraws." He will "not circumvent the prince but oppose him openly"; "he will speak cautiously."
• Towards subordinates: The superior man gives his servants no ground for complaint that he makes insufficient use of them, but (unlike the inferior man) he does not expect perfection; he takes men’s abilities into account and does not dismiss old and trusted servants without grave cause.

The great alternative:

Confucius was conscious of facing a great alternative: to retire into solitude or to live in the world and try to shape it. His decision was unequivocal: "A man cannot live with the birds and beasts. If I do not live with men, with whom shall I live?"
In this devotion to man and his world, Confucius developed certain ideas that may be stressed as his basic wisdom—among them, the following.

The nature of man:
The nature of man is called jen. Jen is humanity and morality in one. The ideogram means "man" and "two," that is to say: to be human means to be in communication. The question of the nature of man is answered, first in the elucidation of what he is and should be; second in an account of the diversity of his existence.

A man must first become a man. For man is not like the animals which are as they are, whose instincts govern their existence without conscious thought; he is a task to himself. Men actively shape their life together and, transcending all instinct, build it on their human obligation.

Humanity underlies every particular good. Only he who is in jen can truly love and hate. Jen is all embracing, not a virtue among others, but the soul of all virtues. Confucius does not derive one virtue from another. Jen is the all-embracing source. It is through jen that the particular virtue becomes truth. And jen is the source of the absolute untainted with expedience: "The ethical man puts the difficulty first and the reward last."

To help explain this concept, Confucius refered to the mean between two extremes. "To be magnanimous and mild in teaching and not to punish those who behave badly: that is the strength of the south. To sleep and die in the stable without having to: that is the strength of the north. But the superior man stands in the middle and bends to neither side." Or: "A man may put an empire in order, he may forgo office and honors, he may tread on bare knives-and yet not master the measure and the mean."

Because norms and impulses come from something so deep and wide as to defy definitive formulation, the rules by which we reckon what should be done can never suffice. Truth and reality can never be embodied once and for all in any unchanging state or dogmatic statements. Confucius "had no opinions, no bias, no obstinacy." "the superior man is not absolutely for or against anything in the world. He supports only what is right." He is "not partisan but for all." He preserves his openness.

The necessity of order:
Order is necessary because it is only in human association that the essence of man is real. Order is based on a first principle which throughout life can serve as a guide to action. "Do to no one what you would not wish others to do to you." In acting on this rule, men are bound by shu (a sense of equality). "Do not display to your inferiors what you hate in your superiors. Do not offer your neighbors on the left what you hate in your neighbors on the right."

Unlike the Christian doctrine of turning the other cheek or the Taoist doctrine that one should repay hostility with good deeds, Confucius argued: "With what then shall we reward good deeds? No, reward hostility with justice, and good deeds with good deeds."

A second principle of order is this: Because men are so different, good government is made possible only by degrees of power. The higher the power, the more exemplary, knowing, human, must be he who possesses it. He must "march in advance of the people and encourage them. He must not weary."

Those who are capable of self-mastery, who have learned to do what is good and to know what they are doing, will always be few. The people, on the other hand, "can be led to follow something; they cannot be led to understand it." The fundamental relation of the exemplary man to the people is this: "The essence of the prince is the wind, the essence of the crowd is the grass. If the wind blows over it, the grass must incline." Order is possible only through authority.