Years ago there used to a great many popular jokes that began: “Confucius say….” It seems as if everybody knows that Confucius said many wise things. Confucius was one of the greatest moral teachers of all time. He lived in China about five hundred years before Christ. Confucius studied ancient Chinese writings from which he took ideas that to him seemed important to the development of fine character. Then he taught these ideas to the princes and to the students of all classes who flocked to him for instruction. The rules he laid down 2,400 years ago are still held up as ideals.

Confucius’ Chinese name was Kung-Fu-tse. At the age of 22, three years after his marriage, Confucius began to teach men how to live happily. His principle rule for happiness, “What you do not wish done to yourself, do not do to others,” was much like the Golden Rule.

Confucius held office under many different princes whom he tried to interest in the right moral conduct, the conduct based on love, justice, reverence, wisdom, and sincerity.

One of his teachings, the reverence for parents, had a tremendous effect on China, because it teaches reverence not only while the parents are living but after they are dead. As a form of ancestor worship, it caused China for a long time to look to the past instead of moving forward.

Confucius did not consider himself a god. In fact, he taught nothing about a supreme being or a hereafter. He believed that man was naturally good and could preserve this goodness by living harmoniously with his fellow men. Within five hundred years after his death, his teachings became the philosophy of the state. But when Buddhism appeared, the teachings of Confucius were almost forgotten for a period. They were later revived, and even today his teachings influence the lives of millions of people.