19.19. 19. How this Union of Religion, Laws, Manners, and Customs among the
Chinese was effected.
The principal object of government which the
Chinese legislators had in view was the peace and tranquillity of the
empire; and subordination appeared to them as the most proper means to
maintain it. Filled with this idea, they believed it their duty to
inspire a respect for parents, and therefore exerted all their power to
effect it. They established an infinite number of rites and ceremonies
to do them honour when living, and after their death. It was impossible
for them to pay such honours to deceased parents without being led to
reverence the living. The ceremonies at the death of a father were more
nearly related to religion; those for a living parent had a greater
relation to the laws, manners, and customs: however, these were only
parts of the same code; but this code was very extensive.
A veneration for their parents was necessarily connected with a
suitable respect for all who represented them; such as old men, masters,
magistrates, and the sovereign. This respect for parents supposed a
return of love towards children, and consequently the same return from
old men to the young, from magistrates to those who were under their
jurisdiction, and from the emperor to his subjects. This formed the
rites, and these rites the general spirit of the nation.
We shall now show the relation which things in appearance the most
indifferent may bear to the fundamental constitution of China. This
empire is formed on the plan of a government of a family. If you
diminish the paternal authority, or even if you retrench the ceremonies
which express your respect for it, you weaken the reverence due to
magistrates, who are considered as fathers; nor would the magistrates
have the same care of the people, whom they ought to look upon as their
children; and that tender relation which subsists between the prince and
his subjects would insensibly be lost. Retrench but one of these habits
and you overturn the state. It is a thing in itself very indifferent
whether the daughter-in-law rises every morning to pay such and such
duties to her mother-in-law; but if we consider that these exterior
habits incessantly revive an idea necessary to be imprinted on all minds
-- an idea that forms the ruling spirit of the empire — we shall see
that it is necessary that such or such a particular action be performed.
