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Updated: May 24, 2025
Thus, the original monotheism of the pre-Confucian documents has been completely obscured by the later webs of sophistry which have been woven about the original scriptures. The ancient simplicity of doctrine has been lost in the mountains of commentary which were piled upon the primitive texts.
But China, in those first pre-Confucian centuries, was desperately prosaic: not so much modern, as pertaining to an ugly not impossible future. Antiquity was far, far away. The dawn with its glow and graciousness; noon and the prime with their splendor, were as distant and unimaginable as from our Amercan selves the day when Charlemain with all his peers went down.
The political edifice, no less than the social, is built on the Confucian and pre-Confucian foundation of filial piety. The Emperor is father of his people; the whole population of the empire forms one vast family, of which the Emperor is the head. As a son owes obedience and reverence to his parent, so does the subject owe reverence and obedience to his sovereign.
The expression "Shang Ti," which means "Supreme Ruler," belongs in the main to pre-Confucian times, but both terms originally represented a God as definitely anthropomorphic as the God of the Old Testament. As time went by the Supreme Ruler became more shadowy, while "Heaven" remained, on account of the Imperial rites connected with it.
The annual sacrifice in the Temple of Heaven represented almost the sole official survival of pre-Confucian religion, or indeed of anything that could be called religion in the strict sense; for Buddhism and Taoism have never had any connection with the State.
He also wrote a work named "Spring and Autumn, or Chronicles of his Native State of Lu from 722 B.C., to 481 B.C." He "changed his world," as the Buddhists say, in the year 478 B.C., having lived seventy-three years. Primitive Chinese Faith. The pre-Confucian or primitive faith was monotheistic, the forefathers of the Chinese nation having been believers in one Supreme Spiritual Being.
They do, indeed, make some reference to a "creator" by using a rare word. Occasionally, their language seems to touch the boundary line on the other side of which is conscious intelligence, but nothing approaching the clearness and definiteness of the early Chinese monotheism of the pre-Confucian classics is to be distinguished.
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