Note 324 — Chapter XIV · CONFUCIANISM—II

In case the reader should be misled into the belief that this opinion is shared by all foreigners in China, I quote some words recently published by the Rev. J. Macgowan in his work Sidelights on Chinese Life (pp. 75-6). The root of ancestor-worship, he says, "lies neither in reverence nor in affection for the dead, but in selfishness and dread. The kindly ties and the tender affection that used to bind men together when they were in the world and to knit their hearts in a loving union seem to vanish, and the living are only oppressed with a sense of the mystery of the dead, and a fear lest they should do anything that might incur their displeasure and so bring misery upon the home." This view is not, I think, a fair one.