ABSTRACT
To depart from history was to enter it. Confucianism, yielding the future, became a thing of the past. It was remembered, loved by many, but lived only in fragments. It was historically significant.
Anyone writing the history of Confucian China, before it suffered its modern fate, might tell a great part of the story in great Confucian lives. In recent history, however, the conditions of greatness were lost to Confucianists-at least greatness in the open, where achievement may be measured. Liao P'ing (1852-1932), for example, was really unimportant.
