ABSTRACT
Confucianism began as a system of ethics based on morality, and "occupying itself mainly with social relations." "The classics were its priests, ethics its theology, and the written characters its symbol." It would never have been called a religion but for the rites subsequently grafted upon it. Every family, from the imperial family to the poorest in the land, who can afford a few feet of soil wherein to lay his dead, erects a temple in their honour where the "spirit tablets" of the departed are kept. In April of every year a "Che Cheng" or memorial day is fixed by imperial edict, upon which the people gather at these ancestral graves to sweep them out, put the grounds in repair, and trim the funereal trees which nearly always adorn them. Besides worshipping their ancestors, latter day Confucians honour hundreds of gods.
