Considerations from Confucius

In the early 20th Century, various publishers issued ‘miniature’ series of slight portable volumes designed to slip into a shirt pocket. In this increasingly secular age, they typically contained a selection of sage remarks from authors like Emerson, Ruskin, Carlyle, or Wordsworth, that might offer moral support or inspiration as the reader went about their daily business. This 6x9cm edition of Confucian aphorisms, which I found at the bottom of a cardboard box at Foster Books in Chiswick High Road, bears the slogan ‘Make Conscientiousness and Sincerity your Chief Object’ on the verso facing its title page. There are no ownership marks. Many English-speaking readers of the time, particularly those of a conservative bent, adopted Chinese philosophy as a source of daily wisdom. A noted example is the steel tycoon and philanthrophist, Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), who approved books of this kind in which ‘the gems from Confucius and others which delight the world have been selected with much care’. Reflecting his Presbyterian upbringing, he compared such short inspirational passages to ‘collects’ or congregational prayers.