To define “Confucianism” as it exists to-day, we must go back to and endeavour to realise the times in which this so-called “religion” originated—to that marvellous epoch in the world's intellectual history when some five centuries before the Christian era, in three different regions of the earth's surface, almost simultaneously yet quite disconnectedly, the spirit of enquiry swept as a wave across the three great centres of such civilisation as the human race in pre-Christian times had been able to attain. It was in the fifth century before our era that Socrates and Plato may be said to have laid down the foundations of Grecian philosophy which was to take the place of the crude mythology of their forbears: the same century saw in India an attempted reform of the prevailing but distorted Brahmanism of the day, and introduced in its place a religion of love of one's fellow-men, founded by the Indian Prince Gautama, known as Sakyamouni, or “The Buddha”; while in China Confucius preached that reform in manners and doctrine which has changed the face of the whole “Far East,” and has maintained its moral influence persistently down to the present day;—a doctrine familiar to ourselves under the term, Confucianism.