ers had a greater effect on the people than did laws or codes ofpunishment. So when these types of people were rulers, their moral example would inspire the people to lead good lives. Confucius died sometime around 479 B.C., and his philosophy was not very well known. If it weren't for his disciples his ideas would probably still be unknown. Confucius never wrote anything down himself; his disciples wrote all of his sayings down in a collectionof books called the Analects. These contain all that modern day man knows about Confucius. There existed two important Confucian philosophers-Mencius (390-305 BC) and Xunzi (mid 200's B.C.). They held beliefs similar to Confucius but they were somewhat different. Mencius's viewpoint was that people were born good, and that they had to "preserve the natural compassion of the heart". Xunzi opposed this by saying that people could be good and live peacefully only if their minds were shaped by education and conduct. Both of these ideas parallel Confucius', in that they both state that people can be good. Confucianism was concerned primarily with the needs of society,and unlike Buddhism and Taoism, not the ability for a person to live in harmony with nature. Beginning in the 200's B.C. Buddhism and Taoism began to affect and reshape the standards of Confucianism, and things such as nature came into play. Around A.D. 200 to 600, there was a rapid decline in the Confucian Beliefs in China. This was partly because Confucianism now had to compete with Buddhism and Taoism, which were developed around this time. These religionswere to Confucianism as night is to day, in other words, they were exact opposites. Buddhism and Taoism were largely concerned with the meaning of suffering and death, while Confucianism largely ignored these. The revival of Confucianism began around the 600's and was fully revived by the 700's. In the 1100's, there was a movement lead by Zhu-Xi called the N...
