In the 5th century BC, in Athens, origin of so much that is central to Western civilization, the great philosopher and thinker Plato described in a book an ideal society: a society utterly under the reign of philosophers, in which people would live in harmony and orderliness. The book is the world-famous The Republic.
About 100 years before Plato lived, another cultural giant was dedicating his life to creating and building a society of peace and prosperity, a society of mutual love and orderliness. In the end, he died believing that his ideals would disappear with him from the world. He was wrong. His teachings gained in popularity, and generation after generation of Chinese inherited and handed down his great thoughts. This man is known in history as Confucius—a philosopher for the ages.
In the early years of the 17th century, when Western missionaries first trod upon the mysterious land of China, they were puzzled as to how such a vast empire containing dozens and dozens of ethnic groups could coexist so harmoniously.
The key to this impressive imperial stability, the ideology that propped up this magnificent country was, as the missionaries were later to discover, provided by the life and teachings of that Oriental cultural giant, Confucius, the founder of the school of Confucianism. By the time those hesitant missionaries trod on Chinese soil, Confucius had been sleeping the sleep of ages for more than 2,000 years.