nasty, under which many people thought the ancient system of religious rule was bankrupt; why couldn’t the gods prevent the social up heavel The burning issue of the day was: If it is not the ancestral and nature spirits, what then is the basis of a stable, unified and enduring social order? The dominant view of the day was that strict law and statecraft were the bases of sound policy. C fucius, however believed that the basis lay in the Zhou religion, in its rituals. He interpreted these not as sacrifices asking for the blessings of the gods, but as ceremonies performed by human agents and embodying the civilized and cultured patterns f behavior developed through generations of human wisdom. They embodied , for him, the ethical core of Chinese society. Moreover, Confucius applied the term “ritual” to actions beyond the formal sacrifices and religious ceremonies to include social ri als. He saw these time-honored and traditional rituals as the basis of human civilization, and he fel

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HUNDRED SCHOOLS, Confucianism Confucius, Moreover Confucius, Word Count, existing religions, unified enduring social, stable unified enduring, authority ruler, enduring social, patterns behavior, conformity social, social roles, unified enduring, stable unified, orderly society, confucianism attractive,