Original subtitles

(solemn music)

(fire crackling)

Since the dawn of civilization,

the forces of nature and the whims of gods

held sway over humanity.

But 2,500 years ago,

humankind experienced a profound transformation.

Suddenly there were new possibilities.

This is a time when rationality

overrode superstition and belief.

This is an ethic which does not rely on the gods.

The world is now explained in terms of natural forces.

We're now responsible for our own destiny.

(dramatic music)

Upheavals across the globe

sparked an ambitious vision of what humans could achieve,

spearheaded by three trailblazers.

Socrates, Confucius, and the Buddha,

great thinkers from the ancient world

whose ideas still shape our own lives.

Is wealth a good thing?

How do you create a just society?

How do I live a good life?

By daring to think the unthinkable,

they laid the foundations of our modern world.

I've always been intrigued by the fact

that these men, who lived many thousands of miles apart,

seemed almost spontaneously,

within 100 years of one another,

to come up with such radical ways of thinking.

So what was going on?

I want to investigate their revolutionary ideas,

to understand what set them in motion.

In this program, I'm on the trail

of that quintessential eastern sage, Confucius.

He had a mission,

but many people at that time did not agree with him.

His vision was modeled

on the power of the past and the family.

He believed that education

could transform both individuals and society.

He's talking about your state of mind, your feelings.

But in the 20th century,

Confucius was declared an enemy of communism.

So now he should be out of favor,

but that hardly seems to be the case.

This is the longest continuous civilization in the world,

and Confucius has a huge role in that.

It's so amazing to be so close to them.

My heart is beating.

(pensive music)

In 551 BC, an elderly ex-soldier

from the ancient state of Lu faced a grave predicament.

His family line was in danger of ending.

He needed a son to continue his name,

someone who'd be able to perform the vital rituals

to honor him and his ancestors.

The old man took a young wife.

We're told that she went to a sacred mountain

and prayed hard for a boy.

The son she bore would become known as Master Kong.

In Chinese, Kong Fuzi.

In the West, we call him Confucius.

Confucius was born

into one of the most advanced civilizations in the world.

The ancient Chinese were innovators

in art, metalwork, agriculture, and weaponry.

And from around 1000 BC,

they developed a sophisticated political system,

a network of vassal lords who bore allegiance to one king.

(tense music)

But by the time Confucius was growing up,

stability had turned to chaos.

This was an age when all of ancient China

was trapped in a ruthless cycle of war.

Tribal invasions from the west,

along with rebellion amongst the lords,

splintered the empire into independent states,

(weapons clashing) (fighters shouting)

all vying for power.

Spurred on by a kind of arms race,

now that cast iron meant

that weapons could be mass-produced,

families attacked families.

This was total war.

(weapons clashing) (fighters shouting)

This collapse in society would become

the catalyst for Confucius' ground-breaking philosophy.

(somber music)

The oldest record of Confucius' life and ideas,

the Analects, were compiled about a century after his death.

These fragments of his conversations,

along with other later histories,

give us clues to his life story.

We're told that Confucius was just three

when his father died.

Old aristocracy, he'd fallen on hard times,

one of the victims of the turmoil of the age,

leaving Confucius' mother to raise her son on her own

in a kind of genteel poverty.

Interestingly, it seems that education

was Confucius' lifeline.

Somehow, probably through a mix

of private teachers and homeschooling and, you suspect,

the sheer grit and determination of his mother,

Confucius was taught history, poetry, and ritual.

(delicate music)

While other children played with toys,

he's said to have acted out sacred rituals

by laying out cups and bowls.

Now these weren't just empty gestures,

a bit of spiritual theater.

The kinds of rituals that Confucius learned

played a crucial role in the ancient Chinese worldview,

a worldview in which order and harmony,

both on Earth and in the cosmos,

were considered essential goals

if life on Earth was to continue.

(solemn music)

The ancient rites that young Confucius knew

were performed here at the Temple of Heaven in Beijing,

right up until the 20th century.

The Chinese had a particular religious outlook

which meant that these rituals

weren't directed towards a deity.

There is no creator god.

There's nothing like the idea of a supreme power

that dreams everything into being.

What it posits instead is this notion

that there are two cosmic forces.

They're not even really divine.

They're just natural forces, a bit like gravity in a sense.

And on the temple here, you have perhaps the most common,

the most powerful symbols of these two great forces.

And that is the dragon, the heavenly force,

and the phoenix is the female, the cold, the earthly force.

And they are locked in perpetual struggle.

They try to overcome each other.

And it's this incredible dance of power

out of which all life pours.

So what's humanity's role in all of this?

We're fundamental to this.

You've got these two great cosmic forces,

and our role is to keep the balance,

and we do this through ritual.

And that's what this kind of temple complex was built for.

This is where the ruler would come to make offerings

to rebalance these two forces.

And it wasn't just for the rulers.

It took place in every single temple,

every local shrine, right down to the household.

Sounds like a potent and a pervasive worldview

that Confucius is being brought up with.

Absolutely, it's the only worldview he knows.

(somber music)

As he reached adulthood,

it looks as though Confucius grew to appreciate

the gaping disparity between the ancient ideal of order

and the reality of life subject to the chaos

that raged all around him.

His search for a solution to that intractable problem

at the very heart of Chinese society

would prove to be his life's work.

(stirring music)

Fortunately, conditions across the ancient world

were nourishing new ways of thinking.

Improvements in agriculture, increased trade,

and growing urbanization meant that some in society

were less tied to a life of subsistence,

creating the opportunity

for men like Socrates, the Buddha, and Confucius

to develop their ideas.

The scale of change, economic and technological,

is reflected in archeological remains,

like this monumental grain store.

Advances in technology from the Iron Age onwards

led to an increase in agricultural yields

that were stored in massive pits like this.

Suddenly, for ordinary people, because they had enough food,

life just wasn't a grinding cycle

of a kind of hand-to-mouth existence.

Obviously, stores like this provided grain,

but they also gave another great gift, time to think.

When Confucius was about 20,

we're told he landed a bureaucratic job

managing grain stores like this.

But his mind was occupied by the turmoil of the day.

Looking around him,

it seemed obvious to Confucius that humanity needed help,

and how he responded

is considered a first in Chinese history.

He began to engage in systematic philosophical inquiry.

(pensive music)

One thing I like about Confucius is the sense that you get

that he had a kind of natural curiosity,

that he felt compelled to explore

and to try to understand the world.

And in his early 20s,

he decided to leave his home state of Lu

and get on the road.

Traveling west, he would have eventually met

the great Yellow River.

I think we have to imagine him, at this point in his life,

as a kind of ethnographer,

going from one place to another

with open eyes and an open mind,

gathering together experiences and encounters.

The Analects describe Confucius meeting people

who had renounced civilized society

and lived amongst nature.

These recluses were the forerunners of Taoism,

that other great belief system of ancient China.

They believed in something known as the Way.

Could you explain to me what exactly the Way is?

Is it possible for humans to influence or control the Way?

(Bettany speaking in foreign language)

(lyrical music)

The Taoists believed that developed society

diverted us from the Way.

Society was artificial, something people imposed

on the natural spontaneous way of the universe.

Only by reconnecting with the forces of nature

could we achieve harmony once again.

Confucius reacted to Taoist belief

with a kind of frustrated indignation.

We can't go and live with the birds and the beasts.

Am I not a man among men?

If the Way prevailed in the world,

there'd be no need for me to change it.

Confucius' search for solutions to the problems of his day

took on a more practical, political dimension.

For him, the Way wasn't an intangible cosmic force.

Instead, he saw it as the harmony that'd be brought about

by a perfectly ordered society,

something attainable by human action.

It was a claim the Taoists thought the height of arrogance.

This critical dispute is embodied

in one legendary encounter.

Confucius is said to have come here, the city of Luoyang.

As he was studying in the state archives,

he met an older man

and they struck up a philosophical discussion.

As Confucius got up to leave, the old man chastised him.

"Put away your proud air and many desires,

"your insinuating habit and wild will.

"These are of no advantage to you."

The enigmatic old man was none other than Laozi,

credited as the founder of Taoism.

Whether it's true or not,

this pairing with such a great figure

reveals the iconic status Confucius would later reach.

And it tells us something else.

That setting in the archive

gives us a clue to Confucius' methods.

For him, solutions to contemporary problems

lay in a close study of what had gone before.

The past was a kind of reservoir of truth.

(somber music)

Ever since he was a boy,

he'd been schooled in ancient texts.

Now as a man, they became the inspiration for

and the very foundation of his philosophy.

Recent discoveries have shed new light

on these classic texts of Chinese history.

800 bamboo slips,

which contain the earliest evidence of Confucius' words.

They were found in 1993

in the tomb of a old nobleman.

Amazing. Yes.

And they date back to when?

Oh, these were dated to the fourth century BCE,

roughly 100 years after Confucius.

And it says something like,

"Set your mind on the way and be virtuous.

"Do everything in accordance with humanity."

Not only the earliest words of Confucius,

but beautiful words too, wow.

And they were so amazing

because they provide us new information on early classics

that were very important to Confucius himself.

And for example, this particular slip

mention about the classics he would have read.

The Book Of Odes, ritual and music.

But the Book of History is very important

because it recorded figures such as the Duke of Zhou

and early kings of the Western Zhou

that was about 500 years before Confucius' time.

And these men were able to lead a society of harmony.

(pensive music)

Confucius found in the words of the Book of History

what he was looking for, an ideal model

where social and political harmony had prevailed,

engineered by the almost superhumanly sage rulers

of the early Zhou dynasty.

In particular, the Duke of Zhou.

When his brother, King Wu, died,

the duke could have seized the throne,

but it's reported that instead he acted loyally,

ruling as a regent for his nephew, the king's son.

And then when the boy grew up,

fairly and faithfully, he handed over the reins of power.

Whether these accounts were entirely true is a moot point,

but Confucius saw huge potential in them.

This golden age was robust evidence

that social order was possible.

By following the practices and the examples

of the early Zhou, by reviving the past,

there could be solutions to the problems of the present.

It is the great thing about golden ages,

they're very comforting.

We believe that if humanity was capable

of wonderful things in the past,

we can achieve them once again.

(lyrical music)

Confucius believed that early Zhou society

was the ideal manifestation of his concept of the Way.

To recreate that harmony,

society needed to return to their high standards,

especially in terms of ritual.

Confucius was convinced

that the ancient rites had been corrupted.

In order to restore the golden age,

he would have to reinstate proper ritual.

Here in Confucius' hometown of Qufu

is a temple dedicated to the master.

It's the ultimate place of pilgrimage

for many of his devotees.

Mr. Kong traces his ancestry back to Confucius

and often leads rituals

that his illustrious relative set such store by.

(chanting in foreign language)

(chanting in foreign language)

But ritual here

has always meant more than just ceremony.

It's an all-encompassing ethos

that shapes every aspect of people's behavior,

including what we might call etiquette and customs.

It seems that Confucius threw himself

into understanding and perfecting

the rites of the early Zhou.

Confucius was nothing if not a stickler for detail.

We hear he wouldn't even sit on a mat

unless it was dead straight.

But there seems to have been a kind of beauty

in his precision.

Just listen to these wonderful words describing him.

"His expression was serious, his step brisk.

"When with his clasped hands he bowed to his colleagues

"on left and right,

"his robes moved evenly in front and back.

"His hurrying advance was a glide."

(energetic music)

Confucius set out to transmit

the importance of proper ritual,

promoting his ideas right across the land.

One account describes his rather hostile reception

from a government advisor from the state of Qi.

"Confucius lays such stress on appearance and costume,

"elaborate etiquette and codes of behavior

"that it would take generations to learn his rule.

"One lifetime wouldn't be enough."

To this day, Confucius is often criticized

for his pedantic attachment

to intricate forms of antiquated ritual.

But what his critics didn't understand

is that he'd discovered something radically new

within these ancient rites,

something which marked a critical shift in his thinking.

(lyrical music)

When Confucius' was in his mid-20s, his mother died.

For three years, he dutifully carried out

ancestral rites in her honor.

But he would breathe new life and new meaning

into these traditions.

(gasps) Oh, yes.

Wow, how beautiful.

So these are things that would actually

have been used in ancestor worship?

Exactly, ancient Chinese believed

that the ghost and spirits continue to exist

after the ancestors die,

so it's important to offer them food and wine

in these kind of vessels.

In particular, those made of very expensive bronze.

And everyone would be really engaging

in the ritual to continue

a kind of relationship they had before.

Do we know what Confucius thought about all of this?

Well, Confucius still believed

that ancestors were still very important part,

but he started to shift the emphasis towards the living

by saying that it meant that it's important for us

to develop this kind of reverence

and the proper relationship while they're still alive.

As he said in the Analects very clearly,

that if you don't know how to serve the living,

how would you know how to serve the dead?

That's really interesting.

He's saying actually focus first on the here and now

and on those who are still around you in the day-to-day

before you start to think about those who are long dead.

You are so right.

It's no longer just about objects like this.

It's about your state of mind, your feelings,

your love and sincerity from inside

that you would have towards these people around you.

(solemn music)

Confucius realized that ritual brought out

positive emotions in us,

but his really big revelation

was that this could permanently change who we are.

Habitually performing the rituals of history

with the right attitude and sincerity

could transform our mindset.

Virtuous feelings could make virtuous beings.

Ritual for him was not just the way you do things,

exactly follow the traditional and this and the rules.

But even more importantly,

you've got to have something inside.

You've got to have a reverence, respect

because this was the way

to cultivate your inside goodness,

inside of this kind of, and the qualities.

And the whole person would be transformed on the inside.

But, I mean, that sounds really radical.

So he's saying you need to do things properly,

but they're not just a mechanical action.

It affects who you are inside, sort of psychologically?

Yes, yeah, I think it's exactly,

not only just bring order to the social and life,

but also this to create a new psychological

and this meaning there

and try to cultivate this good human qualities.

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting

'cause he doesn't sell himself as an innovator, but he was.

Yes, he was,

I think, Confucius said, you know,

he was the only transmitter

that transmitted the ancient culture

to today, to the future.

But actually what he did was innovation.

These new things, they're really coming

from his reinterpretation

of something already exist, such as the ritual.

(peaceful music)

Nourishing virtue lay at the core of Confucius' vision.

And he saw transformative opportunities in everyday rituals,

how we speak, how we dress, and how we eat.

But one that was particularly close to his heart was music.

He's said to have played the zither and the sounding chimes.

This was a time and place where music was all around,

played on totally wonderful things

like this monumental set of bells

that date to just after Confucius' death.

Music was played to accompany ritual in temples and homes.

So if you listen to these, then you'll be hearing the sounds

that would have surrounded Confucius during his lifetime.

(bell pealing)

Confucius was convinced

that music had the power to harmonize,

to transform and perfect an individual.

Basically, this is art as therapy

2,500 years before we invent the phrase.

(lyrical music)

This practical application of philosophical ideas

in day-to-day life

is something that really marks out Confucius,

as well as those other game-changing philosophers,

the Buddha and Socrates.

As a philosopher, you don't just indulge

in abstract musings.

You develop a robust delivery mechanism for your theories.

Ideas have to have traction,

and they have to have tangible impact.

(horn honking)

Confucius was a practical man.

He'd been spurred into action

by the bellicose times into which he was born.

His philosophy would only truly be a success

if he could effect change on a grand scale.

Confucius came to think this,

that shaping and cultivating moral individuals

was the key to creating a stable social and political order.

By figuring out what made a good person,

you could make a good society.

And so his mission was this,

to teach people how to be virtuous

in a world of political disorder and moral decay.

(suspenseful music)

Confucius had given himself a mountain to climb.

How to instill virtue in society

when society's moral contract was so broken

was Confucius' big challenge.

He was to find inspiration

from a familiar and enduring institution,

the family.

Hello, thank you.

(fireworks banging)

Wow, that was quite some welcome.

Thank you. (speaks in foreign language)

(people applauding)

Confucius noted how families are organized

along hierarchical lines with fixed responsibilities.

From birth, we learn our place within key relationships.

Husband, wife.

Father, son.

Older brother, younger brother.

(people chatting in foreign language)

Recognizing, oh, thanks.

Ah, yeah, thank you very much. (laughs)

Recognizing your, oh (speaks in foreign language).

Recognizing your place within these relationships

and fulfilling your mutual responsibilities

within that hierarchy taught essential moral values.

From the family, we developed a sense of loyalty,

of honesty, of duty, of respect, of filial responsibility.

Basically, to love those around us.

(solemn music)

Confucius saw that the concept of family was a potent model

and a potential solution for society's ills.

The family showed how authority

could be both exercised and submitted to,

fairly and productively.

Not through intimidation, but through mutual assent.

(people chatting in foreign language)

The moral values learnt in the family,

affection and care directed downwards

and loyalty and obedience directed above,

had the potential to transform everyone.

But Confucius saw that arguably their greatest value

lay in relation to the glaring problem

at the heart of society,

the waywardness of its rulers.

(delicate music)

This magnificent sword embodies what, for Confucius,

was the fundamental problem with Chinese leadership.

This was made when Confucius was alive,

and it tells us all about itself.

There's an inscription here that reads,

"Belonging to King Goujian of Yue.

"Made for his personal use."

Now, this is obviously a fabulously deluxe object,

and Confucius wouldn't have had a problem with that per se.

He wasn't puritanical.

He enjoyed the good things of life,

swimming in rivers, singing with friends,

and he understood the need for worldly goods.

But he did not think that good men

should devote their time and energy

to the pursuit of personal gain.

And he didn't believe in immoderate action,

anywhere, anytime, from anyone.

In Confucius' opinion,

kings who commissioned swords like this

often abandoned virtue

if it got in the way of worldly success.

He saw the way to transform society

was to instill the values at work in the family

in the rulers of his day.

To understand the power they wielded,

you only need look at the way they were honored in death.

This ruler, from around the time of Confucius,

was buried along with 26 expensive chariots

and 70 sacrificial horses.

What kind of connection did Confucius see

between the relationships that he'd observed

between father and son and the family

and what's going on here?

Well, he looked at the fact that if you had a good father,

he could bring up a good son.

And a good son could then respect the father,

and this could work.

So he said "Well, look, if it works at this level,

"let's just take it to the top."

If the ruler views those beneath him as his children

and treats them with love but with firmness,

with compassion but with integrity,

that it would then kind of roll down through the system.

And the Confucianist could say,

"Look, you see how the ruler's living like this.

"You should live like this."

And literally it would roll down

like the clouds from the mountain

and bring blessing to everyone.

So for him, might in and of itself wasn't a problem.

But if you had might, then you also had to have

a kind of philosophical responsibility to your people?

Yes, Confucius continued the Zhou tradition

that a ruler has the right to rule

because heaven has clearly given them

the power and the authority,

and that's why the top, top ruler

was called the son of heaven.

However, that mandate, that right to rule,

can be taken away by heaven.

And a sign that heaven has taken it away

is natural disasters, massive earthquakes, floods.

Confucius said if a ruler becomes corrupt

and people are suffering through this cruelty,

then the people have the right to rebel.

And so Confucius, at one level,

tells you respect, honor, duty, loyalty.

And he also said, "And if that fails,

"you have the right to overthrow."

Amazing trick.

(somber music)

Confucius' tactic was very direct.

He set out to influence those in power

by getting a governmental post.

One snag was his personality.

He was often seen as arrogant,

too blunt in the way he delivered his advice.

But he also faced a bigger problem.

With enemy armies numbering as many as 300,000

camped on their borders

and disloyal sons plotting behind their backs,

perhaps it's no surprise that the rulers of the day

failed to take Confucius seriously.

Cultivating moral character and virtuous actions

in such precarious times was just not a priority.

(tense music)

(speaking in foreign language)

With rejection upon rejection,

Confucius' faltering political career looked set to fail

and his ideas in danger of being lost to history.

But he was tenacious and resourceful.

In his early 50s,

it looks as though he decided to change his strategy.

He gathered together a few belongings

and hit the road once again to continue his moral crusade.

Only this time, he wasn't alone.

He was traveling together with a group of devoted students.

His ability to attract motivated young men

put his mission to transform self and society back on track.

By all accounts, Confucius possessed

a kind of compelling raw charisma.

Now combine that with intellectual rigor,

with bold, exciting new ideas

and inspiring moral instruction,

and you've got a potent mix.

Whilst Confucius had failed alone,

a band of around 70 students could infiltrate

the corridors of power at many levels and in many states.

They could be a moral vanguard

to advise and instruct rulers on how to rule virtuously.

And for this vital role,

Confucius was scrupulously meritocratic,

accepting students even from the poorest of backgrounds.

In the Analects, Confucius said,

"I have never refused instruction to anyone,

"if, of his own accord, he comes to me."

This in itself was a truly innovatory moment

marking an historic shift.

He was urging that Chinese society

should no longer be governed by a hereditary elite,

people who owed their positions simply to their bloodlines.

Rather, it was those who were most virtuous,

most concerned about the wellbeing of others,

who should lead.

His way was open to people from any background

to rise to positions of authority.

Confucius shared his groundbreaking commitment

to a kind of egalitarianism with Socrates and the Buddha.

Their solutions were, in theory, available to everyone.

But to a greater or lesser extent,

when it came to women, they all seemed to have struggled.

None of them were exactly model family men.

The Buddha left his wife and child.

Socrates treated his young wife pretty cursorily.

But at least those two included women in their thinking

and suggested they could be part of a solution

to society's problems.

However, when it comes to Confucius,

it seems that he had next to no time

for the female of the species.

(pensive music)

The ultimate goal for Confucius' students

was to become a junzi.

Now, this wasn't a title he'd made up.

Just as with ritual, he took something traditional

and gave it a potent new twist.

Junzi was an aristocratic word meaning a son of the lord,

denoting qualities that could only belong

to a privileged social elite.

Now, as part of his shift towards a moral elite,

Confucius appropriated it and changed it to mean

the ultimate moral person, a superior man.

A new kind of gentleman, in its most literal sense.

For Confucius, education was crucial.

Drawing on his own life experience,

he saw an unswerving commitment to critical learning

as the path to self-cultivation.

He likened the process to polishing jade,

crafting one's virtuous character

to become the perfect moral person.

You had to know the books of history

to live by the example of the sage kings

and to enact correct ritual.

But what was essential

was to be morally alive to your environment,

to understand how to behave intuitively in any situation,

to think for yourself.

(lyrical music)

Confucius' students joined their master,

moving across war-torn China

to try to influence its errant rulers.

They were attacked, beaten, and almost starved.

But these testing times sharpened their education.

The challenges they faced

forced them to engage in urgent moral debate.

They proposed solutions to their problems

and then interrogated those,

provoking the intense intellectual discussions

between master and students that you find in the Analects.

They asked questions like,

should the junzi accept office in degenerate times?

Can you serve a corrupt master

if you think you can make a difference?

(solemn music)

Confucius encouraged this open-ended,

free-thinking discussion.

Yet his students still looked to him for definitive answers.

Ultimately, they wanted to know,

what was the essence of goodness?

For Confucius, there was one all-embracing virtue,

the most essential to cultivate

and yet the most difficult to attain,

something called ren.

Ren is a very splendid word idea,

but what does it actually mean?

What quality does it imply?

Well, many people try to translate it differently.

It's been translated as human heartedness,

as good or goodness.

But we prefer now to use the word simply humanity

because virtually all Confucian values

are linked to this notion.

Courage with ren.

Then it's real courage rather than just simply bravery.

Justice with ren.

Then it's a humane justice

rather than just harsh punishment.

Wisdom with ren.

Then it's being wise, not just being smart.

And is this something that you achieve,

or is looking for ren a constant quest?

Every person, by definition of being a person,

embodies ren.

In other words, every human being is capable

of sympathetic response to the external world.

But at the same time, to realize ren fully,

which means human flourishing

in the most comprehensive sense of the term,

that requires learning.

And learning, of course, it's not simply

the acquisition of knowledge or internalization of skills,

but basically learning to build one's character.

And in that sense, it's like the highest ideal.

At the same time, it's the minimum requirement to be human.

Do you think that Confucius felt that he'd achieved ren?

No, and the interesting thing

is many students or followers of Confucius also said no.

Ren requires continuous process of struggling.

Even to the end of your life,

this is still a task incomplete.

So no matter what,

the struggle to be fully human continues.

There's something in Confucian philosophy,

a core message that I find really genuinely inspiring.

It's his golden rule taken from the Analects.

One student said, "Is there a single word

"that I should use as a rule to live my life by?"

And the master replied, "That would be empathy perhaps.

"What you do not wish for yourself, don't do to others."

It's this focus on human relations and being compassionate

that I think comes closest to defining

what Confucius meant by the term ren.

I do love this about all three of the philosophers

whose stories I'm investigating.

They made it clear that none of us operate in isolation.

It isn't that man is the measure of all things,

but man's relationship with man.

(solemn music)

Confucius continued to travel

and to teach into his later years,

but only a handful of his students

went on to hold political office.

When Confucius was 73, he fell ill.

Unable to fulfill his mission,

his final words seem defeated and bitterly disappointed.

"No intelligent monarch arises.

"There is none who will make me his master.

"It is my time to die."

Confucius was buried here in his hometown, Qufu.

The great transformation he'd worked for his entire life

had not been fulfilled.

But his devoted students planted trees around his grave

and kept his dream alive.

(dramatic music)

For 300 years, Confucius' ideas continued

as just one of many Chinese schools of thought.

Competing with the likes of Taoism,

it was unable to effect real change in a chaotic world.

But once China was reunited under all-powerful emperors,

stability changed the political landscape.

The first emperor of the Han Dynasty

was convinced by his principal advisor

that ruling by brutality had served his predecessor badly.

Allying himself with Confucianism,

and its ideal of rule by virtue,

would lend to his dynasty greater legitimacy.

Many of the values that Confucius set great store by,

the importance of education, a shared cultural heritage,

an ethical government,

had seemed an irrelevance during the chaos of his lifetime.

But these would prove hugely effective

in holding the new empire together.

Successive emperors

enthusiastically took up Confucian ideas,

and education was central.

(reciting in foreign language)

The poetry, arts, and music of the early Zhou were revived

as a means of cultivating the goodness and virtue within.

Schoolchildren learnt the Confucian canon by heart,

meticulously writing it out in their best calligraphy.

Knowledge of the books of history

and rituals of the Zhou Dynasty

became a prerequisite to be part of the civil service.

Confucian education and Confucian texts

became a powerfully integrative force in Chinese history.

And of course it was very useful

for rulers to have all that emphasis

on obedience and respect and top-down structure.

(students speaking in foreign language)

Even those who didn't get the chance to go to school

learnt his words.

It's actually why we've developed

that rather crass form, Confucius says,

because for 24 centuries, right across China,

people were all quoting Confucius.

(jaunty music)

♪ Confucius say a boy, a girl, a moon ♪

♪ Make wedding bells ring out in month of June ♪

♪ Confucius say when love come, don't delay ♪

♪ So honey, hold me tight ♪

♪ Tonight's the night ♪

♪ Remember what Confucius say ♪

(foreboding music)

But all that changed in the 20th century.

Confucianism came under attack.

In 1919, students who wanted China

to modernize and become democratic

condemned Confucius for holding them back.

But it was Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution of the 1960s

that tried to annihilate all vestiges of his legacy.

His Red Guard destroyed statues, temples, and texts.

They even came here to his burial place.

In a telegram to Chairman Mao, they wrote,

"We have dragged out the statue of Confucius.

"We have torn down the plaque

"extolling the teacher of 10,000 generations.

"We have leveled Confucius' grave.

"We have destroyed."

It is really chilling coming here

to see how a raging, rigid form of an ideology

tried to obliterate the memory of a man of ideas.

(delicate music)

(reciting in foreign language)

But thousands of years of ubiquitous Confucian education,

particularly the exam system,

had embedded his principles deep within Chinese culture.

By the start of the 21st century,

the government began once again to embrace his ideals.

Today, Confucianism is undergoing a renaissance,

and education remains at the forefront.

(people speaking in foreign language)

This is a Confucian school in Qufu.

120 pupils from the ages of six to 18

study the Confucian texts and classical arts here.

It's just one of around 3,000 schools in China

that teaches Confucian values and philosophy.

(speaking in foreign language)

So what is your favorite Confucius quote?

Why do you like Confucius?

Why did you decide to send your daughter

to a Confucian school?

It is just fascinating seeing these kids

being brought up with an ancient philosophy

at the heart of everything that they think and say and do,

and actually they seem to be having a great time.

It's also even more incredible though

if you think that just a few decades ago,

Confucius was considered an enemy of the state,

and none of this would have been allowed to happen,

or if it did, it would have had to have happened

in secret behind closed doors

and at the risk of really severe punishment.

(teacher speaking in foreign language)

In modern China, greater individualism

is seen to have undermined

a collective sense of right and wrong.

Confucius' resurgence can be explained by the desire

for a clearer sense of moral purpose.

But I wonder if Confucius' appeal is very simple.

He tells us that whatever our character,

whatever situation we're born into,

being good, living a good life

is a possibility

and that the root to goodness is wisdom.

Now, that means that as a species, in our finest form,

we are all philosophers,

in the true sense of the word,

lovers of wisdom.

(stirring music)

Across this series, I've examined the ideas

of three inspiring minds of the ancient world.

Socrates brought philosophy

down from the heavens and into people's homes

so that through the training of our reason,

we can achieve happiness for ourselves.

The Buddha changed the question from is there god

to questions like how to agree on good action

without necessarily agreeing on what happens after death.

Confucius said ritual is a way

to bring out the inside good qualities,

like the benevolence, like this reverence.

And if more people possess good qualities

and become real human,

then the social life, family life,

or community life would become peaceful.

But ultimately, what do they have to teach us

in the here and now?

Although these were ideas

that were developed 25 centuries ago,

do you think they have as much relevance to our world

as they did to ancient China, ancient Greece, ancient India?

If I want to exaggerate, probably even more so.

They were confronted with a world in disintegration,

little rationality, little compassion.

And we are in a world that's much more serious.

Because it's not simply the human world is in trouble,

the planet is in trouble.

And we have in our power

the destruction of all civilizations,

including the planet itself.

So a change has to be made.

Not just the change of a political system

or economic system, these are absolutely necessary,

but a change of mindset.

And the retrieval of the wisdom of Socrates,

of Buddha and Confucius is not a question of relevance.

It's a question of human survival.

(solemn music)

These extraordinary thinkers

aren't remote historical figures.

They are pioneers of human consciousness

whose ideas have informed and enriched the lives

of countless people to this day.

Their radical responses to the social upheaval of their age

have, in many ways, determined who we are now.

Their message was inspiring and challenging,

that the world isn't unknowable, unchangeable.

By engaging with it fully,

we can lead better and more meaningful lives.

We have agency.

Our minds can shape the world.

(dramatic music)