About his time occurred the return of the Jews from Babylon and the invasion of Greece by Xerxes.

His descendants have always enjoyed high privileges, and there are now some forty thousand of them in China, seventy generations and more removed from their great ancestor.

His is the oldest family in the world, unless we consider the Jews as a single family descended from Abraham.

His influence, through his writings, on the minds of so many millions of human beings is greater than that of any man who ever lived, excepting the writers of the Bible; and in saying this we do not forget the names of Mohammed, Aristotle, St.Augustine, and Luther.
So far as we can see, it is the influence of Confucius which has maintained, though probably not originated, in China, that profound reverence for parents, that strong family affection, that love of order, that regard for knowledge and deference for literary men, which are fundamental principles underlying all the Chinese institutions.

His minute and practical system of morals, studied as it is by all the learned, and constituting the sum of knowledge and the principle of government in China, has exerted and exerts an influence on that innumerable people which it is impossible to estimate, but which makes us admire the power which can emanate from a single soul.
To exert such an influence requires greatness.