24 JULY 1915, Page 22

Professor H. A. Giles in his Confucianism and its Myatt

(Williams and Norgate, 6s. net) publishes the "Hibbert Lectures" delivered by him in London last autumn. The lectures give an outline of the religious views of the Chinese people from the earliest times down to the present. Professor Giles shows that originally the Chinese had a conception of a personal God, but that under the influence of Confucianism all ideas of the supernatural became gradually obscured, and their religion was little more than a code of morals. " With a highly practical nation like the Chinese," he remarks, " the acts of human beings have always been reckoned as of infinitely greater importance than their opinions."