an ardent conformist................

     Light comes from the East.  The Chinese sage Confucius, who lived five centuries before Christ, left no writings of his own, and is known to us, as Christ is, from the words and deeds recorded by his apostles.  Unlike Christ, however, Confucius was not a religious reformer, but an ardent conformist in all matters both temporal and spiritual, and his counsels and maxims, recorded in the Analects, are concerned with the orderly conduct of life in this world, rather than the hopes and fears for the next.  Confucius lived through the collapse of feudal civilization in ancient China, and wandered the land in search of a prince who would listen to his counsels.  He loved life, was fond of horses and hunting, and was both a practical and a respectable man, distinguished from his contemporaries largely by his propensity both to utter uncomfortable truths, and to live by them. 

-Roger Scruton, An Intelligent Person's Guide to Modern Culture