The Analects is a compilation of ethical pronouncements attributed to the ancient Chinese scholar and teacher Kung Fu-Tse, known in the West as Confucius. Confucius felt that society had been drifting into moral decay for at least 200 years before his birth, and his life's effort was an attempt to reverse this trend for he maintained that we, as humans, are capable of handling our own problems without the aid of Divine assistance. This is the only work attributed to Confucius, and it is, in fact, the labor of his students, who compiled his moral maxims in The Analects after his death in 479 B.C.