Contents
-BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
The Sayings of Confucius.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.
XIX
TZU-CHANG said: “The scholar who in danger will stake his life, who in sight of gain remembers right, who is lowly in heart at worship, and sad at heart when mourning, may pass muster.”Tzu-chang said: “Goodness blindly clutched, faith that lacks simplicity, can they be said to be, or said not to be?”The disciples of Tzu-hsia asked Tzu-chang about friendship.
Tzu-chang said: “What does Tzu-hsia say?”
They answered: “Tzu-hsia says: ‘Cling to worthy friends; push the unworthy away.’”
Tzu-chang said: “I was taught otherwise. A gentleman honours worth, and bears with the many. He applauds goodness, and pities weakness. Am I a man of great worth, what could I not bear with in men? Am I a man without worth, men will push me away. Why should I push others away?”Tzu-hsia said: “Though there is no trade without interest, a gentleman will not follow one, lest it clog the mind at length.”Tzu-hsia said: “Who recalls each day what fails him, who each month forgets nothing won, he may indeed be called fond of learning!”Tzu-hsia said: “Through wide learning and singleness of aim, through keen questions and searchings of heart we come to love.”Tzu-hsia said: “To learn their trade apprentices work in a shop: by study a gentleman reaches the truth.”Tzu-hsia said: “The vulgar always gloss their faults.”Tzu-hsia said: “A gentleman alters thrice. Seen from afar he looks stern: as we draw near, he thaws: but the sound of his words is sharp.”Tzu-hsia said: “A gentleman lays no burdens on the people until they have learned to trust him. Unless they trusted him they would think him cruel. Until he is trusted he does not reprove. Unless he were trusted it would seem fault-finding.”Tzu-hsia said: “If we keep within the bounds of honour, we may step to and fro through propriety.”Tzu-yu said: “The disciples, the boys of Tzu-hsia,can sprinkle and sweep the floor, answer when spoken to, and enter or leave a room; but what can come of branches without root?”
When Tzu-hsia heard this, he said: “Yen Yu is wrong. In training a gentleman, because we teach one thing first, shall we flag before reaching the next? Thus plants and trees vary in size. Should a gentleman’s training bewilder him? To absorb it first and last none but the holy are fit.”Tzu-hsia said: “Crown servants should use their spare strength for study. A scholar with his spare strength should serve the crown.”Tzu-yu said: “Mourning should stretch to grief, and stretch no further.”Tzu-yu said: “My friend Chang can do things that are hard, but he is void of love.”Tseng-tzu said: “So magnificent is Chang that to do as love bids is hard when at his side.”Tseng-tzu said: “I have heard the Master say: ‘Man never shows what is in him unless when mourning one near to him.’”Tseng-tzu said: “I have heard the Master say: ‘In all else we may rival the piety of Meng Chuang, but in not changing his father’s ministers, or his father’s rule, he is hard to rival.’”The Meng made Yang Fu criminal judge, who asked Tseng-tzu about his duties.
Tseng-tzu said: “The gentry have lost their way, and the people long been distraught. When thou dost get at the heart of a crime, be moved to pity, not puffed with joy.”Tzu-kung said: “The wickedness of Chou was not so great. Thus let princes beware of living in a sink, where the filth of the world all streams together!”Tzu-kung said: “The faults of a prince are like the darkening of sun or moon. The fault is seen of all, and when he breaks free all men admire.”Kung-sun Ch´ao of Wei asked Tzu-kung: “Where did Chung-ni get his learning?”
Tzu-kung said: “The lore of Wen and Wu has not fallen into ruin, but lives in men: the big in big men, the small in small men. No man is empty of the lore of Wen and Wu. How should the Master not learn it? What need had he for a set teacher?”Shu-sun Wu-shu, talking to some lords at court, said: “Tzu-kung is a greater man than Chung-ni.”
Tzu-fu Ching-po told this to Tzu-kung.
Tzu-kung said: “This is like the palace and its wall. My wall reaches to the shoulder. Peeping over one sees the goodly home within. The Master’s wall is many fathoms high. Unless he enter the gate, no man can see the beauty of the Ancestral Temples, the wealth of the hundred officers. And if but few men gain the gate, is my lord not right to speak as he does?”Shu-sun Wu-shu decried Chung-ni.
Tzu-kung said: “It is labour lost. Chung-ni cannot be cried down. The greatness of other men is a mound that can be overleaped. Chung-ni is the sun or moon that no man can overleap. To run into death though a man were ready, how could he hurt the sun or moon? His want of sense would but show the better!”Ch´en Tzu-ch´in said to Tzu-kung: “Sir, your humility is overdone. In what way is Chung-ni your better?”
Tzu-kung said: “By a word a gentleman betrays wisdom, by a word his want of wisdom. Words are not to be lightly spoken. None can come up to the Master, as heaven is not to be climbed by steps. Had the Master power in the land, the saying would come true: ‘All that he plants takes root; whither he leads men follow. The peace he brings draws men; his touch tunes them to harmony: honored in life, he is mourned when dead.’ Who can come up to him?”
