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THE WISDOM
OF CONFUCIUS
The Wisdom
of Confucius
with critical and biographical sketches by
EPIPHANIUS WILSON, A.M.
_Art Type Edition_
_THE WORLD'S POPULAR CLASSICS_
Books, Inc.
NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT, 1900
BY THE COLONIAL PRESS
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
THE WISDOM OF CONFUCIUS
PAGE
Introduction 3
BOOK
I. On Learning--Miscellaneous Sayings 8
II. Good Government--Filial Piety--The Superior Man 12
III. Abuse of Proprieties in Ceremonial and Music 16
IV. Social Virtue--Superior and Inferior Man 22
V. A Disciple and the Golden Rule--Miscellaneous 25
VI. More Characteristics--Wisdom--Philanthropy 31
VII. Characteristics of Confucius--An Incident 36
VIII. Sayings of Tsang--Sentences of the Master 42
IX. His Favorite Disciple's Opinion of Him 46
X. Confucius in Private and Official Life 51
XI. Comparative Worth of His Disciples 56
XII. The Master's Answers--Philanthropy--Friendships 62
XIII. Answers on the Art of Governing--Consistency 68
XIV. Good and Bad Government--Miscellaneous Sayings 75
XV. Practical Wisdom--Reciprocity the Rule of Life 83
XVI. Against Intestine Strife--Good and Bad Friendships 88
XVII. The Master Induced to Take Office--Nature and Habit 93
XVIII. Good Men in Seclusion--Duke of Chow to His Son 99
XIX. Teachings of Various Chief Disciples 103
XX. Extracts from the Book of History 108
THE SAYINGS OF MENCIUS
Introduction 113
BOOK I. King Hwuy of Leang.
Part I 115
[_Books II, III, and IV are omitted_]
BOOK V. Wan Chang.
Part I 128
THE SHI-KING
Introduction 143
_Part I. Lessons from the States._
BOOK I. THE ODES OF CHOW AND THE SOUTH.
Celebrating the Virtue of King Wan's Bride 145
Celebrating the Industry of King Wan's Queen 146
In Praise of a Bride 146
Celebrating T[']ae-Sze's Freedom from Jealousy 147
The Fruitfulness of the Locust 147
Lamenting the Absence of a Cherished Friend 148
Celebrating the Goodness of the Descendants of King Wan 149
The Virtuous Manners of the Young Women 149
Praise of a Rabbit-Catcher 150
The Song of the Plantain-Gatherers 151
The Affection of the Wives on the Joo 151
BOOK II. THE ODES OF SHAOU AND THE SOUTH.
The Marriage of a Princess 152
The Industry and Reverence of a Prince's Wife 152
The Wife of Some Great Officer Bewails his Absence 153
The Diligence of the Young Wife of an Officer 154
The Love of the People for the Duke of Shaou 154
The Easy Dignity of the Officers at Some Court 155
Anxiety of a Young Lady to Get Married 155
BOOK III. THE ODES OF P[']EI.
An Officer Bewails the Neglect with which He is Treated 157
A Wife Deplores the Absence of Her Husband 158
The Plaint of a Rejected Wife 159
Soldiers of Wei Bewail Separation from their Families 161
An Officer Tells of His Mean Employment 161
An Officer Sets Forth His Hard Lot 162
The Complaint of a Neglected Wife 163
In Praise of a Maiden 164
Discontent 164
Chwang Keang Bemoans Her Husband's Cruelty 165
[_Books IV, V, and VI are omitted_]
BOOK VII. THE ODES OF CH[']ING.
The People's Admiration for Duke Woo 167
A Wife Consoled by Her Husband's Arrival 168
In Praise of Some Lady 168
A Man's Praise of His Wife 169
An Entreaty 169
A Woman Scorning Her Lover 169
A Lady Mourns the Absence of Her Student Lover 170
BOOK VIII. THE ODES OF TS[']E.
A Wife Urging Her Husband to Action 171
The Folly of Useless Effort 172
The Prince of Loo 172
BOOK IX. THE ODES OF WEI.
On the Misgovernment of the State 174
The Mean Husband 175
A Young Soldier on Service 175
BOOK X. THE ODES OF T[']ANG.
The King Goes to War 177
Lament of a Bereaved Person 178
The Drawbacks of Poverty 179
A Wife Mourns for Her Husband 179
BOOK XI. THE ODES OF TS[']IN.
Celebrating the Opulence of the Lords of Ts[']in 181
A Complaint 182
A Wife's Grief Because of Her Husband's Absence 182
Lament for Three Brothers 183
In Praise of a Ruler of Ts[']in 184
The Generous Nephew 185
BOOK XII. THE ODES OF CH[']IN.
The Contentment of a Poor Recluse 186
The Disappointed Lover 186
A Love-Song 187
The Lament of a Lover 187
BOOK XIII. THE ODES OF KWEI.
The Wish of an Unhappy Man 189
BOOK XIV. THE ODES OF TS[']AOU.
Against Frivolous Pursuits 190
BOOK XV. THE ODES OF PIN.
The Duke of Chow Tells of His Soldiers 191
There is a Proper Way for Doing Everything 192
_Part II. Minor Odes of the Kingdom._
BOOK I. DECADE OF LUH MING.
A Festal Ode 194
A Festal Ode Complimenting an Officer 195
The Value of Friendship 196
The Response to a Festal Ode 198
An Ode of Congratulation 199
An Ode on the Return of the Troops 200
BOOK II. THE DECADE OF PIH HWA.
An Ode Appropriate to a Festivity 203
BOOK III. THE DECADE OF T[']UNG KUNG.
Celebrating a Hunting Expedition 204
The King's Anxiety for His Morning Levee 205
Moral Lessons from Natural Facts 206
BOOK IV. THE DECADE OF K[']E-FOO.
On the Completion of a Royal Palace 207
The Condition of King Seuen's Flocks 208
BOOK V. THE DECADE OF SEAOU MIN.
A Eunuch Complains of His Fate 210
An Officer Deplores the Misery of the Time 212
On the Alienation of a Friend 213
BOOK VI. THE DECADE OF PIH SHAN.
A Picture of Husbandry 215
The Complaint of an Officer 216
BOOK VII. DECADE OF SANG HOO.
The Rejoicings of a Bridegroom 219
Against Listening to Slanderers 220
BOOK VIII. THE DECADE OF TOO JIN SZE.
In Praise of By-gone Simplicity 221
A Wife Bemoans Her Husband's Absence 222
The Earl of Shaou's Work 223
The Plaint of King Yew's Forsaken Wife 224
Hospitality 226
On the Misery of Soldiers 226
_Part III. Greater Odes of the Kingdom._
BOOK I. DECADE OF KING WAN.
Celebrating King Wan 228
[_Book II is omitted_]
BOOK III. DECADE OF TANG.
King Seuen on the Occasion of a Great Drought 231
_Part IV. Odes of the Temple and Altar._
BOOK I. SACRIFICIAL ODES OF CHOW.
Appropriate to a Sacrifice to King Wan 235
On Sacrificing to the Kings Woo, Ching, and K[']ang 236
THE WISDOM
OF CONFUCIUS
[_Translated into English by William Jennings_]
PRONUNCIATION OF PROPER NAMES
_j_, as in French.
_ng_, commencing a word, like the same letters terminating one.
_ai_ or _ei_, as in _aisle_ or _eider_.
_au_, as in German, or like _ow_ in _cow_.
_e_, as in _fete_.
_i_ (not followed by a consonant), as _ee_ in _see_.
_u_ (followed by a consonant), as in _bull_.
_iu_, as _ew_ in _new_.
_ui_, as _ooi_ in _cooing_.
_h_ at the end of a name makes the preceding vowel short.
['] in the middle of a word denotes an aspirate (h), as _K[']ung_
= _Khung_.
INTRODUCTION
The strangest figure that meets us in the annals of Oriental thought is
that of Confucius. To the popular mind he is the founder of a religion,
and yet he has nothing in common with the great religious teachers of
the East. We think of Siddartha, the founder of Buddhism, as the very
impersonation of romantic asceticism, enthusiastic self-sacrifice, and
faith in the things that are invisible. Zoroaster is the friend of God,
talking face to face with the Almighty, and drinking wisdom and
knowledge from the lips of Omniscience. Mohammed is represented as
snatched up into heaven, where he receives the Divine communication
which he is bidden to propagate with fire and sword throughout the
world. These great teachers lived in an atmosphere of the supernatural.
They spoke with the authority of inspired prophets. They brought the
unseen world close to the minds of their disciples. They spoke
positively of immortality, of reward or punishment beyond the grave. The
present life they despised, the future was to them everything in its
promised satisfaction. The teachings of Confucius were of a very
different sort. Throughout his whole writings he has not even mentioned
the name of God. He declined to discuss the question of immortality.
When he was asked about spiritual beings, he remarked, "If we cannot
even know men, how can we know spirits?"
Yet this was the man the impress of whose teaching has formed the
national character of five hundred millions of people. A temple to
Confucius stands to this day in every town and village of China. His
precepts are committed to memory by every child from the tenderest
age, and each year at the royal university at Pekin the Emperor holds
a festival in honor of the illustrious teacher.
The influence of Confucius springs, first of all, from the narrowness
and definiteness of his doctrine. He was no transcendentalist, and
never meddled with supramundane things. His teaching was of the earth,
earthy; it dealt entirely with the common relations of life, and the
Golden Rule he must necessarily have stumbled upon, as the most
obvious canon of his system. He strikes us as being the great Stoic of
the East, for he believed that virtue was based on knowledge,
knowledge of a man's own heart, and knowledge of human-kind. There is
a pathetic resemblance between the accounts given of the death of
Confucius and the death of Zeno. Both died almost without warning in
dreary hopelessness, without the ministrations of either love or
religion. This may be a mere coincidence, but the lives and teachings
of both men must have led them to look with indifference upon such an
end. For Confucius in his teaching treated only of man's life on
earth, and seems to have had no ideas with regard to the human lot
after death; if he had any ideas he preserved an inscrutable silence
about them. As a moralist he prescribed the duties of the king and of
the father, and advocated the cultivation by the individual man of
that rest or apathy of mind which resembles so much the disposition
aimed at by the Greek and Roman Stoic. Even as a moralist, he seems to
have sacrificed the ideal to the practical, and his loose notions
about marriage, his tolerance of concubinage, the slight emphasis
which he lays on the virtue of veracity--of which indeed he does not
seem himself to have been particularly studious in his historic
writings--place him low down in the rank of moralists. Yet he taught
what he felt the people could receive, and the flat mediocrity of his
character and his teachings has been stamped forever upon a people
who, while they are kindly, gentle, forbearing, and full of family
piety, are palpably lacking not only in the exaltation of Mysticism,
but in any religious feeling, generally so-called.
The second reason that made the teaching of Confucius so influential
is based on the circumstances of the time. When this thoughtful,
earnest youth awoke to the consciousness of life about him, he saw
that the abuses under which the people groaned sprang from the feudal
system, which cut up the country into separate territories, over which
the power of the king had no control. China was in the position of
France in the years preceding Philippe-Auguste, excepting that there
were no places of sanctuary and no Truce of God. The great doctrine of
Confucius was the unlimited despotism of the Emperor, and his moral
precepts were intended to teach the Emperor how to use his power
aright. But the Emperor was only typical of all those in
authority--the feudal duke, the judge on the bench, and the father of
the family. Each could discharge his duties aright only by submitting
to the moral discipline which Confucius prescribed. A vital element in
this system is its conservatism, its adherence to the imperial idea.
As James I said, "No bishop, no king," so the imperialists of China
have found in Confucianism the strongest basis for the throne, and
have supported its dissemination accordingly.
The Analects of Confucius contain the gist of his teachings, and is
worthy of study. We find in this work most of the precepts which his
disciples have preserved and recorded. They form a code remarkable for
simplicity, even crudity, and we are compelled to admire the force of
character, the practical sagacity, the insight into the needs of the
hour, which enabled Confucius, without claiming any Divine sanction,
to impose this system upon his countrymen.
The name Confucius is only the Latinized form of two words which mean
"Master K[']ung." He was born 551 B.C., his father being governor of
Shantung. He was married at nineteen, and seems to have occupied some
minor position under the government. In his twenty-fourth year he
entered upon the three years' mourning for the death of his mother.
His seclusion gave him time for deep thought and the study of history,
and he resolved upon the regeneration of his unhappy country. By the
time he was thirty he became known as a great teacher, and disciples
flocked to him. But he was yet occupied in public duties, and rose
through successive stages to the office of Chief Judge in his own
country of Lu. His tenure of office is said to have put an end to
crime, and he became the "idol of the people" in his district. The
jealousy of the feudal lords was roused by his fame as a moral teacher
and a blameless judge. Confucius was driven from his home, and
wandered about, with a few disciples, until his sixty-ninth year, when
he returned to Lu, after accomplishing a work which has borne fruit,
such as it is, to the present day. He spent the remaining five years
of his life in editing the odes and historic monuments in which the
glories of the ancient Chinese dynasty are set forth. He died in his
seventy-third year, 478 B.C. There can be no doubt that the success of
Confucius has been singularly great, owing especially to the narrow
scope of his scheme, which has become crystallized in the habits,
usages, and customs of the people. Especially has it been instrumental
in consolidating the empire, and in strengthening the power of the
monarch, who, as he every year burns incense in the red-walled temple
at Pekin, utters sincerely the invocation: "Great art thou, O perfect
Sage! Thy virtue is full, thy doctrine complete. Among mortal men
there has not been thine equal. All kings honor thee. Thy statutes and
laws have come gloriously down. Thou art the pattern in this imperial
school. Reverently have the sacrificial vessels been set out. Full of
awe, we sound our drums and bells."
E. W.
BOOK I
_On Learning--Miscellaneous Sayings_
"To learn," said the Master, "and then to practise opportunely what
one has learnt--does not this bring with it a sense of satisfaction?
"To have associates in study coming to one from distant parts--does
not this also mean pleasure in store?
"And are not those who, while not comprehending all that is said,
still remain not unpleased to hear, men of the superior order?"
A saying of the Scholar Yu:--
"It is rarely the case that those who act the part of true men in
regard to their duty to parents and elder brothers are at the same
time willing to turn currishly upon their superiors: it has never yet
been the case that such as desire not to commit that offence have been
men willing to promote anarchy or disorder.
"Men of superior mind busy themselves first in getting at the root of
things; and when they have succeeded in this the right course is open
to them. Well, are not filial piety and friendly subordination among
brothers a root of that right feeling which is owing generally from
man to man?"
The Master observed, "Rarely do we meet with the right feeling due
from one man to another where there is fine speech and studied mien."
The Scholar Tsang once said of himself: "On three points I examine
myself daily, viz., whether, in looking after other people's
interests, I have not been acting whole-heartedly; whether, in my
intercourse with friends, I have not been true; and whether, after
teaching, I have not myself been practising what I have taught."
The Master once observed that to rule well one of the larger States
meant strict attention to its affairs and conscientiousness on the
part of the ruler; careful husbanding of its resources, with at the
same time a tender care for the interests of all classes; and the
employing of the masses in the public service at suitable seasons.
"Let young people," said he, "show filial piety at home,
respectfulness towards their elders when away from home; let them be
circumspect, be truthful; their love going out freely towards all,
cultivating good-will to men. And if, in such a walk, there be time or
energy left for other things, let them employ it in the acquisition of
literary or artistic accomplishments."
The disciple Tsz-hia said, "The appreciation of worth in men of worth,
thus diverting the mind from lascivious desires--ministering to
parents while one is the most capable of so doing--serving one's ruler
when one is able to devote himself entirely to that object--being
sincere in one's language in intercourse with friends: this I
certainly must call evidence of learning, though others may say there
has been 'no learning.'"
Sayings of the Master:--
"If the great man be not grave, he will not be revered, neither can
his learning be solid.
"Give prominent place to loyalty and sincerity.
"Have no associates in study who are not advanced somewhat like
yourself.
"When you have erred, be not afraid to correct yourself."
A saying of the Scholar Tsang:--
"The virtue of the people is renewed and enriched when attention is
seen to be paid to the departed, and the remembrance of distant
ancestors kept and cherished."
Tsz-k[']in put this query to his fellow disciple Tsz-kung: said he,
"When our Master comes to this or that State, he learns without fail
how it is being governed. Does he investigate matters? or are the
facts given him?"
Tsz-kung answered, "Our Master is a man of pleasant manners, and of
probity, courteous, moderate, and unassuming: it is by his being such
that he arrives at the facts. Is not his way of arriving at things
different from that of others?"
A saying of the Master:--
"He who, after three years' observation of the will of his father when
alive, or of his past conduct if dead, does not deviate from that
father's ways, is entitled to be called 'a dutiful son.'"
Sayings of the Scholar Yu:--
"For the practice of the Rules of Propriety,[1] one excellent way is
to be natural. This naturalness became a great grace in the practice
of kings of former times; let everyone, small or great, follow their
example.
"It is not, however, always practicable; and it is not so in the case
of a person who does things naturally, knowing that he should act so,
and yet who neglects to regulate his acts according to the Rules.
"When truth and right are hand in hand, a statement will bear
repetition. When respectfulness and propriety go hand in hand,
disgrace and shame are kept afar-off. Remove all occasion for
alienating those to whom you are bound by close ties, and you have
them still to resort to."
A saying of the Master:--
"The man of greater mind who, when he is eating, craves not to eat to
the full; who has a home, but craves not for comforts in it; who is
active and earnest in his work and careful in his words; who makes
towards men of high principle, and so maintains his own
rectitude--that man may be styled a devoted student."
Tsz-kung asked, "What say you, sir, of the poor who do not cringe and
fawn; and what of the rich who are without pride and haughtiness?" "They
are passable," the Master replied; "yet they are scarcely in the same
category as the poor who are happy, and the rich who love propriety."
"In the 'Book of the Odes,'" Tsz-kung went on to say, "we read of one
Polished, as by the knife and file,
The graving-tool, the smoothing-stone.
Does that coincide with your remark?"
"Ah! such as you," replied the Master, "may well commence a discussion
on the Odes. If one tell you how a thing goes, you know what ought to
come."
"It does not greatly concern me," said the Master, "that men do not
know me; my great concern is, my not knowing them."
[Footnote 1: An important part of a Chinaman's education still. The
text-book, "The Li Ki," contains rules for behavior and propriety for
the whole life, from the cradle to the grave.]