by Confucius
5.16 The Master said of Zichan: “He was respectful in the manner in which he conducted himself, reverent in the service of his lord, generous in caring for the common people, and just in the way he employed them.”
Zichan, prime minister of the state of Zheng from 543 until his death in 522 BC, was a prominent figure in the history of the Spring and Autumn period. Confucius admired this counselor for all the reasons he mentions here but also for Zichan’s political skills and shrewd judgment. And when he heard the news of Zichan’s death, he wept and said, “This man possessed the benevolent air of the ancients.” Zichan’s given name is Qiao, meaning “tall,” and his courtesy name is Mei, meaning “beautiful.” Scholars feel that qiao and mei together give a perfect description of his disposition and character.
Zhu Xi explains in his gloss why Zichan was “just in the way he employed [the common people].” Quoting the records in the Zuo Commentary, he says, “Within Zichan’s administration, distinctions were observed between urban and agrarian societies. People above and people below had separate responsibilities. The farmlands had proper boundaries and irrigation ditches, and every five families were organized into a unit.”
5.17 The Master said, “Yan Pingzhong is good at handling social relationships. Even after he has known a person for a long time, he remains respectful.”
Some scholars offer an alternative reading of what Confucius says here about Yan Pingzhong, or Yan Ying, who was his contemporary and a counselor from the state of Qi: “Yan Pingzhong is good at handling social relationships. Even when people have known him for a long time, they continue to respect him.” But most scholars prefer the reading I have given here. Qian Mu writes, “It is usually the case that the longer you know a person the less respect you will have for him. But this was not true with Master Yan. Though he could have known a person for a long time, his respect for him was like that in the beginning. This was the reason why Confucius spoke approvingly of Master Yan’s character.”
5.18 The Master said, “Zang Wenzhong housed the great tortoise in a hall where the capitals of the pillars were carved in the shape of mountains and the rafters’ posts were decorated with duckweed design. What can we say, then, about his wisdom [zhi]?”
Zang Wenzhong was counselor and chief advisor to Duke Zhuang of Lu in the sixth century BC. People at the time thought that he had an uncanny ability to foretell the future from what he knew and what he observed, and they called him “wise” (zhi), but Confucius disagreed, and his opinion was recorded in several early sources, not just the Analects. The Zuo Commentary quotes Confucius as having said: “Zang Wenzhong was not humane on three counts. He lacked wisdom (zhi) on three counts. He refused to promote [the worthy counselor] Liuxia Hui; he established six customs barriers; he encouraged the women in his family to weave rush mats [and sell them for a profit]. In these three ways he was not humane. He emplaced a meaningless ritual object; he put no stop to violations related to ancestral sacrifice; he [told the people in the capital of Lu] to make offerings to a large seabird called Yuanju. In these three ways he showed a lack of wisdom.” The Han scholars say that the “meaningless ritual object” in the Zuo Commentary must have been the “great tortoise” Zang Wenzhong housed. But how could it have been meaningless when its shell was used for divination? Zang Wenzhong must have robbed it of its meaning, they argue, by putting the tortoise in his own private hall when its proper place would have been in the ancestral hall of the ruler of Lu. And in so doing, he was also trying to usurp the ruler’s authority; therefore, Confucius said Zang Wenzhong lacked wisdom. Song scholars, however, do not agree with this interpretation. Zang never made the great tortoise his private possession, they say, and if he did, his transgression would have been much more serious than lacking wisdom. The tortoise was placed in his charge because he was the chief counselor, and he “housed” it in the ruler’s temple, but to impress the gods and to entice them to come to the temple, he had “the capitals of the pillars carved in the shape of mountains and the rafters’ posts decorated with duckweed design.” This he should not have done because such adornments were the prerogatives of the Zhou king and not of a regional ruler. It was for this reason, these Song scholars say, that Confucius thought Zang Wenzhong lacked wisdom.
5.19 Zizhang asked, “Ziwen was appointed to the position of prime minister [of Chu] three times, yet he did not appear to be pleased. He had to resign from this position three times, yet he did not appear to be resentful. And as the outgoing prime minister, he invariably gave the incoming prime minister a full account of the affairs of the state. What do you think of this?”
The Master said, “He certainly did his best in fulfilling his duty [as a public official].”
“Was he humane [ren]?”
“That I don’t know [buzhi], but then how could he [or anyone] have fulfilled his potential to be humane?”
Scholars over the centuries focus on three questions in their comments: whether it was Ziwen who was given the position of prime minister three times and was forced to give it up three times, because several early sources told a similar story about another prime minister of Chu, Shu Ao; whether when Confucius said “three times” he meant literally three times, because this could not be corroborated with the historical accounts in the Zuo Commentary; and whether to understand buzhi to mean “I don’t know” or “he lacked wisdom,” because both readings are possible. Most scholars agree that Shu Ao could not have been the prime minister in question because according to early history he was prime minister of Chu for less than seven years and so could not have been appointed three times and been forced to resign three times during that period. They also believe that “three times” means “more than once,” because examples from early writings show that it was common to use “three” to denote “more than once.” They are, however, divided on the reading of buzhi. Some scholars argue that Confucius was criticizing Ziwen, saying that he “was not wise” because the man Ziwen recommended as his successor later led the Chu army to a crushing defeat in a campaign against the Song. And if Ziwen was not wise, how could he have been humane, which was much more difficult to attain? Other scholars, however, feel that such a reading is too tortuous; they prefer to understand buzhi simply as “I don’t know,” which, they say, is also consistent with Confucius’ answer to Zizhang’s next question.
Ziwen is a fascinating figure in the accounts of early history. He was born out of wedlock to a young woman who was the daughter of the ruler of Yun. His father was from the Dou family of Chu. Soon after his birth, his maternal grandmother abandoned him in the marshes. Tigers suckled him and kept him alive until his grandfather, the ruler of Yun, found him and brought him home. Consequently his given name was Gouyutu, which in the language of the Chu meant “suckled by the tiger.” Ziwen was first appointed to the position of chief counselor in 664 BC, at a time when the ruler of Chu had just died and the ruler’s younger brother was assassinated for his untoward conduct against the ruler’s widow. Ziwen did everything he could “to extricate the state of Chu from the crisis it was in” even “at the expense of his own family,” upon which effort he built a reputation as someone who was dedicated to serving the state. And it was in this context that Confucius gave his assessment of Ziwen: that he knew Ziwen was responsible and constant in carrying out his public duty, but that he did not know about this man’s moral interior, which, like everyone else’s, could not possibly have been perfect.
[Zizhang again asked,] “Cuizi had the ruler of Qi killed. Chen Wenzi left the state, thus leaving behind [everything he possessed in Qi, including] the ten teams of horses [which his position entitled him to have]. After he arrived at another state, he said, ‘The officials here are not different from our counselor Cuizi,’ and so he left and went to yet another state, whereupon he said yet again, ‘The officials here are just like our counselor Cuizi.’ And so he left that state, too. What do you think of this?”
The Master said, “He wanted nothing to defile him.”
“Was he humane?”
“That I don’t know, but then how could he [or anyone] have fulfilled his potential to be humane?”
Cuizi was the chief counselor of Qi. Cuizi and his ruler, Duke Zhuang, had once been partners in crime—it was Cuizi who put Duke Zhuang on the throne in 554 BC after helping Duke Zhuang to get rid of his rivals—but the relationship turned hostile when Duke Zhuang imposed his presence in Cuizi’s house and became Cuizi’s wife’s lover. The murder Cuizi committed was, therefore, an act of revenge. The history in the Zuo Commentary, however, does not mention that Chen Wenzi left Qi after Duke Zhuang was assassinated, but speculations abound as to why he left. One says that since Chen Wenzi was an official entitled to only ten teams of horses, with four horses in each team, he could not have had the authority to rectify the violent death of his ruler; therefore, he left, but he was disappointed at every state in which he considered taking up residence. And so Confucius described him as someone who “wanted nothing to defile him.” Chen Wenzi makes an interesting contrast to Ning Wuzi in 5.21, who feigned stupidity when the moral way was not practiced in the state.
Traditional historians like to hark back to this chapter in the history of the Spring and Autumn period because the accounts in it say something important about historians and their responsibilities. After Cuizi had done away with his ruler, we are told, the historian of Qi recorded in the official chronicle that “Cui Zhu [Cuizi] assassinated his ruler.” Cuizi had this man killed, and when the historian’s two younger brothers persisted in making the charge stick, he had them killed as well. But he had to relent after yet another brother refused to have it erased from the record.
5.20 Ji Wenzi always thought three times before taking action. When the Master learned about this, he said, “Twice would have been enough.”
Ji Wenzi was the name given posthumously to Jisun Xingfu, chief counselor to three rulers of Lu from 601 to 568 BC. Some scholars consider Confucius’ remark about him to be flattering, but others see it as critical. This is because accounts of Ji Wenzi during his long political career could support either interpretation. Records in the Zuo Commentary say that Ji Wenzi devoted his life to the service of his state and never considered reaping any personal gain—“his wives were not dressed in silk; his horses were not fed on chestnuts; and he had no gold or jade stored away.” Encomiums like these might have prompted scholars such as Zheng Xuan to understand Confucius’ remark to mean, “Wenzi always did his best, was worthy in his conduct, and rarely made mistakes, and so there was no need for him to think three times [before taking action].” But early histories also show Ji Wenzi to have been overly cautious, and, as a result, to have often missed his chance to act, as in the case of the political crisis in 609 BC when the heir apparent of Lu, who was the son of the deceased ruler’s principal wife, was murdered, and the son of a concubine was put in his place. The aberration in the pattern of succession had devastating consequences for the future of the state, and it happened under Ji Wenji’s watch as the chief counselor at the time. He, it seems, did nothing to either avert or correct the situation. Thus it is possible that when Confucius said “Twice is enough,” he was actually blaming Ji Wenzi for being ponderous and indecisive.
5.21 The Master said, “Ning Wuzi was wise when the moral way prevailed in his state and acted like a fool when the moral way did not prevail in his state. He could be equaled in being wise but unequalled in being a fool.”
Ning Wuzi, whose given name was Yu, was a counselor from the state of Wei. He served only one ruler, Duke Cheng of Wei, and so it must have been under this ruler that the moral way prevailed and did not prevail. Yet early history suggests that Duke Cheng was not incompetent and did not make many serious mistakes, and so the reference to whether the moral way prevailed or not must have to do with whether Wei was in order or not, and with the possibility that if there was disorder, it could have been brought about by outside factors, not necessarily by Duke Cheng himself. And so if Ning Wuzi behaved like a fool during such times, just what was he like to merit Confucius’ comment that his acting like a fool was much harder to match than his being wise? Some scholars believe that Ning Wuzi hid his talents when the going got rough and pretended to be a fool to protect himself because he hoped to stay alive and accomplish greater things. Others think that Ning Wuzi always did his best to get his ruler out of a crisis, with no concern for his own safety, and that people around him saw him as a fool. Although Ning Wuzi could have acted like a fool in either case, it would have taken the subtler kind of behavior—to pretend one is a fool when one is not—to earn such high marks from Confucius.
5.22 When the Master was in the state of Chen, he said, “Let’s go home. Let’s go home! Our young men back home are wildly spirited [kuang] and unhewn [jian]. They are made of brilliant fabric but they don’t know how to shape their material.”
Kuang () is a grand word. A person who is kuang could be wildly spirited and extravagantly ambitious or sublimely wild and wise. A sublimely wild man is a close relative of a man who, like Ning Wuzi, wears the disguise of a fool. Jie Yu in 18.5 is such a man. But here Confucius is referring to the wildly spirited young men of Lu, who possessed the material but needed shaping. Once a disciple of Mencius asked his teacher, “Why did Confucius miss the wildly spirited young men of Lu when he was in Chen?” Mencius replied, “Confucius himself remarked, ‘Not being able to be in the company of those who do not swerve from the appropriate path, one must, then, turn to the wildly spirited [kuang] and the overly cautious [juan ].’” And of the two, Mencius said, Confucius felt that the wildly spirited were the next best, and so “his thoughts turned to them.” And when asked why these men were called “wildly spirited,” Mencius explained, “Their ambitions were big, and they liked to declaim, ‘The ancients, the ancients!’ But if you examine their action, it does not quite cover what their words proclaimed.”
5.23 The Master said, “Bo Yi and Shu Qi did not dwell on old wrongs [jiu’e], and so they were rarely blameful.”
An alternative reading of Confucius’ remark—and one found in most translations—is: “Bo Yi and Shu Qi did not remember old scores, and for this reason they incurred little resentment.” The point there is to explain why other people did not resent Bo Yi and Shu Qi, but the story of these two men does not support such an interpretation. Bo Yi and Shu Qi, who lived during the dynastic transition from Shang to Zhou, were princes from the state called Guzhu. They did not like the fact that the Zhou conquered the Shang by force, and so they refused to eat the grain of the Zhou and, according to some, died of starvation on Mount Shouyang. Mencius gives this description of Bo Yi: “He refused to be present in the court of a reprehensible man, and he also refused to speak to anyone who was reprehensible.” Thus the most distinct character of the two brothers in these sources is that they avoided at all cost any chance of being defiled, which is also consistent with the circumstances of their death if the story is true. And since none of the sources suggests that others incurred injuries, what were they meant to forget? For this reason, I prefer the reading suggested by Qian Mu. Qian Mu stresses that Bo Yi and Shu Qi did not remember other people’s “old wrongs” (jiu’e), which is not the same as saying that they did not remember the wrongs done to them. “Not to dwell on old wrongs,” he says, resonates with what Confucius says about himself in 14.35—“I blame neither Heaven nor man [for my not being understood].”
Sima Qian in his biography of Bo Yi and Shu Qi gives Confucius the credit for letting the world and letting posterity know about the conduct and the deeds of these two men. Yet he questions Confucius’ characterization of Bo Yi and Shu Qi as “being rarely blameful.” “When they were on the point of starvation,” Sima Qian writes, “they composed a song, ‘We ascended the western hills / And plucked its ferns. / He replaces violence with violence, / And sees not his own fault. / Shen Nong, Yu, and Xia, / How long ago these great men vanished! / Whom now should we follow? / Alas, let us depart, / For our fate has run out.�
� . . . When we examine this song, do we find rancor or not?”
5.24 The Master said, “Who said that Weisheng Gao was upright? When someone asked him for vinegar, he begged it from a neighbor and gave it to that person.”
Here Confucius, as in 5.18 and 5.20, seeks to correct the favorable impression his contemporaries had of Weisheng Gao. If this Weisheng Gao was Weisheng of Lu, then he was the person mentioned in my commentary on 1.13, who was so trustworthy that when a woman failed to show up for a date under a bridge and the water began to rise, instead of leaving, he wrapped his arms around the pillar of the bridge and was drowned. Confucius, however, had doubts about him, yet from his description here, Weisheng Gao seems to have done a nice thing. For it would have been much simpler for this man to tell the person who came to borrow vinegar that he did not have any and send him away than to go to the trouble of asking for it from a neighbor and then giving it to that person. So what was Confucius’ problem with Weisheng Gao? Several scholars point out that Confucius was weighing the question of whether Weisheng Gao was upright because he had a reputation for being “upright.” By not telling the person who asked him for vinegar that the vinegar came from a neighbor, Confucius says, he was being dishonest. And why did Confucius stress the seriousness of an incident that seems like a trifle? Because he believed that a person’s conduct in ordinary life was a reflection of his character.
5.25 The Master said, “Clever words, a pleasing countenance, nervous shuffling [zugong]—Zuoqiu Ming regarded such things as shameful, and I, too, regard them as shameful. To act like a friend to a person while concealing your displeasure—Zuoqiu Ming regarded such behavior as shameful, and I, too, regard it as shameful.”
