The Analects

by Confucius

  6.13 The Master said to Zixia, “Be a gentlemanly ru. Don’t be a petty ru.”

  Scholars propose two different ways of understanding Confucius’ advice for Zixia. Liu Baonan says that ru refers to “village teachers” and also officials in the Zhou court who were responsible for “instructing the people with their knowledge of the six arts,” and that since Zixia was thinking about establishing a school, Confucius urged him to be “a gentlemanly ru,” someone who sought “to understand and transmit bigger things,” not minutiae, which was the sort of learning associated with Zixia.

  Other scholars, however, feel that what Confucius says here is not about two styles of learning but about two types of human character—the gentlemanly, the authentic ru; and the petty, the fake ru. This was the question he was most concerned with, these scholars argue, because Confucius realized that it could be difficult to distinguish the two and that, without a clear distinction, right and wrong would be in a muddle. In the context of this reading, ru refers not merely to teachers but to ritual specialists, professional men with textual knowledge, the class from which Confucius emerged and which was later associated with his followers.

  6.14 Ziyou was the steward of Wucheng. Confucius said, “Have you found any good man?”

  “There is Tantai Mieming. He doesn’t take shortcuts, and he never comes to my room unless it is on official business.”

  Ziyou was one of Confucius’ younger disciples, someone Confucius characterizes as having shown strength in “the cultural arts and literary learning.” There were two districts called Wucheng during Confucius’ time, one to the southwest of the capital of Lu, and the other to the southeast. Scholars believe that this was the Wucheng that was located to the southeast of the capital because Tantai Mieming was from that district. According to the Han sources, Tantai Mieming, or Ziyu, was also a disciple of Confucius. From Ziyou’s description, Tantai Mieming appears to have been a man of integrity—he neither took shortcuts in fulfilling his public duties nor did he mix personal affairs with official matters. To most people, Mieming’s approach as a public official could seem impractical and even a little clumsy, but to the Song thinker Yang Shi, “to hold oneself up using Mieming as the model means that you will never know the shame of having acted in an improper and low-down way.”

  6.15 The Master said, “Meng Zifan does not like to boast. When his army fled [in the battle against the Qi], he guarded the rear. Yet upon entering the city gates, he whipped up his horses and said, ‘I was not so brave as to stay behind [to guard the rear]. It was just that my horses refused to move forward.’”

  Meng Zifan was a counselor from the state of Lu. When a war broke out in 484 BC between Lu and Qi, he was the head of a division within the Right Army. A similar account of his conduct and words is found in the history in the Zuo Commentary. That same account also tells us that the leaders of the Lu were reluctant at first to fight the Qi army, and that it was Confucius’ disciple Ran Qiu who spurred them into action before putting himself in charge of the Left Army. Even though the Right Army was routed by the Qi army in this conflict, the Left Army won a major battle, and thereby the war, under Ran Qiu’s command.

  6.16 The Master said, “If you have only Song Zhao’s good looks and not Priest Tuo’s rhetorical skills [ning], it will still be hard for you to escape unscathed in the present world.”

  Song Zhao was the stud, the lothario, of the late Spring and Autumn period. Women found him irresistible, but he, too, had a roving eye and was a transgressor. The wives of both Duke Xiang and Duke Ling of Wei had relationships with him while he served as counselor in their husbands’ court.

  Priest Tuo was also an official of Wei, but of a much lower rank than Song Zhao. When Confucius is asked, in 14.19, why a morally depraved ruler like Duke Ling of Wei did not lose his state, he explains that this was because Wei had talented men—Zhongshu Yu was in charge of foreign guests, Priest Tuo looked after the ancestral temple, and Wangsun Jia was responsible for military affairs. From this comment, it does not appear that Confucius could have had a negative view of Priest Tuo even though he described him as ning. I have pointed out in 5.5 that although ning nearly always suggests “glibness” in the Analects, it is still possible to find it to mean “skillful in speech,” which is the case here. Not only ning is used here without any moral judgment; the same can be said about Confucius’ description of Song Zhao as having “good looks.” In Qian Mu’s view, Confucius was making an observation about “the air, the manner, that characterized his times,” “he was not reproaching Song Zhao and Priest Tuo about their behavior.”

  6.17 The Master said, “Who can leave a room without using the door? How is it, then, that no one uses this way [when conducting his life]?”

  The Han thinker Dong Zhongshu says that “this way” (sidao) refers to the way by which “Heaven, earth, and the sages move” and “transform” things—the dao that would remain constant despite the changes in circumstances. Other scholars disagree—they do not think that “this way” refers to anything lofty and beyond reach. “Door” (hu) and “the way” (dao) are a pair, they argue: “If everyone knows to use the door to leave a room, why is it that they do not use the way [to live a proper life]?” They say that when Confucius mentioned “this way” he was speaking of the rites—ritual rules and practices that could help a person find his balance in conduct and in judgment.

  6.18 Confucius said, “If the native material outweighs refinement, you have a rustic [ye]. If refinement outweighs the native material, you have a scribe [shi]. When there is a right balance of native material and refinement, you have a gentleman [junzi].”

  What Confucius tries to do here, Liu Baonan explains, is “to rectify the name junzi”—to restore the integrity of the name junzi. And so he says that when there is a right balance of native material and refinement, you have a junzi, a gentleman. A person with too much native material is called ye, a rustic. He is not a junzi. A person with too much refinement is called shi, a scribe. He, too, is not a junzi. But why call this man a scribe? Because the duty that a scribe performs is perfunctory—he writes and writes, not knowing what he is writing.

  6.19 The Master said, “One is able to live out his life by being upright. If a person is able to survive while living a crooked life, it is due to luck that he is spared.”

  The first sentence is the most difficult to understand. For why should life be sustained by “being upright”? Liu Baonan uses the ideas in the Book of Changes and the Doctrine of the Mean to give this explanation: “Being upright [zhi] means doing one’s best [cheng]—not deceiving oneself nor deceiving others. . . . Heaven and earth give life to things by doing all they can. . . . If they do not do their best, nothing can be brought forth—nothing will exist. Doing one’s best is fundamental to giving life and sustaining life.”

  6.20 The Master said, “To know something is not as good as to have a love for it. To have a love for something is not as good as to find joy in it.”

  Most scholars agree that the pronoun zhi (之) , translated as “something” here, refers to learning, and Liu Baonan says that 6.11 and 7.19 best express what Confucius means by finding joy in learning. We read in 6.11 that Yan Hui would not let anything, not his meager diet or poor dwelling, take away his joy in learning, and, in 7.19, that Confucius was so full of joy that he forgot his worries. Learning must give pleasure is Confucius’ point here, and pleasure is the proof of one’s love for learning.

  6.21 The Master said, “You can speak about higher matters to those who are above the middle in intelligence but not to those who are below the middle in intelligence.”

  Confucius’ advice is practical and is applicable to anyone, but especially to teachers and officials charged with the responsibility of instructing the masses. To try to explain abstruse concepts or complex policies to people who simply cannot grasp what you say is not only a waste of your time and effort; your words may also confuse them or mislead them. This is the reason why Confucius “rarely s
poke about human nature and Heaven’s way,” even to his own disciples, Liu Baonan says; and this is also why, when instructing his disciples, he “would do it a step at a time” while “coaxing them to move forward,” and he would adjust his teachings to fit the predisposition and temperament of each disciple.

  6.22 Fan Chi asked about wisdom. The Master said, “Work for what is appropriate and right in human relationships; show respect to the gods and spirits while keeping them at a distance—this can be called wisdom.”

  Fan Chi asked about humaneness. The Master said, “The humane man takes on the difficult first and will not attend to any benefits [until he has completed his tasks].”

  Fan Chi was a warrior when he was younger. Now it seems that he was considering an administrative position in the Lu government, and so he asked Confucius several times about ways to serve the people of Lu wisely and humanely. Here Confucius gives a crisp response: stay close to the people and make sure that they do what is right in their familial relationships and in their relationship to the larger world; be in awe of the gods and spirits (because they are not something we can understand), and show them respect through the rites but keep them apart from the human world.

  Confucius’ response to Fan Chi’s question about humaneness may seem overly exact and limiting, but it is understandable, given the background of this conversation. The Song statesman and general Fan Zhongyan, many centuries later, rephrased what Confucius says here in a declaration of his own commitment to public service. He said, “To be first in worrying about the world’s worries and last to enjoy its pleasures.”

  6.23 The Master said, “The wise delight in water; the humane delight in mountains. The wise are in motion; the humane are still. The wise are joyful; the humane are long-lived.”

  What Confucius says here is abstruse. Why do the wise delight in water, and why do the humane delight in mountains? And even more perplexing is the statement that the wise are joyful while the humane are long-lived. What did Confucius mean by “long-lived”? These questions gave rise to many theories and conjectures, some very smart and insightful and others simply outlandish. Qian Mu suggests that we break the statement down into three parts: what the wise and humane delight in; what they are like; and the effects that being in motion and being still have on the wise and on the humane. Liu Baonan in his commentary has a lengthy discussion about what the wise and the humane delight in. Quoting an early Han source, he says that not just the wise but all virtuous men are drawn to rivers or streams because they bring to mind wonderful things—the source, the living impulse, a forward motion, unfathomable depths, clearness and purity. Yet only the humane have a deep connection with mountains: mountains are still and stable; they do not move but they are home to grass and trees, birds and animals, and all living things. The humane find a home in mountains, and they are still, like the mountains, because they are contemplative and their lives are reflective lives. None of the commentaries, I feel, gives a satisfying explanation of why “the wise are joyful,” but Cheng Shude proposes an interesting way of considering the statement “the humane are long-lived.” He feels that “a long or short life is not measured by the number of years one has lived” but by how one has lived. “A person lived a long life,” he explains, if “he was able to realize fully his inborn nature in the time alloted to him.” Thus even though Yan Hui died young, he lived a long life. Cheng’s interpretation bears Mencius’ influence, and so one cannot say for sure that this was what Confucius meant when he said, “the humane are long-lived.”

  6.24 The Master said, “With one great change the state of Qi could resemble the state of Lu. With one great change, [the government of] Lu could embody the moral way.”

  Here Confucius expresses his bias: he believed that Qi was inferior to Lu because the founder of Qi, though a capable man, was inferior to the founder of Lu, who was the son of the supreme counselor, the Duke of Zhou. An early Han source says that this was evident from the beginning, just a few years after these two men were enfeoffed to create their separate states in the east. Even then, this source continues, the Duke of Zhou noticed traces of a hegemon in the words and policies of the founder of the Qi and evidence of a true king in his own son’s conduct. But by Confucius’ time, Qi and Lu had become indistinguishable: the rulers of both places lacked talent and probity. Yet Confucius still believed that with one great change things could turn around in Lu because of her history and also because of his faith in what good counselors like himself could do even in an age of moral depravity.

  6.25 The Master said, “A gu is not a gu. How could it be a gu? How could it be a gu?

  This is another enigmatic comment, even more elusive than that in 6.23. The discussions in the commentaries are primarily about the identity of gu, whether it was a drinking vessel used in rituals or a wooden writing tablet. Most scholars feel that it is easier to gauge what Confucius was trying to say if we think of a gu as a drinking vessel, and they feel that Confucius’ lament was about what his contemporaries had done to a gu: either the ritual object was now poorly made and was of inferior quality, or its size and shape had been altered to hold more wine. And so he said, “A gu is not a gu.” But lacking a context, this reading remains speculative.

  6.26 Zai Wo asked, “If a humane man, a renren, is told that someone is stuck in a well, would he go down the well himself to see what he could do?”

  The Master said, “Why would he do that? A gentleman, a junzi, can go and take a look but he is not going to hurl himself into a trap. He can be deceived but not ensnared.”

  A humane man, a renren, is someone who is able to feel the fear and anxiety of another more sharply than other people, and also someone who will always act on his empathy. Thus if he is told about a man trapped in a well, he will for sure try to lower himself into the well before attempting to find ways to get that person out. This is an alarming thought for Zai Wo, and so he asks his teacher whether this is indeed what a humane man might do should such a situation arise. Confucius, however, does not wish to talk about the humane man in his response to Zai Wo. He says that “a gentleman, a junzi, can go and take a look”: a gentleman would try to do the right thing, and he might be deceived but he will not be entrapped. A century later, Confucius’ follower Mencius enlarged on this idea to say that a gentleman may be fooled into believing what others tell him if their words seem reasonable, but he cannot be tricked into thinking that a fraudulent way is the correct way.

  6.27 The Master said, “The gentleman broadens his learning in literature and holds himself back with the practice of the rites. And so he is able not to go beyond the bounds of the moral way.”

  Scholars cannot agree as to what Confucius meant here: whether literature and the rites together should be the foundation of one’s cultivation or whether one should rely on the practice of the rites to rein in one’s knowledge so that one does not swerve from the moral way. Liu Baonan offers a solution. He begins his explanation with a long quotation from the eighteenth-century scholar Cheng Yaotian’s elegant essay on why literature matters. Cheng writes:

  What should we learn? Literature. The sages and worthies realized the moral way long before us, and so they are surely our teachers. But they are no longer here, and what is kept is found in the literary tradition. If literature is kept alive, then the dao, the moral way, is kept alive; and if the dao is kept alive, then teachings of the sages and worthies are kept alive. Thus we have much to gain from studying literature. Moreover, its influence can be more inspiring [than being in the presence of a great man] because it calls upon us to articulate our ideas and beckons us to draw analogies. Thus what literature offers us is more than something to rely on: it takes us by the hand and bolsters us up; it holds us by the arm to get us on our way.

  But why learn so widely from literature? Cheng explains that we would know, for instance, that the cultural vestiges of both Emperor Yao and Confucius are rich and beautiful, but without broad knowledge we would not be able to perceive the nuances of
their richness and beauty or the differences that lie [in the shades and tones] of their richness and beauty. Building on Cheng’s ideas, Liu Baonan says that if we consider literature as “the vehicle for transmitting the dao,” then “the rites are the means to make it evident.” “To learn widely and observe widely allows a person to store up his knowledge of the moral, but he must put it to the test through the practice of the rites.”

  6.28 The Master went to see Nanzi. Zilu was not happy. The Master swore an oath to him: “If I have done anything wrong, may Heaven forsake me, may Heaven forsake me.”

  Nanzi, a highly sexed woman known for her indiscretions, was the wife of Duke Ling of Wei. Confucius paid her a visit when he was living in Wei. Sima Qian, in his biography of Confucius, turns these two lines in the Analects into a scene that seems slightly risqué. He writes, “The lady was sitting behind a ge-hemp curtain. Confucius entered the room. Facing north, he got down on his knees and placed his hands on the ground. He bowed with his head touching his hands. The lady returned the formality from within the curtain—the jade pendants on her girdle tinkled as she bowed.”

  While Sima Qian found the references to Zilu’s displeasure and Confucius’ sworn oath a perfect launch for storytelling, Confucian scholars scramble to come up with a reasonable explanation for Confucius’ visit. Some say that it was the ritual rules at the time that dictated his decision—that as a distinguished guest in the state of Wei, he had to pay the ruler’s wife a visit. Qian Mu, however, offers a more plausible answer: when Confucius was in Wei, he was desperate for a job in Duke Ling’s government, and so when no offer came, he went to see Nanzi and also Wangsun Jia.