by Confucius
7.36 The Master said, “Being extravagant often means that you lack humility. Being frugal often means that you are shabby. I would rather be shabby than lacking in humility.”
Liu Baonan thinks that what Confucius says here applies only to the rites. Qian Mu, however, feels that it is relevant to human character. He says, “an extravagant person wants to be at the top of the heap,” and so the person is a show-off, and he would be “unwilling to yield to anyone.” A frugal person, because “he tries to be abstemious in everything he does, may in the end cut himself off from other people,” but “the problem lies within him”—“he will not treat anyone high-handedly.”
7.37 The Master said, “The gentleman is large of spirit and mind, while the petty man is always nervous about something.”
The gentleman does all he can, and so he is at ease and is not afraid to face the unknown. A petty man has no anchor, and so he frets about everything.
7.38 The Master is gentle but serious and principled, dignified but not fierce, respectful but relaxed.
Only by chiseling and filing could one come upon the paradoxical nature in a gentleman’s character, thus seeing him more sharply and more accurately. This is what Confucius shows Zigong in 1.15, and it is reflected here in what other people observed about Confucius.
BOOK EIGHT
8.1 The Master said, “Tai Bo may be said to embody the highest virtue. Three times he yielded his right to the empire. And the people did not know that this was what he had done, and so they did not accord him the recognition he deserved.”
Tai Bo was King Wen’s uncle and King Wu’s granduncle—therefore, an ancestor of the Zhou royal family. He was the oldest son of the Zhou chieftain Tai Wang and was heir to his father’s position. But he realized that his younger brother, Ji Li, was a worthy man, and that Ji Li’s own son, the future King Wen, possessed the disposition of a sage, and so he relinquished his right to become the head of the Zhou tribe to Ji Li. This gave Ji Li’s son and grandson a chance to realize their potential, which they did as founders of a new dynasty. But why did Tai Wang yield his right “three times”? One can find several explanations in the early sources, but Zheng Xuan’s is the most compelling and the one that makes the most sense, in Liu Baonan’s view. “Tai Bo wished to have his brother established as heir but lacked the authority,” Zheng Xuan says, “and so when his father, Tai Wang, fell ill, he used this opportunity to go to the regions of Wu and Yue [in the east] to gather herbal medicine for him. After Tai Wang died, he did not return home, thus letting his brother Ji Li be the presiding mourner. This was the first time he relinquished his right. After Ji Li informed him of the date of the funeral for their father, Tai Wang did not hasten home for it. This was the second time he relinquished his right. After he declined to attend the funeral, he cut his hair and tattooed his body [thus following the customs of his adopted land]. This was the third time he relinquished his right. The most remarkable thing about his yielding his right three times was the fact that he kept his deed hidden, and so ‘the people did not know what he had done and did not accord him the recognition he deserved.’” What distinguished Tai Wang from the rest was not that he yielded his right three times, but that he kept what he did out of sight, and this, Zheng Xuan thinks, was the reason why Confucius thought that he exemplified “the highest virtue.”
8.2 The Master said, “Unless a man acts according to the spirit of the rites, in being respectful, he will tire himself out; in being cautious, he will become timid; in being brave, he will become unruly; in being forthright, he will become derisive.
“If a person in a ruling position [junzi] is generous toward his family and kin, the common people will be inspired to act humanely. If he does not forget old friends and acquaintances, the common people will not be uncharitable.”
Most of the discussions in the commentaries are about whether the two sections should be treated as separate entries because there is no obvious connection between them. Yet the ideas in either section give one much to chew over. Confucius in the first section tells us about the subtle power of the rites. It can give a person balance, Confucius says, especially when he thinks that he is behaving correctly and, therefore, does not need anything to hold him back: what this person does not see is the unseemly, the offensive, side of his behavior if he does not rely on the rites to restrain him from going too far. The advice in the second section, inspired perhaps by what the Duke of Zhou says to his son in 18.10, was intended for men in the ruling position, also called junzi. These men were different from the junzi, the gentleman, who is distinguished by the integrity of his words and conduct.
8.3 When Master Zeng [Zengzi] was seriously ill, he summoned his disciples and said, “Look at my feet. Look at my hands. The Ode says,
‘In fear and trembling,
As if standing on the edge of an abyss,
As if treading on thin ice.’
Only now do I know I have been spared from harm, my young friends.”
Confucius’ youngest disciple, Zeng Can, has a prominent presence in this chapter—five statements are attributed to him. He is called Master Zeng probably because his disciples, along with the disciples of You Ruo, Zixia, Zizhang, and Ziyou, were responsible for drafting an early version of the Analects. An overwhelming sense of filial duty distinguished Master Zeng from others, which is what we find here: he asks his disciples to examine his hands and feet before he dies; he wants them to realize that he has kept the body given to him by his parents unharmed, which, he says, was not an easy feat. According to a Han ritual text, Dai De’s Book of Rites, Master Zeng claimed that he had heard Confucius say, “A child receives from his parents a body that is intact when he is born, and if he keeps it intact when he dies, this is called filiality.”
8.4 Master Zeng [Zengzi] was seriously ill. Meng Jingzi came to ask how he was. Master Zeng said, “When a bird is about to die, its cries are sorrowful. When a man is about to die, his words carry weight. A gentleman prizes three things in his pursuit of the Way: he gravely deports himself, and so his temperament is far from being violent and surly; he keeps a dignified expression, and so his character is close to being trustworthy; he uses a proper choice of words and a clear tone of voice, and so he avoids being vulgar and unruly. And as for the sacrificial vessels, there are professionals to look after such matters.”
Meng Jingzi was a scion of the Mengsun family, the son of Meng Wubo and grandson of Meng Yizi, and a counselor in Lu in the early Warring States period. Confucius had conversations with both his father and grandfather, but Meng Jingzi was a younger contemporary of Confucius’ disciple Zeng Can (Master Zeng). According to the Han scholar Bao Xian, Meng Jingzi paid too much attention to details when conducting the rites, and so when Master Zeng saw him on his deathbed, he pointed out to him the more important matters in ritual practice—those that pertain to one’s deportment, countenance, and speech and are essential to the cultivation of one’s character.
8.5 Master Zeng [Zengzi] said, “To be able yet to seek the advice of those who are less able; to know a great deal yet to seek the advice of those who know little; to have something [you] yet seemingly to have nothing [wu]; to be full [shi] yet seemingly to be empty [xu]; to be trespassed against yet to be content to lay aside any need for reprisal—in the past, a friend of mine devoted his effort to realizing this.”
What Master Zeng says here about his friend resonates with the teachings shared by many early thinkers: Mencius, Xunzi, Zhuangzi—and, most prominently, the author(s) of the Laozi, because the main arguments in that book are built on the relationships of such concepts as “to have” (you) and “not to have” (wu), “full” (shi) and “empty” (xu), and the Laozi’s point is that once you have worked out these relationships, you can use your knowledge to survive in the world, to advance yourself, or to cultivate virtue. Master Zeng, of course, has only the moral self in mind when he applies these ideas to what he remembers about his friend, whom most scholars believe to be Yan Hui. In Liu Baona
n’s mind, an essay called “The Way of Humility” (Xudao), by the late Han thinker Xu Gan, best illustrates Master Zeng’s point here. Xu says:
In acting virtuously, can one be likened to an empty vessel? If a vessel is empty, then things will flow into it, ceasing when it is full. Thus the gentleman constantly empties his heart’s ambitions and makes his demeanor respectful. He does not use his superior talents to be condescending toward the multitude of people; rather he looks upon others as though they were worthy, and upon himself as though he was wanting. Thus others are willing to tell him what they know and are never tired of doing it. The Book of Changes says: “The superior person receives others with emptiness.” The Book of Poetry says, “That admirable gentleman / What do I have that I could tell him?” In his approach to the way of goodness, the gentleman remembers the big and the small for what they are. Irrespective of their relative importance, he bears them in mind, and then, at the right time, he will draw upon them and put them into practice. What I know cannot be taken away from me; what I don’t know, I will learn it from others—it is by this means that the gentleman is always ahead of others in his achievement while others lag behind.
Xu Gan was an eclectic thinker, even though in the formal histories he is treated as a Confucian. He lived in the last fifty years of the Han dynasty, at a time when the teachings of the Laozi were on the rise and when thought and practice tended to defy rigid classifications. Thus Liu Baonan is right to use Xu Gan’s writing to illustrate early Chinese teachings, before bibliographers and ideologues tried to separate the two into distinct categories.
8.6 Master Zeng [Zengzi] said, “A man who can be entrusted with the care of an orphan six chi tall and charged with the command of a state of one hundred square li in size, someone who will not waver when faced with a serious crisis—is he not a gentleman? He is a gentleman.”
In Master Zeng’s time, six chi, according to some calculations, would have been somewhere between three and four feet. So the orphan mentioned here must be a very young child, and traditional scholars say that this orphan was not just any orphan but a child who became a ruler at a young age and so needed a counselor—or a regent—who could take on the responsibility of governing a state of a relatively large size. If this counselor could stand firm in his charge, Master Zeng says, “Is he not a gentleman?”
8.7 Master Zeng [Zengzi] said, “A man of education and aspiration [shi] must be big and strong [in spirit and mind], and he must be resolute. His burden is heavy, and his road is long. He takes [the fulfillment of] humaneness as his burden. Is it not heavy? And his road ends only with death. Is it not long?”
A shi was not an aristocrat: he was not entitled to any income or privileges he had not earned himself. He was a common gentleman, and his education and aspirations were what put him in a class above the ordinary folk. Confucius was a shi, and there were many shi among his disciples. Here Master Zeng tells the common gentleman that his principal purpose is not making a living but perfecting his humaneness, which is a burden so heavy that it demands a large spirit and a strong mind, as well as a willfulness that will keep him on that track until he dies.
8.8 The Master said, “The Odes are to stimulate [our mind and spirit]. The rites are to steady us. Music is the final lesson.”
Poetry, the rites, and music take up a large part of Confucius’ remarks in the Analects, but rarely do they appear together and in a sequence. This passage has led some scholars to believe that this was how Confucius organized his teachings: poetry comes first, to give our spirit and mind a lift; the rites follow poetry, to hold us back lest we become heady; and only after we have learned to steady ourselves are we prepared to gather up the distinct pieces to create music. Another way of understanding Confucius’ comment is to consider the order he proposes here as an analogy for the steps to take to perfect our inborn nature—from inspiring it to reach higher, to teaching it to find balance, to drawing together a life that is as fluent as perfect music.
8.9 The Master said, “The common people can be made to follow a course of action, but they cannot be made to understand the reasons for doing it.”
Liu Baonan observes that just as Confucius separated out disciples who could be instructed to follow a particular course of action from disciples who could actually understand why such a course of action was morally superior, he made the same distinction among humans as a whole. Qian Mu feels that Confucius was not trying to belittle the common people but that he was merely telling the ruler that it would be more effective simply to point out the right course of action to his people rather than to rely on “words and argument first to make them understand why they should pursue such a course.” Explanations can give rise to misunderstanding and doubt in minds that are not ready to follow what is said, Qian Mu writes, and consequently there will be more obstacles for the ruler to overcome.
8.10 The Master said, “If the people love bravery and at the same time are angry about their poverty, this is a formula for chaos. If the people are infuriated with men who are inhumane, this, too, will lead to chaos.”
Since the subject of the second sentence could also be the ruler, it is possible to understand the sentence to say: “If you detest men who are inhumane to an extreme, this may provoke them to instigate incidents of disorder.” Nearly all the commentaries follow this interpretation. Still, I prefer mine because it lets the subject of the two sentences stay the same, and, even more important, Confucius in this reading gives the people a more prominent voice. He explains why they might be driven to create social upheaval, and why the ruler should hear them out and try to alleviate their troubles.
8.11 The Master said, “Although a person may have talents as outstanding as those of the Duke of Zhou, if he is arrogant and ungenerous, none of his other qualities are worth admiring.”
An arrogant person thinks highly of his own talents, Liu Baonan writes, and an ungenerous person guards what he knows and what he possesses jealously. The two are often the same man. Such a person, in Mencius’ words, keeps others “miles away.” He may have “beautiful talents,” Qian Mu observes, but he lacks “beautiful virtue.”
8.12 The Master said, “It is hard to find a person who, after three years of studying, has not yet turned his thoughts to earning a salary.”
Confucius was unusually frank about the predicament of a shi, a man who got an education because he had higher aspirations. Most of such men wanted respectable jobs, and, in early China, this meant positions in government. And it was Confucius who encouraged them to set their sights on something even higher: Let learning take you to self-reform, he said. Yet he also realized just how hard it was not to think about earning a living while you were studying; he was, therefore, more realistic and more reasonable than his disciple Master Zeng, who seems to suggest in 8.7 that a shi should take the fulfillment of humaneness as his sole purpose—and his burden—in life. Perhaps Confucius’ remark was informed by his own experience as a man of education and learning: from the time that he was a young man, he was always looking for work, either at home in Lu or during his travels, because he needed a livelihood.
8.13 The Master said, “Have unshakable trust in [the moral path you pursue]. Love learning. Hold on to the way of the good until you die. Do not enter a state threatened with danger. Do not reside in a state embroiled in conflict. Show yourself when the moral way is evident. Seek reclusion when it is not. When the moral way prevails in a state, being poor and lowly is a cause for shame. When the moral way does not prevail in the world, having wealth and position is a cause for shame.”
Liu Baonan puts the first two ideas together in this way: When a person knows beyond any doubt that what he wants most is to pursue the moral way, he will love learning for as long as his life permits. But what did Confucius mean by “hold on to the way of the good until you die,” and why did he advise staying away from a state that was “threatened with danger” or “embroiled in conflict”? One would imagine that a person who is committed to the way of
the good is likely to be drawn to such a place, in order to put his faith to the test. Mencius, however, thought differently. He says, “Though nothing happens that is not due to destiny, one should accept only what is one’s proper destiny. This is the reason why he who understands destiny does not stand under a wall on the verge of collapse. He who dies having done his best in following the Way dies according to his proper destiny.” To do “[one’s] best in following the Way” does not mean that one should seek to be in a perilous place, to right some wrongs and undo the injustice that might have been the source of the trouble. To do one’s best, in Mencius’ teachings, is to perfect the self. Which, some scholars claim, is also what Confucius means by saying, “Hold on to the way of the good.” This seems to make sense in the context of what Confucius says here but becomes problematic when we consider some of his political decisions—his willingness to step into hazardous terrain and spar with men known for their bad behavior.
8.14 The Master said, “If you don’t have a particular position, then don’t meddle with any of its business.”
