The Analects

by Confucius

  12.6 Zizhang asked about keen perception. The Master said, “When slanders that seep under your skin and grievances that cut through the flesh do not drive you to an immediate response, you may be said to have keen perception. And if indeed you are this clear-eyed, you may be said to have far-reaching perception.”

  The seventeenth-century scholar Lu Longqi says that the key to understanding Confucius’ response is by way of his interlocutor: Zizhang had large ambitions and a high opinion of his own intellect, and when he asked about keen perception, he probably expected his teacher to begin with something grand—something that he alone could grasp. Confucius, however, surprised him. His description of keen perception was tactile, beginning with slanders and grievances that can gnaw at you and pain you. And if they “do not drive you to an immediate response,” he said, then “you may be said to have keen perception,” and keen perception not only of things near at hand but also of things from a great distance—the subject that had prompted Zizhang’s question in the first place.

  12.7 Zigong asked about the way of governing. The Master said, “Sufficient food, a well-equipped army, and the trust of the common people.”

  Zigong said, “Suppose you are forced to do away with one, which of the three would you let go first?”

  The Master said, “The army.”

  Zigong continued, “Suppose you are forced to give up one more, which of the two would you let go now?”

  The Master said, “Food. Death has been the human lot since the beginning of time, but a state cannot survive if it does not have the trust of the common people.”

  Liu Baonan gives a most thoughtful reading of this dialogue between Zigong and Confucius. When a state has sufficient food, a well-equipped army, and the trust of the people, he says, it cannot but be strong. But this was not the point of the conversation, he notes. Confucius and Zigong were talking about which of the three bases a government should give up when a state is in distress—when it has been struck by disasters such as drought or plague. Confucius’ answer is “army first,” which Liu understands to mean military conscription because this would give the people some relief. But if the situation deteriorates and the state is sliding into an even darker place, what might be the next thing to forgo? Confucius says food, because since the beginning of time there has always been death from starvation, but trust is something a ruler should never give up. But this does not mean that Confucius had little regard for the lives of the common people. When a state was on the verge of collapse, Confucius felt, its only hope for survival was having the trust of the people. In Liu Baonan’s words, “Even when the people were dying from hunger, they could not find anything to criticize about their ruler’s integrity.”

  12.8 Ji Zicheng said, “What matters about a gentleman is the stuff he is made of. What need is there for cultural refinement?”

  Zigong said, “I am sorry to hear what you have just said about the gentleman. Even a team of horses cannot catch up with [misspoken words] from a tongue. The stuff of a gentleman is not different from his refinement, and his refinement is not different from the stuff he is made of. The skin of a tiger or a leopard, shorn of hair, is not different from the skin of dog or a sheep.”

  It is telling that Zigong should have had this conversation with Ji Zicheng, who, according to some early sources, was a counselor from the state of Wei. As I point out in my comments on 11.19, it was Confucius who made the observation that because Zigong refused to accept his lot, he learned to make money, and in so doing he acquired the skills of “assessing a situation” and “reading people.” This means that Zigong was able to let his experience in moneymaking hone his mind and wits, and so, one could say, what became of him through refinement was indistinguishable from the stuff he was made of. To support his argument here, Zigong could have pointed to himself.

  12.9 Duke Ai said to You Ruo [Youzi], “This is a lean year. I don’t have enough to keep things going. What should I do?”

  You Ruo replied, “Why not apply the [Zhou] system of che, under which the people were taxed one part in ten?”

  “If I don’t seem to have enough if I tax them two parts in ten, how will I manage if I tax them one part in ten?”

  You Ruo replied, “If the people have enough, how can their ruler be left without enough? When the people do not have enough, how can their ruler hope to have enough?”

  There are three separate questions that need to be addressed: the time of this conversation, the nature of the two kinds of taxes being discussed, and whether You Ruo was indeed the person Duke Ai approached regarding the state of Lu’s financial troubles. Some scholars think that this conversation must have taken place sometime between the years 483 and 482 BC, when the farmers of Lu were left with very little to live on after repeated plagues of locusts, and their ruler was worried about the military buildup in the neighboring state of Qi. It was for this reason, they say, that Duke Ai turned to You Ruo for advice: he needed more revenue for military spending and other expenditures and did not know how to get it. Liu Baonan, however, feels that this happened before 483, before the situation in Lu became desperate but at a time when the ruler was already strapped for money. So in this scene Duke Ai is hoping that You Ruo can help him find a solution to the financial woes of his government.

  You Ruo’s response—reduce the tax to one part in ten—may have seemed counterintuitive. But, like his teacher, You Ruo believed that if the ruler were to extract even more from his people when they were already living in privation, he in the end would have the most to lose. The third-century BC Confucian Xunzi, in his essay “Enriching the State,” says that one could think of the land and fields as the roots of a state’s wealth, the granaries and storehouses as the branches of its wealth. “If the land and fields are desolate while the granaries and storehouses are full, if the people are left with nothing while the treasuries and arsenals are overflowing with supplies,” Xunzi writes, “this means that the country is on the verge of collapse.” And to avoid such a calamity, he writes, the ruler must nurture the roots: he must allow the land and fields to flourish and his people to have enough—which means that he cannot overburden them with taxes, especially during lean years. And a reasonable tax, You Ruo tells Duke Ai here, is one part in ten, the standard set by the Duke of Zhou. The “one part,” according to many of the early sources, was not taken from the crop the people harvested each year from the land that belonged to their homesteads; it was the crop grown on a parcel of public land to which every family in a nine-family unit had to contribute their share of work. This was the reason why in 594, about fifty years before Confucius was born, when the ruler of Lu, Duke Huan, introduced a land tax—a tax based on the crop yield from the farmers’ own land—his action was thought to be “against the ritual propriety.” The author of the Zuo Commentary writes, “To increase his wealth, a ruler should not collect more grain from his people than what he receives through the labor he borrows from them.”

  Finally there is the question of You Ruo. He was the Youzi (Master You) who appears in 1.2, 1.12, and 1.13. He was forty-three years younger than Confucius, and by 484 or 483 he was still in his twenties, and so could not have been in a position that would have allowed him access to the ruler of Lu. Thus there may have been some confusion in the transmission of this account—an error on the part of a scribe, perhaps. If that is so, we still do not know who the person in this conversation with Duke Ai was.

  12.10 Zizhang asked, “How does one take virtue to a higher level, and how does one know that one’s judgment is clouded?”

  The Master said, “If you hold on to doing your best and being trustworthy [in words] as your principle and try always to direct your intent and action to what is right, you will be taking virtue to a higher level. When you like a person, you want him to live. When you dislike a person, you want him to die. To wish him to live at one moment and to wish him to die at the next, this is clouded judgment. [The Ode says,]

  ‘Not for her wealth, oh, no!
<
br />   But merely for the novelty.’”

  The Song scholar Cheng Yi says that the two lines from Ode 188, “I Ventured into the Wild,” are “misplaced bamboo strips,” which, he believes, should come at the beginning of 16.12. But given the context of the poem—a woman decrying the fickleness of her husband, saying that it was not the wealth of the other woman but the novelty of a fling that made him unfaithful—these two lines seem to fit well with what Confucius says here about “clouded judgment.” In his view, feelings are what clouds judgment, and feelings of like and dislike can weigh so heavily upon one’s thoughts about another that they metamorphose from a wish of life to a wish of death.

  12.11 Duke Jing of Qi asked Confucius about the way of governing.

  Confucius replied, “Let the ruler be a ruler, the subject be a subject, a father be a father, a son be a son.”

  The Duke said, “Right! If indeed the ruler is not a ruler, a subject is not a subject, a father is not a father, a son is not a son, even though there is plenty of grain, will I be able to eat it?”

  Scholars like to give a historicist reading of this conversation. Confucius’ response, they argue, was directed toward Duke Jing’s private troubles: this man was losing the authority of his position and the respect of his subjects, and he was also having difficulty deciding which of his sons should be the heir apparent, so, in the eyes of his people, he lacked the integrity of a ruler and of a father. Yet what Confucius said also expressed a fundamental concept in his political teachings. One later historian explains: When rulers and subjects, fathers and sons give considerable thought to the question of what it means to be ruler or subject, father or son, then “they will come to realize the weight [and enormous responsibility] inherent in these names.” Confucius himself refers to the concept as “rectifying names” (zhengming) in 13.3 when Zigong asks him about “the way of government.”

  Scholars also try to establish when the meeting may have taken place. Most believe that it happened in 517 BC, the year the ruler of Lu was forced into exile by the hereditary families. They say that Confucius left Lu for Qi, to avert the turmoil back home and to find a job. They also point out that a year later, in 516, Duke Jing’s chief counselor, Master Yan, gave this ruler very similar advice about how to put his state and family in order, which, these scholars say, could suggest that Master Yan, following Confucius’ lead, was putting more pressure on Duke Jing to act responsibly. I, however, feel that Confucius did not visit the state of Qi until much later, perhaps around 505, when the retainers in the hereditary families of Lu were edging toward staging an uprising. Knowing that an upheaval was imminent, Confucius left for a safer place. And by this time it was probably not that hard for him to secure a government position elsewhere because he was already known outside of Lu as a wise counselor and a capable administrator. Did Duke Jing offer him a job after their meeting? We are told in 18.3 that he did consider giving him one, but when the question of position and salary came up, he dithered, saying that he was too old and too tired to find a suitable fit for Confucius’ talents in his government. Duke Jing did not die until fifteen years later, and after his death it took less than a decade for his descendants to lose the rulership to a member of the powerful Chen family, which was something that the counselor Master Yan had predicted long before.

  12.12 The Master said, “The person who could bring a legal case to a conclusion by speaking from just one side of a dispute is You [Zilu], is it not?” Zilu would never wait for a moment to fulfill his promise.

  An alternative reading of Confucius’ comment about Zilu is: “The person who could decide on a legal case from hearing just one side of a dispute is You (Zilu), is it not?” This puts Zilu in a negative light—since it suggests that he would make up his mind before hearing the other side of the argument—which is not consistent with the remaining comment about him, that he was trustworthy. My translation reflects the reading of Liu Baonan and Qian Mu. Liu says, “Because Zilu had the trust of others, people did not think that he could deceive them, and so even when he was speaking from one side of a dispute, they believed that it had to be the honest truth.”

  12.13 The Master said, “In hearing litigation, I am no different from others. Yet what I think is important is to bring it about that litigation no longer exists.”

  Most scholars focus on the second sentence, but Liu Baonan thinks that we should consider the two sentences together, beginning with Confucius’ remark that he was no different from others in hearing litigation—which meant that in deciding a case, he, like any responsible legal officer, would listen closely to the words of the parties involved and observe closely their manners and dispositions—but what was more important than hearing litigation was not letting litigation happen at all. By the latter remark Confucius could have meant either that the adjudicator should try to get the two sides to work out their differences without having to resort to litigation, or that the adjudicator should get the side that has no reason to litigate to stop pursuing the case. Most traditional scholars, however, have yet another view. They feel that Confucius was trying to get to the root of the problem. They say that it was his belief that litigation would not exist if people learned to respect one another and let their conduct be guided by ritual propriety.

  12.14 Zizhang asked about the way of governing. The Master said, “Never be weary when you are in the position you occupy. Do your best when you conduct business.”

  In their commentaries on this passage, scholars like to quote the Elder Dai’s Book of Rites, which says that in order to carry out a policy effectively, the official in charge has to take the lead and be an example to his people. I, however, prefer to understand it as the way Confucius told it, which I read to mean: When you are not tired of your job, you will do your best, and that is the most effective way to conduct business in government.

  12.15 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.”

  Since this is a repetition of 6.27, one could refer to the commentary there.

  12.16 The Master said, “A gentleman helps others to realize what is good in them. He does not help others to realize what is reprehensible about them. A petty man is just the opposite.”

  The Elder Dai’s Book of Rites gives slightly more depth to what Confucius observes here about the gentleman. It says, “The gentleman likes to see other people doing what is good, but he will not pressure them to do so. He does not like to see other people doing what is not good, but he will not show his anxiety. He may be worried about the mistakes other people made, but he will not try to patch things up for them. He will enhance the goodness of others, but he will not cause them to become arrogant. When a person is arrogant, he will not move forward. When a person has his flaws patched up by someone else, he will not know to correct them.”

  12.17 Ji Kangzi asked about the way of governing [zheng]. Confucius replied, “To govern [zheng] is to correct [zheng]. When you set an example by correcting your mistakes, who will dare not to correct his mistakes?”

  Confucius, as I understand him, believed that having the awareness to correct your mistakes was the key to perfecting your character and also the way to realizing a strong and moral government. His teaching about “rectifying names” in 12.11 and 13.3 follows this idea, for to rectify names is to reform one’s ways in a continuing effort to give integrity back to such names as “father” and “son,” “ruler” and “subject.”

  12.18 Ji Kangzi was troubled about the problem of thieves, and he asked Confucius for advice.

  Confucius said, “When you do not have excessive desires, even if you were to offer rewards for stealing, people would not do it.”

  Here Ji Kangzi was worried about something specific—the prevalence of thieves in Lu. Confucius’ response implies that Ji Kangzi, who was the most powerful man in Lu, more powerful than the ruler he served, was himself no different from a th
ief: this man stole from the people, even from those who were desperate, because he could not rein in his desires. Confucius’ criticism of Ran Qiu in 11.17 had already exposed the greed of this man’s family, and in the present exchange, Confucius tells it to Ji Kangzi straight: If you stop stealing from others, the people will also stop, and, in fact, “even if you were to offer rewards for stealing, the people would not do it.”

  12.19 Ji Kangzi asked Confucius about the way of governing, saying, “In order to realize the moral way, how about if I were to kill those who do not live by it?”

  Confucius replied, “As head of the government, why would you need to kill anyone [to bring about moral order]? The character of those at the top [junzi] is like that of the wind. The character of those below [xiaoren] is like that of grass. When wind blows over the grass, the grass is sure to bend.”

  Usually when they appear in the Analects, junzi and xiaoren refer to “the gentleman” and “the petty man.” But here, as Qian Mu points out, they probably refer to their older meaning of “the ruler” and “the ruled”—which were purely designations of position, without any moral intimation. And the central question in this conversation is how to order society. Ji Kangzi suggests the eradication of the bad. But Confucius says: You are the head of the government—the most powerful man in the state—why would you need to kill anyone? Think about the power you hold—you are like the wind, which can bend whatever is in its path. Moreover, if your power is founded on integrity, surely you can bring all the people under your moral sway.