Chinese and Arabian Literature - E. Wilson - The Search For Mecca

BOOK V
WAN CHANG*
Part I
WAN CHANG asked Mencius, saying, " When Shun
went into the fields, he cried out and wept towards
the pitying heavens. Why did he cry out and
weep?" Mencius replied, "He was dissatisfied and full of
earnest desire."
Wan Chang said, " When his parents love him, a son rejoices
and forgets them not ; and when they hate him, though
they punish him, he does not allow himself to be dissatisfied.
Was Shun then dissatisfied with his parents ? " Mencius said,
" Ch'ang Seih asked Kung-ming Kaou, saying, ' As to Shun's
going into the fields, I have received your instructions ; but I
do not understand about his weeping and crying out to the
pitying heavens, and to his parents.' Kung-ming Kaou answered
him, ' You do not understand that matter.' Now
Kung-ming Kaou thought that the heart of a filial son like
Shun could not be so free from sorrow as Seih seemed to imagine
he might have been. Shun would be saying, ' I exert my
strength to cultivate the fields, but I am thereby only discharging
my duty as a son. What is there wrong in me that my
parents do not love me ? '
" The emperor caused his own children—nine sons and two
daughters—the various officers, oxen and sheep, storehouses
and granaries, all to be prepared for the service of Shun amid
the channeled fields. Most of the officers in the empire re-
paired to him. The emperor designed that he should superin-
tend the empire along with himself, and then to transfer it to
* The Book is named from Wan having retired into privacy, composed
Chang, who is almost the only interlocu- the Seven Books which constitute his
tor with Mencius in it. The tradition works. The part which follows is all
is that it was in company with Wan's occupied with discussions in vindication
disciples that Mencius, baffled in all of Shun and other ancient worthies,
his hopes of doing public service, and
no