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

34
CONFUCIUS
sons to have constancy, when they pretend to have that which
they are destitute of, to be full when they are empty, to
"
do
things on a grand scale when their means are contracted !
When the Master fished with hook and line, he did not also
use a net. When out with his bow, he would never shoot at
game in cover.
" Some there may be," said he, " who do things in ignorance
of what they do. I am not of these. There is an alternative
way of knowing things, viz.—to sift out the good from the
many things one hears, and follow it ;
and to keep in memory
the many things one sees."
Pupils from Hu-hiang were difificult to speak with. One
youth came to interview the Master, and the disciples were in
doubt whether he ought to have been seen. " Why so much
ado," said the Master, " at my merely permitting his approach,
and not rather at my allowing him to draw back? If a man
have cleansed himself in order to come and see me, I receive
him as such ; but I do not undertake for what he will do when
he goes away."
" Is the philanthropic spirit far to seek, indeed? " the Master
"
exclaimed ; "I wish for it, and it is with me !
The Minister of Crime in the State of Ch'in asked Confucius
whether Duke Ch'au, of Lu was acquainted with the Proprieties
; and he answered, " Yes, he knows them."
When Confucius had withdrawn, the minister bowed to
Wu-ma K'i, a disciple, and motioned to him to come forward.
He said, " I have heard that superior men show no partiality
are they, too, then, partial ? That prince took for his wife a lady
of the Wu family, having the same surname as himself, and
had her named ' Lady Tsz of Wu, the elder.' If he knows the
Proprieties, then who does not ? "
The disciple reported this to the Master, who thereupon remarked,
" Well for me ! If I err in any way, others are sure to
know of it."
When the Master was in company with any one who sang,
and who sang well, he must needs have the song over again, and
after that would join in it.
" Although in letters," he said, " I may have none to compare
with me, yet in my personification of the * superior man ' I have
not as yet been successful."
" *A Sage and a Philanthropist ? ' How
should I have the
;