The Sayings of Confucius: A New Translation of the Greater Part of the Confucian Analects
PART OF THE CONFUCIAN ANALECTS · 1/3
The Sayings of Confucius: A New Translation of the Greater Part of the Confucian Analects
PART OF THE CONFUCIAN ANALECTS
1THE SAYINGS OF CONFUCIUS A NEW TRANSLATION OF THE GREATER WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES LIONEL GILES, M.A. 2(Oxon.) 3ASSISTANT IN THE DEPARTMENT OF ORIENTAL BOOKS AND MANUSCRIPTS OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM THE WISDOM OF THE EAST SERIES Edited by L. 4CRANMER-BYNG Dr. 5KAPADIA. 6NEW YORK E. 7DUTTON AND COMPANY 1910 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL DISCIPLES GOVERNMENT AND PUBLIC AFFAIRS INDIVIDUAL VIRTUE CONFUCIUS' ESTIMATE OF OTHERS CONFUCIUS ON HIMSELF MISCELLANEOUS SAYINGS PERSONALIA CONFUCIUS AS SEEN BY OTHERS SAYINGS OF THE DISCIPLES EDITORIAL NOTE The object of the Editors of this series is a very definite one. 8They desire above all things that, in their humble way, these books shall be the ambassadors of goodwill and understanding between East and West--the old world of Thought and the new of Action. 9In this endeavour, and in their own sphere, they are but followers of the highest example in the land. 10They are confident that a deeper knowledge of the great ideals and lofty philosophy of Oriental thought may help to a revival of that true spirit of Charity which neither despises nor fears the nations of another creed and colour. 11Finally, in thanking press and public for the very cordial reception given to the "Wisdom of the East" Series, they wish to state that no pains have been spared to secure the best specialists for the treatment of the various subjects at hand. 12CRANMER-BYNG. 13KAPADIA. 14NORTHBROOK SOCIETY, 185, PICCADILLY, W. 15INTRODUCTION Confucius is one of the few supremely great figures in the world's history. 16A man's greatness must always be measured, in the first place, by the consensus of opinion in his own country; the judgment of foreigners can only be allowed to have a secondary value. 17Especially is this true when the critics are not only foreigners, but belong to a totally different order of civilisation from the men whose greatness they would appraise. 18For even if they can keep their minds free from purely national bias of the unreasoning sort, they will naturally look for such attributes as are highly prized among themselves, and feel disappointed if these are not much in evidence. 19They will be apt to see certain defects too plainly, whereas they may easily overlook or fail to appreciate to the full those very qualities on which the title to greatness is mainly based. 20These errors and prejudices will, doubtless, tend to disappear as more intimate knowledge is gained and the essential unity of human nature shows itself beneath the accidents of custom and environment. 21But the process will always be slow. 22The name of Confucius may be deemed sufficiently familiar in the West to render unnecessary any revision of the popular verdict which has already been passed on him. 23But are his judges equally familiar with the teaching which his name represents? 24The name of Shakespeare was well enough known to Frenchmen in the time of Voltaire. 25Yet how many generations had to pass ere they began to recognise his true greatness? 26The parallel between dramatist and social reformer may seem strained, but it is not drawn at random. 27In both cases, wide differences of language and the inadequacy of translations to bridge the gap, lie at the root of the trouble. 28No great man has suffered more than Confucius from the stupidity, the misstatements and the misrepresentations, from the lack of sympathy and generosity, and, in some points, from the pure ignorance of his critics. 29Early travellers arriving from the West, amongst a people utterly alien to themselves in almost every detail--language, dress, habits, modes of thought, ethical ideals and general view of life--would have done well to walk very warily and, in the Confucian phrase, "to reserve their judgment" on what they saw and heard around them. 30But patience and discrimination were the very last virtues which these inquisitive newcomers had a mind to practise; and, unluckily, the extraordinary fame of the national sage marked him out as one of the earliest victims to their thirst for the marvellous. 31On the strength of Chinese evidence, readily forthcoming and eagerly swallowed, the most exaggerated accounts of this new luminary were poured into the ears of Europe, and it may well be imagined that these enthusiastic reports suffered no diminution in the telling. 32Confucius was the prince of philosophers, the wisest and most consummate of sages, the loftiest moralist, the most subtle and penetrating intellect that the world had ever seen. 33He was a statesman, a bard, an historian and an antiquary rolled into one. 34His sagacity put the most illustrious of ancient and modern philosophers to shame. 35He was the greatest and noblest representative of the greatest, happiest, and most highly civilised people on the face of the earth. 36Such extravagant eulogy could only pave the way for disillusionment. 37When, after the lapse of a hundred years or so, foreigners had painfully acquired sufficient knowledge of the language to enable them to begin translating, after a fashion, parts of the Classics said to have been composed by this glorious sage, or at least containing the choicest pearls of his wisdom still extant, it is not altogether surprising that the results did not come up to the general expectation. 38Reactionist in, and it soon became the fashion to decry the once much-lauded philosopher. 39His sayings, which had been extolled as the very epitome of wisdom, were now voted jejune and commonplace. 40His teaching was found to be shallow, disjointed, unsatisfying. 41He was blamed for his materialistic bias, for his rigid formalism, for his poverty of ideas, for his lack of spiritual elevation. 42Comparisons, much in his disfavour, were drawn between him and the founders of other world-systems of religion and ethics. 43All this before the circumstances of his career had been studied, before the surface of contemporary Chinese history had been so much as scratched, before the host of native commentators and critics had been consulted, or their existence even become known; above all, before the very book which contained his authentic sayings had been translated with anything approaching to exactness or understanding, or with a faint realisation of its numerous difficulties and pit-falls. 44Such was still the deplorable state of things when Legge set to work on his translation of the Confucian Canon, which when completed many years later, with its exhaustive prolegomena, notes and appendices, formed a truly wonderful monument of research and erudition. 45With its publication, Chinese scholarship was carried at once to a higher plane, and foreign study of Confucian doctrine began in earnest. 46The heavy accumulations of ignorance and error were in large part removed, and the figure of the great Teacher began at last to emerge from the "obliterating sands of time." 47His sayings were no longer read as interesting but desultory fragments of conversation, but studied in relation to the events of his life. 48From various Chinese sources, the chief of which were the Analects themselves and Ssŭ-ma Ch‘ien's biography, Legge managed to compile a good and coherent account of the sage's life, work and wanderings, which was an enormous advance on anything that had been done before, and is not likely, even in the future, to undergo any considerable addition or amendment. 49There are many minor points which may be disputed, and many long blanks which may never be filled up, but taken as a whole, the chronology and the leading events of the life of Confucius must now be considered as finally settled. 50If Legge is on firm ground where hard facts are concerned, it is far otherwise when he comes to draw inferences from these facts, to sum up the salient principles of Confucian ethics, and to pass judgment on the character of Confucius himself. 51His pronouncements on these points, too hastily accepted as final, need to be carefully re-examined and, as I shall hope to show, largely modified if not totally reversed. 52His opinion, of course, was based chiefly on his own interpretation of the more important sayings in the Analects, in translating which he had the oral help of native scholars, besides the benefit of voluminous standard commentaries. 53Thus equipped for his task, it cannot but appear strange that he, admittedly a great sinologue, should have gone so far astray as to miss the very core and essence of the doctrines to the elucidation of which he devoted most of his life. 54The explanation may lie in the fact that he was a Christian missionary in the first place, and only secondly a scientific student; he had come to teach and convert the heathen, not to be taught or converted by them. 55This preconceived idea acted as a drag on the free use of his understanding, and prevented him from entering whole-heartedly into his subject. 56We are told that the Master himself had "no foregone conclusions," but Legge's whole attitude to Confucianism bespoke one comprehensive and fatal foregone conclusion--the conviction that it must at every point prove inferior to Christianity. 57A certain inelasticity of mind showed itself also in the way in which he approached the work of translation. 58He was too apt to look upon a Chinese word as something rigid and unchanging in its content, which might be uniformly rendered by a single English equivalent. 59Delicate shades of meaning he too often ruthlessly ignored. 60Now there is a certain number of Chinese terms which mirror Chinese ideas, but have really no absolute equivalent in English at all, and must therefore be translated with the aid of circumlocution, and in such a way as to suit the context and the general spirit of the passage. 61It is in such terms, unfortunately, that the very essence and inner significance of the Confucian teaching are contained. 62Obviously, if proper equivalents are not given, the whole sense of the passages in which they occur will be lost or violently distorted. 63Worse still, the judgments laboriously built up on such rotten foundations will be hopelessly vitiated. 64Here, indeed, we have an object-lesson of the importance, clearly recognised by Confucius himself, of "defining terms" and making "words harmonise with things." 65Indispensable as such a process is for any investigation in which language plays a part, it is doubly so when words have to be transplanted, as it were, from their native soil to one differing from it in almost every conceivable quality. 66Such an operation can only be successful if carried out with the utmost delicacy and care, and no amount of erudition can supply the want of that instinctive feeling for the right word which is the translator's choicest gift. 67The scope of the present work forbids my entering into details, but some broad examples of failure in this respect will be noted later on. 68Of the life of Confucius only the barest sketch can be given here, but stress may be laid on one or two points which it is important to bear in mind. 69Confucius was born at a time when the feudal system, established several centuries earlier by the founder of the Chou dynasty, was showing unmistakable signs of disruption and decay. 70It is almost certain that China had been feudally governed from the very earliest times, but Wu Wang placed the whole system on a seemingly firmer basis than ever. 71He divided his realm into a large number of vassal states, which he bestowed upon his own kith and kin who had helped him to the throne. 72Thus the Empire really came to resemble the huge united family which Chinese political theorists declare it to be, and for a short time all seems to have worked smoothly. 73But as the bonds of kinship grew looser, the central government gradually lost all effective control over its unruly children, and the various states were soon embroiled in perpetual feuds and struggles among themselves, besides being usually at loggerheads with the parent dynasty. 74The state of things that ensued may be likened (though on a far larger scale) to several Wars of the Roses going on at the same time, or better still, to the turbulence of the later days of the Holy Roman Empire, when the fealty of its members had become merely nominal. 75Matters were further complicated in many of the states by the upgrowth of large and powerful families which often attempted either by insidious methods or by open violence to wrest the supreme authority into their own hands. 76Thus in Lu, the comparatively small state to which Confucius belonged, there were three such families, the Chi, the Mêng, and the Shu; the heads of these clans, of whom we hear a good deal in the Analects, had already, by the time of Confucius, reduced their lawful prince (or duke, as he is generally called) to a condition of virtual dependency. 77On the other hand, they themselves were sometimes threatened by the lawless behaviour of their own officers, such as the ambitious chariot-driver, Yang Huo,[1] who thought nothing of seizing towns or even the person of his own chief, in order to hold him to ransom. 78Thus, though the period of the "Warring States" is not usually reckoned as beginning until after the death of Confucius, the date is a purely arbitrary one, inasmuch as his whole life long disturbances were rife and military operations well-nigh incessant throughout the length and breadth of China. 79In the midst of the prevailing disorder, Confucius comported himself with an admirable mixture of dignity, tact and outspoken courage. 80Wisely opposing the dangerous tendency to decentralisation, and upholding the supreme authority of the Emperor as against his too powerful vassals, he heartily disapproved of the illegal usurpations of the dukes, the great families and the soldiers of fortune that preyed one upon the other, and did not shrink on occasion from expressing his disgust in unequivocal terms. 81But knowing the futility of protests unbacked by force, he kept himself aloof for the most part, and devoted himself to a long course of study and teaching, gathering, it is said, as many as three thousand disciples around him. 82This is a palpable exaggeration, but there can be no doubt that he had become a marked man and gained great fame as a moralist and teacher many years before he actually took office. 83In 501 B.C., at the age of fifty, he at last made his entry on the political stage by accepting the governorship of a small town in Lu. 84Here he is said to have been eminently successful in the work of reform, and he rapidly rose to be the most trusted adviser of Duke Ting, who on one occasion at least owed his life to the courage and address of his minister. 85But it was not long ere the weak and fickle character of the ruler, carefully manipulated by rivals to Confucius, brought about a catastrophe. 86The neighbouring state of Ch‘i, jealous of the new prosperity of Lu under the régime of the sage, cunningly sent as a gift to the prince a band of beautiful women, trained in song and dance, and a number of magnificent horses, in order to distract his mind from the serious cares of state. 87The plotters had evidently taken the measure of their victim, for the artifice succeeded, and Confucius felt compelled to resign. 88Then began the weary years of wandering from state to state, in which we cannot follow him here, except to note a sagacious prophecy uttered by a friendly official on the frontier of Wei. 89Coming out from an interview with Confucius, he comforted the woebegone disciples by telling them that their Master's divine mission was now only just beginning.[ 902] It may, indeed, be that the ensuing period of homeless exile, hardships and danger, did more to spread the fame of the great reformer than either the few brilliant years of office or those spent as a teacher in the comparative seclusion of Lu. 91For one thing, it could not but inspire and fortify his followers to observe that the lofty principles which a sudden accession to power had failed to corrupt, were equally capable of standing the test of adversity. 92His serene and courageous bearing in many a strange and perilous situation proved that the conception of a "higher type of man" was for him no empty ideal, but the worthy object of practical endeavour. 93It is sad, however, to reflect that the best years of his life had passed before the call came which resulted in his return. 94Had it not been so long delayed, he would doubtless have thrown himself once more into the arena of public affairs, and begun rebuilding the fabric of good government which had been so rudely shattered thirteen years before. 95His patience would have been equal to the task; but he was now an old man, worn out by years of travel, privation and anxiety, at a time of life when the physical frame begins to demand a certain measure of quiet and repose. 96Hence, though he may be said to have returned to his native state with flying colours, he took no further active part in its administration, but devoted the rest of his life to literary labours which have added materially to his fame. 97Such were the collecting and editing of certain old national ballads known to us as the Odes, and the penning of the Spring and Autumn Annals of Lu, which may be regarded as the first real record of authentic facts, as opposed to the mere string of speeches and eulogies which we find in the miscalled
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