The Analects

by Confucius

  5.3 The Master said of Zijian: “A gentleman, this one! If there were no gentlemen in Lu, how could he have acquired [his strengths and character]?”

  Zijian was Confucius’ disciple Fu Buqi. Accounts about him from the late Warring States period and the Western Han suggest two ways of understanding what Confucius meant when he declared that Zijian was a gentleman. One account in the World of Stories (Shuoyuan) emphasizes Zijian’s moral character. It says that while most people in office complained about not having enough time to learn and to be with friends and family when they were ill or in mourning, Zijian felt differently: he said that being in office gave him a chance to put his learning into practice; that the pressure of an official life forced him to find time to be with his friends and family, thereby helping him to reinforce those bonds. This, according to the World of Stories, was the reason why Confucius thought Zijian was a junzi, a gentleman. And what about the second half of his remark? Confucius says in 4.25 that virtue “is bound to have neighbors,” and so Zijian could not have acquired his virtue alone—he must have had help from others. Other sources say that Zijian was a gentleman because when he was an official he knew how to search for talent and delegate responsibilities. Mr. Lü’s Spring and Autumn Annals, for instance, describes Fu Zijian as someone who “played the lute all day” when he was put in charge of the district of Shanfu, yet “Shanfu was well governed.” And when asked why this was so, Zijian responded that he knew how “to employ the skills and the strengths of others.” If this story is true, then the second half of Confucius’ remark should read: “If there were no gentlemen in Lu, how could [Zijian] have found [the people to help him govern]?”

  5.4 Zigong asked, “What do you think of me?”

  “You are a vessel [qi].”

  “What kind of a vessel?”

  “A hu or a lian, a vessel that holds offerings of sorghum and millet in the ancestral temple.”

  Some scholars think that by characterizing Zigong as “a vessel,” Confucius was putting his disciple down, because he also says, in 2.12, “A gentleman is not a vessel”—the gentleman is unafraid to take on different problems and is able to adapt his skills to many circumstances, and so he is not like a vessel, which has only a specific use. They also say that after realizing that his comment might have wounded Zigong, Confucius, to make him feel slightly better, told Zigong that he was like a sacred vessel holding offerings of grain in the ancestral temple. But Zigong in the Analects is not someone who possesses only a fixed utility, and so 5.4, as Qian Mu points out, should not have any relationship to 2.12. In fact, Confucius says, in 11.19, “Si [Zigong] does not accept his lot. He is good at moneymaking, and is given to assessing a situation and weighing the favorable against the unfavorable, and is often right in his speculation.” This does fit not the description of a man who is good at only one thing. So what could Confucius have meant when he compared Zigong to an implement in the state temple? Perhaps he felt that given his skills in speech and money matters, and his talent in assessing people and gauging a situation, Zigong could have a career in government service.

  5.5 Someone said, “Yong [Zhonggong] is humane [ren ] but is not skillful in speech [ning ].”

  The Master said, “Why does he need to be skillful in speech? A man who responds with a clever tongue often ends up being detested by others. I don’t know about Yong’s benevolence, but why does he need to be skillful in speech?”

  Confucius’ characterization of his disciple Zhonggong in 11.3 as someone who is “virtuous in conduct” seems to fit the description of Zhonggong here, that he “is humane” but “not skillful in speech,” and Confucius’ reply to the interlocutor concurs with what he says in 4.22 and 4.24. Yet the more compelling issue in this exchange is not Zhonggong’s character or Confucius’ teaching about words and action. It is the question of ren () and ning (). In the early Zhou, ren and ning were interchangeable and were pronounced the same way, with ni as the initial consonant. These two words, even by Confucius’ time, remained closely related, which explains why someone was puzzled by the fact that Zhonggong was ren () (pronounced as ning then) but not ning (). Confucius’ reply, therefore, is an attempt to differentiate the two: that ren pertains to human character and ning to rhetorical skills; that if a person becomes overly clever with words and seems glib, others will call his character into question. Yet even in the Analects, where ning nearly always suggests the ruin of virtue because a glib man could skillfully assume the semblance of humaneness, ren, one is still able to find instances where it is used without any moral implication, as in the case of Confucius’ description of Priest Tuo, who, he says in 6.16, is skillful in speech (ning).

  5.6 The Master encouraged Qidiao Kai to take office. Qidiao Kai replied, “I am not confident I am ready to take this step.” The Master was pleased.

  Qidiao Kai was a disciple of Confucius. Confucius “was pleased” with him because Qidiao Kai had self-awareness, so that even when he urged this disciple to consider an official career, Qidiao Kai held back, saying that he was not yet ready. Whether or not Qidiao Kai entered government service at a later time is unknown. The Analects mentions his name only once, and even though sources from the Han dynasty have more to say about him, most of these stories are not reliable. One, the Kongzi jiayu (Recorded Conversations from the Private Collection of the Kong Family), claims that Qidiao Kai “did not want to take up office.” But “being unwilling to serve could not have been the teaching of Confucius,” the Qing scholar Liu Baonan writes, because Zilu, speaking on behalf of Confucius, had said that “there is no way of knowing what is appropriate and what is right if one does not enter public life,” and that “a person will bring confusion to an important relationship if he tries to keep himself unsullied.”

  5.7 The Master said, “If I cannot practice a proper way here in this world, then I shall take to the open sea and drift around on a bamboo raft. The person who will follow me would be You [Zilu].”

  Zilu was overjoyed when he heard these words.

  The Master said, “You [Zilu] loves courage more than I, but where can I find the timber [cai ] [to build my raft]?”

  It was the Han scholar Zheng Xuan who suggested that cai here refers to “the material for the bamboo raft.” He writes: “Zilu actually believed that his teacher was going to set off to sea, and so Confucius said, ‘You love courage more than I, but I could not find the material’—the timber for the raft—anywhere. Confucius was teasing Zilu because Zilu could not grasp the subtlety of his words.” By “subtlety,” Zheng Xuan means that Confucius never intended to drift around in the open sea but made the remark for rhetorical effect. Of the last sentence, two other readings are possible: “Zilu loves courage more than I, but there is nothing [no knowledge or moral benefit] I can gain from this disciple” and “Zilu loves courage more than I, but he lacks the ability to make correct judgment.” These readings are possible because, in early China, the character cai (), meaning “material,” was interchangeable with the particle zai () and the character cai (), meaning “judgment.” Yet Cheng Shude points out that “there is much more to be savored if one understands cai to mean ‘timber,’” which is what Zheng Xuan proposes.

  5.8 Meng Wubo asked, “Is Zilu humane [ren]?”

  The Master replied, “I really don’t know.”

  Meng Wubo asked again.

  The Master replied, “You [Zilu] could be put in charge of military levies in a state of a thousand chariots, but I don’t know if he is humane.”

  “What about Qiu [Ran Qiu]?”

  The Master replied, “Qiu could be made to assume the stewardship of a town with a thousand households or of a hereditary family with a hundred chariots, but I don’t know if he is humane.”

  “And what about Chih [Gongxi Hua]?”

  The Master replied, “Chih, standing in court with his sash fastened high and tight, could be asked to converse with the visitors and guests, but I don’t know if he is humane.”

  Confucius has alrea
dy sketched out his idea of a humane man and spoken about the paradox inherent in the quest to become one in the first six passages of Book Four. Here the idea becomes more palpable as the discussion moves closer to home—to the question of whether Zilu, Ran Qiu, and Gongxi Hua, men he knows well, are humane. And the approach Confucius takes is to comment on the strengths of these disciples and then to state that he cannot say if they are humane. He is reluctant to speak categorically about what is humaneness and who is a humane man, preferring, instead, to answer the question indirectly: Zilu, Ran Qiu, and Gongxi Hua have these talents, he says, but that is not the same as being humane. Hearing Confucius’ response, the listener or the reader may not know what humaneness is, but at least he is able to distinguish the genuine article from its semblance. We can find more examples of this type of approach in 5.19, 7.34, and 14.1. The self-descriptions of these three disciples in 11.26—that Zilu could be put in charge of military affairs, Ran Qiu in charge of civil administration, and Gongxi Hua in charge of diplomacy and court rituals—seem to support what Confucius observes here about their skills and capabilities.

  5.9 The Master said to Zigong, “Who is the better man, you or Hui [Yan Hui]?”

  Zigong replied, “How dare I compare myself with Hui? Having learned one thing, he gives play to ten, while I go only as far as two.”

  The Master said, “You are not as good as he is. Neither of us is as good as he is.”

  Confucius knew that Zigong was good at grading people, but here he asks Zigong to go further, to assess himself against Yan Hui. And when Zigong replies, How dare I compare myself with Hui? he is not being falsely modest, for he gives a precise measure of himself against his classmate, which prompts their teacher to say, Even I am not as good as Hui. Although Confucius considered Yan Hui a better man—better than everyone else he knew and better than himself because Yan Hui was the most eager to learn and someone who would push himself to gain an extra ten steps after he had learned about one—he, I believe, seemed to prefer spending time with Zigong, sharing an idea or talking about poetry; he liked the to-and-fro of their conversations.

  The distinction Xunzi makes between a “refined Confucian” and a “great Confucian” in “The Teachings of Confucians” (Xiaoru) may help to explain the difference Zigong saw between Yan Hui and himself. A “refined Confucian,” Xunzi writes, is someone whose “speech and conduct have the great model” of the past as their standard but who lacks the intellectual acumen to solve problems that lie outside his learning and experience; a “great Confucian” is someone who is able to take his learning and experience to new heights, “from the shallow to the deep,” “from past to present,” and “from the one to the many.”

  5.10 Zai Yu [Zai Wo] was sleeping in broad daylight. The Master said, “Rotten wood cannot be carved; a wall of mud and dung is beyond plastering. What is the point of scolding Yu?”

  The Master then said, “Formerly, in my relationship with people, after I’d heard what they said, I trusted what they did. Now, in my relationship with people, after hearing what they said, I would go and observe what they do. It was on account of Yu that I made this change.”

  Zai Yu is the disciple Zai Wo. Although Confucius’ remark here suggests that he was more about talk than action, Zai Yu was a good talker—he “excelled in speech.” He makes just five appearances in the records of the Analects, yet we have a firm impression of this man: he was smart and perceptive but a bit lazy; he asked tough questions with difficult follow-ups, all of which were reasons for irritation. And if the early sources are right, Zai Yu seems to have had a notable career in politics. And so he might have been like rotten wood and a wall of mud and dung, but he was not beyond improvement.

  5.11 The Master said, “I have never met a person who is unwavering in his integrity [gang].” Someone mentioned Shen Cheng.

  The Master said, “Cheng has excessive desires. How could he have reached the point where he is unwavering in his integrity?”

  Qian Mu understands gang to mean gangde, “unwavering in one’s integrity.” Confucius stresses this idea, Qian Mu says, “because only a person who is unwavering in his integrity is able to apply himself to any situation while remaining upright and unperturbed” by either pressure or temptation. Having excessive desires “weakens a person’s resolve,” because he is unable to let go his attachments. But what Confucius says here about his disciple Shen Cheng does not imply that Confucius advocates “having no desires” but only not letting desires get out of control.

  5.12 Zigong said, “I do not wish others to impose what is unreasonable [jia] on me, and I also do not wish to impose what is unreasonable on others.”

  The Master said, “Si [Zigong], this is not something that is within your power.”

  The first sentence in most English translations reads: “What I do not wish others to do unto me, I also wish not to do unto others.” Chinese scholars, however, stress that jia means ling, “to bully, to browbeat, to throw one’s weight around, to force something unreasonable on another, usually from a position of power.” And given this understanding of jia, Qian Mu points out that there are two ways of interpreting Confucius’ remark: either Confucius was telling Zigong that he had not gotten to the stage where he was able to refrain from intruding upon others, or he was saying to Zigong that he might be able to avoid intruding upon others but he could not expect others to do the same for him. Qian Mu, following the Han scholar Kong Anguo, prefers the second reading because, he explains, in the first reading Confucius merely berates Zigong for exaggerating his own moral attainment while in the second he conveys an insight about human behavior—that even when a person has acted correctly in his relationship with others, this does not mean that his conduct will be reciprocated. The act of realizing one’s humaneness depends on the self, Qian Mu says; you cannot wish it on anyone else.

  5.13 Zigong said, “One can get to learn about the Master’s accomplishments in literature and the cultural tradition [wenzhang] but not his views on human nature and the way of Heaven [tiandao].”

  “Literature and the cultural tradition” (wenzhang ) refers to history, poetry, rites, and music, areas of knowledge where, in the view of most scholars, Confucius made his most important contributions. But Confucius himself dismissed suggestions that he had something original to add to them. He was a teacher and an editor—a transmitter—he said. Yan Hui put it this way: “He expands me with literature and culture and pulls me in with the rites. I cannot quit even if I want to.” These words seem to imply that, for this disciple, the knowledge his teacher imparted to him through literature and cultural practice was enough to get him going and spur him on in his quest for self-understanding. So was this the reason why Confucius was silent on the subjects of human nature and the way of Heaven? Because he felt that these were difficult subjects, too profound and subtle for anyone to pass on? But what a teacher could do was to prepare his students for the journey of discovering their meaning for themselves, and so he instructed them on history and poetry, and he showed them how rites and music could take them to the appropriate measure.

  Traditional scholars give considerable attention to the term tiandao, “the way of Heaven.” They ask: Was Zigong referring to the inexplicable force that gave rise to fortune and misfortune? Or was he referring to the workings of nature, the source of life and change, and its ever-producing power? These scholars also point out that followers of Confucius in the next two centuries did not hesitate to let others know about their views on human nature and the way of Heaven. And so they wonder whether Confucius’ silence on these topics was just a matter of personal choice, or whether the world of the Spring and Autumn period was not ready and had no need for such disquisitions. But if the latter was true, why was Zigong so interested to know? Was he ahead of his time?

  5.14 Before Zilu was able to put into practice what he had heard, he only feared that he might hear something else.

  Zilu’s predicament was understandable. He was loyal to those he lov
ed and those he served, and if something needed to be done, he was the first to act and the person who would risk everything to get it done. And so even though Confucius thought that this disciple “had the fire of two,” Zilu himself was worried that he could not keep up with everything that called for his attention and, therefore, was afraid to hear “something else.”

  5.15 Zigong asked, “Why was Kong Wenzi given the posthumous name wen [cultured]?”

  The Master replied, “He was quick and eager to learn and was not ashamed to seek advice from those who were inferior to him. Therefore, he was given the posthumous name wen.”

  Kong Wenzi was Kong Yu, a powerful counselor in the state of Wei. He and Confucius knew each other well when Confucius was living in Wei, but their friendship ended abruptly after Kong Yu informed Confucius that he was thinking of using force to punish a son-in-law who had been unfaithful to his daughter. According to the history in the Zuo Commentary, Confucius was so upset about what he had heard that he told his carriage driver “to hitch up and take him out of Wei without delay.” And why was Confucius so enraged? Possibly because he felt Kong Yu was using the power inherent in his political position to settle a personal grudge. This, I believe, was the background to Zigong’s question, Why was such a man awarded the posthumous name wen (), “cultured”? To which Confucius responded that wen, in fact, tallied with a side of Kong Yu’s character that was “quick and eager to learn and not ashamed to seek advice from those who were inferior to him.” Several commentaries stress that “inferior” here does not necessarily refer to age or position—that it could also refer to wealth, intelligence, or ability. Song and Ming scholars point to Confucius’ judgment of Kong Wenzi as an example of his fairness and generosity—that he was able to see the good in a man whose character was flawed.