When the Master was in Wei, he was once pounding on the musical stone, when a man with a basket of straw crossed his threshold, and exclaimed, “Ah, there is a heart that feels!  Aye, drub the stone!” After which he added, “How vulgar! how he hammers away on one note!—­and no one knows him, and he gives up, and all is over!

  Be it deep, our skirts we’ll raise to the waist,
  —­Or shallow, then up to the knee,’”

“What determination!” said the Master.  “Yet it was not hard to do.”

Tsz-chang once said to him, “In the ‘Book of the Annals’ it is stated that while Kau-tsung was in the Mourning Shed he spent the three years without speaking.  What is meant by that?”

“Why must you name Kau-tsung?” said the Master.  “It was so with all other ancient sovereigns:  when one of them died, the heads of every department agreed between themselves that they should give ear for three years to the Prime Minister.”

“When their betters love the Rules, then the folk are easy tools,” was a saying of the Master.

Tsz-lu having asked what made a “superior man,” he answered, “Self-culture, with a view to becoming seriously-minded.”

“Nothing more than that?” said he.

“Self-culture with a view to the greater satisfaction of others,” added the Master.

“That, and yet no more?”

“Self-culture with a view to the greater satisfaction of all the clans and classes,” he again added.  “Self-culture for the sake of all—­a result that, that would almost put Yau and Shun into the shade!”

To Yuen Jang, [31] who was sitting waiting for him in a squatting (disrespectful) posture, the Master delivered himself as follows:  “The man who in his youth could show no humility or subordination, who in his prime misses his opportunity, and who when old age comes upon him will not die—­that man is a miscreant.”  And he tapped him on the shin with his staff.

Some one asked about his attendant—­a youth from the village of Kiueh—­whether he was one who improved.  He replied, “I note that he seats himself in the places reserved for his betters, and that when he is walking he keeps abreast with his seniors.  He is not one of those who care for improvement:  he wants to be a man all at once.”

[Footnote 30:  Confucius had now retired from office, and this incident occurred only two years before his death.]

[Footnote 31:  It is a habit with the Chinese, when a number are out walking together, for the eldest to go first, the others pairing off according to their age.  It is a custom much older than the time of Confucius.]

BOOK XV

Practical Wisdom—­Reciprocity the Rule of Life

Duke Ling of Wei was consulting Confucius about army arrangements.  His answer was, “Had you asked me about such things as temple requisites, I have learnt that business, but I have not yet studied military matters.”  And he followed up this reply by leaving on the following day.