Part I, Section I: Digest of the Analects, The New Learning, Sparta 776 B.C., Totalitarian, Zweck or the Aim Summary and Analysis

Section I contains five short essays, all of which appear to concern different topics. The first essay, "Digest of the Analects" contains Ezra Pound's commentary on brief sections of Confucius' (Kung Tze) Analects. Pound skips around among passages and it is not clear how they string together. Pound will print a passage, reproduce the appropriate Chinese symbols, and then make comments. He claims that the reason he made the digest is that "rapacity is the main force in our time" and so it is difficult to print wisdom. As a result, Pound wants to increase the amount of wisdom available. Another section, Pound argues, points...