[Sidebar] He withdraws to Chi and returns to Lu the following year. B.C. 515, 516.
usurpations [1], he was a sort of dependent of the Chi family, and appears in frequent communication with members of all the three. In the year B.C. 517, the duke Chao came to open hostilities with them, and being worsted, fled into Ch'i, the State adjoining Lu on the north. Thither Confucius also repaired, that he might avoid the prevailing disorder of his native State. Ch'i was then under the government of a ruler (in rank a marquis, but historically called duke) , afterwards styled Ching [2], who 'had a thousand teams, each of four horses, but on the day of his death the people did not praise him for a single virtue [3].' His chief minister, however, was Yen Ying [4], a man of considerable ability and worth. At his court the music of the ancient sage-emperor, Shun, originally brought to Ch'i from the State of Ch'an [5], was still preserved.
According to the 'Narratives of the School,' an incident occurred on the way to Ch'i, which I may transfer to these pages as a good specimen of the way in which Confucius turned occurring matters to account, in his intercourse with his disciples. As he was passing by the side of the Tai mountain, there was a woman weeping and wailing by a grave. Confucius bent forward in his carriage, and after listening to her for some time, sent Tsze-lu to ask the cause of her grief. 'You weep, as if you had experienced sorrow upon sorrow,' said Tsze-lu. The woman replied, 'It is so. My husband's father was killed here by a tiger, and my husband also; and now my son has met the same fate.' Confucius asked her why she did not remove from the place, and on her answering,' There is here no oppressive government,' he turned to his disciples, and said, 'My
1 See Analects, III. i. ii, et al.
2 景公.
3 Ana. XVI. xii.
4 晏嬰. This is the same who was afterwards styled 晏平仲.
5 陳.
children, remember this. Oppressive government is fiercer than a tiger [1].'
As soon as he crossed the border from Lu, we are told he discovered from the gait and manners of a boy, whom he saw carrying a pitcher, the influence of the sages' music, and told the driver of his carriage to hurry on to the capital [2]. Arrived there, he heard the strain, and was so ravished with it, that for three months he did not know the taste of flesh. 'I did not think,' he said, 'that music could have been made so excellent as this [3].' The duke Ching was pleased with the conferences which he had with him [4], and proposed to assign to him the town of Lin-ch'iu, from the revenues of which he might derive a sufficient support; but Confucius refused the gift, and said to his disciples, 'A superior man will only receive reward for services which he has done. I have given advice to the duke Ching, but he has not yet obeyed it, and now he would endow me with this place! Very far is he from understanding me [5]!'
On one occasion the duke asked about government, and received the characteristic reply, 'There is government when the ruler is ruler, and the minister is minister; when the father is father, and the son is son [6].' I say that the reply is characteristic. Once, when Tsze-lu asked him what he would consider the first thing to be done if entrusted with the government of a State, Confucius answered, 'What is necessary is to rectify names [7].' The disciple thought the reply wide of the mark, but it was substantially the same with what he said to the marquis Ching. There is a sufficient foundation in nature for government in the several relations of society, and if those be maintained and developed according to their relative significancy, it is sure to obtain. This was a first principle in the political ethics of Confucius.
Another day the duke got to a similar inquiry the reply that the art of government lay in an economical use of the revenues; and being pleased, he resumed his purpose of retaining the philosopher in his State, and proposed to assign to him the fields of Ni-ch'i. His
1 See the 家語, 卷四, art. 正論解. I have translated, however, from the Li Chi, II. Sect. II. iii. 10, where the same incident is given, with some variations, and without saying when or where it occurred.
2 See the 說苑, 卷十九, p. 13.
3 Ana. VII. xiii.
4 Some of these are related in the 'Narratives of the School;'-- about the burning of the ancestral shrine of the sovereign 釐, and a one-footed bird which appeared hopping and flapping its wings in Ch'i. They are plainly fabulous, though quoted in proof of Confucius's sage wisdom. This reference to them is more than enough.
5 家語, 卷二, 六本.
6 Ana. XII. xi.
7 Ana. XIII. iii.
chief minister Yen Ying dissuaded him from the purpose, saying, 'Those scholars are impracticable, and cannot be imitated. They are haughty and conceited of their own views, so that they will not be content in inferior positions. They set a high value on all funeral ceremonies, give way to their grief, and will waste their property on great burials, so that they would only be injurious to the common manners. This Mr. K'ung has a thousand peculiarities. It would take generations to exhaust all that he knows about the ceremonies of going up and going down. This is not the time to examine into his rules of propriety. If you, prince, wish to employ him to change the customs of Ch'i, you will not be making the people your primary consideration [1].'