may not be out of place to bring together here a few notices of him gathered from reliable sources. He was the son of Li, whose death took place B.C. 483, four years before that of the sage, his father. I have not found it recorded in what year he was born. Sze-ma Ch'ien says he died at the age of 62. But this is evidently wrong, for we learn from Mencius that he was high in favour with the duke Mu of Lu [1], whose accession to that principality dates in B.C. 409, seventy years after the death of Confucius. In the 'Plates and Notices of the Worthies, sacrificed to in the Sage's Temples [2],' it is supposed that the sixty-two in the Historical Records should be eighty-two [3]. It is maintained by others that Tsze-sze's life was protracted beyond 100 years [4]. This variety of opinions simply shows that the point cannot be positively determined. To me it seems that the conjecture in the Sacrificial Canon must be pretty near the truth [5]. During the years of his boyhood, then, Tsze-sze must have been with his grandfather, and received his instructions. It is related, that one day, when he was alone with the sage, and heard him sighing, he went up to him, and, bowing twice, inquired the reason of his grief. 'Is it,' said he, 'because you think that your descendants, through not cultivating themselves, will be unworthy of you? Or is it that, in your admiration of the ways of Yao and Shun, you are vexed that you fall short of them?' 'Child,' replied Confucius, 'how is it that you know my thoughts?' 'I have often,' said Tsze-sze, 'heard from you the lesson, that when the father has gathered and prepared the firewood, if the son cannot carry the bundle, he is to be pronounced degenerate and unworthy. The remark comes frequently into my thoughts, and fills me with great apprehensions.' The sage was delighted. He
1. 魯穆(or 繆)公. 2. 聖廟祀典圖考. 3. 或以六十二似八十二之誤. Eighty-two and sixty-two may more easily be confounded, as written in Chinese, than with the Roman figures. 4 See the 四書集證, on the preface to the Chung Yung, — 年百餘歲卒. 5 Li himself was born in Confucius's twenty-first year, and if Tsze-sze had been born in Li's twenty-first year, he must have been 103 at the time of duke Mu's accession. But the tradition is, that Tsze-sze was a pupil of Tsang Shan who was born B.C. 504. We must place his birth therefore considerably later, and suppose him to have been quite young when his father died. I was talking once about the question with a Chinese friend, who observed:— 'Li was fifty when he died, and his wife married again into a family of Wei. We can hardly think, therefore, that she was anything like that age. Li could not have married so soon as his father did. Perhaps he was about forty when Chi was born.'
smiled and said, 'Now, indeed, shall I be without anxiety! My undertakings will not come to naught. They will be carried on and flourish [1].' After the death of Confucius, Chi became a pupil, it is said, of the philosopher Tsang. But he received his instructions with discrimination, and in one instance which is recorded in the Li Chi, the pupil suddenly took the place of the master. We there read: 'Tsang said to Tsze-sze, "Chi, when I was engaged in mourning for my parents, neither congee nor water entered my mouth for seven days." Tsze-sze answered, "In ordering their rules of propriety, it was the design of the ancient kings that those who would go beyond them should stoop and keep by them, and that those who could hardly reach them should stand on tiptoe to do so. Thus it is that the superior man, in mourning for his parents, when he has been three days without water or congee, takes a staff to enable himself to rise [2]."' While he thus condemned the severe discipline of Tsang, Tsze-sze appears, in various incidents which are related of him, to have been himself more than sufficiently ascetic. As he was living in great poverty, a friend supplied him with grain, which he readily received. Another friend was emboldened by this to send him a bottle of spirits, but he declined to receive it.' You receive your corn from other people,' urged the donor, 'and why should you decline my gift, which is of less value? You can assign no ground in reason for it, and if you wish to show your independence, you should do so completely.' 'I am so poor,' was the reply, 'as to be in want, and being afraid lest I should die and the sacrifices not be offered to my ancestors, I accept the grain as an alms. But the spirits and the dried flesh which you offer to me are the appliances of a feast. For a poor man to be feasting is certainly unreasonable. This is the ground of my refusing your gift. I have no thought of asserting my independence [3].' To the same effect is the account of Tsze-sze, which we have from Liu Hsiang. That scholar relates:— 'When Chi was living in Wei, he wore a tattered coat, without any lining, and in thirty days had only nine meals. T'ien Tsze-fang having heard of his
1 See the 四書集證, in the place just quoted from. For the incident we are indebted to K'ung Fu; see note 3, p. 36. 2 Li Chi, II. Sect. I. ii. 7. 3 See the 四書集證, as above.
distress, sent a messenger to him with a coat of fox-fur, and being afraid that he might not receive it, he added the message,— "When I borrow from a man, I forget it; when I give a thing, I part with it freely as if I threw it away." Tsze-sze declined the gift thus offered, and when Tsze-fang said, "I have, and you have not; why will you not take it?" he replied, "You give away as rashly as if you were casting your things into a ditch. Poor as I am, I cannot think of my body as a ditch, and do not presume to accept your gift [1]." 'Tsze-sze's mother married again, after Li's death, into a family of Wei. But this circumstance, which is not at all creditable in Chinese estimation, did not alienate his affections from her. He was in Lu when he heard of her death, and proceeded to weep in the temple of his family. A disciple came to him and said, 'Your mother married again into the family of the Shu, and do you weep for her in the temple of the K'ung?' 'I am wrong,' said Tsze-sze, 'I am wrong;' and with these words he went to weep elsewhere [2]. In his own married relation he does not seem to have been happy, and for some cause, which has not been transmitted to us, he divorced his wife, following in this, it has been wrongly said, the example of Confucius. On her death, her son, Tsze-shang [3], did not undertake any mourning for her. Tsze-sze's disciples were surprised and questioned him. 'Did your predecessor, a superior man,' they asked, 'mourn for his mother who had been divorced?' 'Yes,' was the reply. 'Then why do you not cause Pai [4] to mourn for his mother?' Tsze-sze answered, 'My progenitor, a superior man, failed in nothing to pursue the proper path. His observances increased or decreased as the case required. But I cannot attain to this. While she was my wife, she was Pai's mother; when she ceased to be my wife, she ceased to be Pai's mother.' The custom of the K'ung family not to mourn for a mother who had been divorced, took its rise from Tsze-sze [5]. These few notices of K'ung Chi in his more private relations bring him before us as a man of strong feeling and strong will, independent, and with a tendency to asceticism in his habits.
1 See the 四書集證, as above. 2 See the Li Chi, II. Sect. II. iii. 15. 庶氏之母死 must be understood as I have done above, and not with Chang Hsuan, — 'Your mother was born a Miss Shu.' 3 子上 — this was the designation of Tsze-sze's son. 4 白,— this was Tsze-shang's name. 5 See the Li Chi, II. Sect. I. i. 4.
As a public character, we find him at the ducal courts of Wei, Sung; Lu, and Pi, and at each of them held in high esteem by the rulers. To Wei he was carried probably by the fact of his mother having married into that State. We are told that the prince of Wei received him with great distinction and lodged him honourably. On one occasion he said to him, 'An officer of the State of Lu, you have not despised this small and narrow Wei, but have bent your steps hither to comfort and preserve it; vouchsafe to confer your benefits upon me.' Tsze-sze replied. 'If I should wish to requite your princely favour with money and silks, your treasuries are already full of them, and I am poor. If I should wish to requite it with good words, I am afraid that what I should say would not suit your ideas, so that I should speak in vain and not be listened to. The only way in which I can requite it, is by recommending to your notice men of worth.' The duke said. 'Men of worth are exactly what I desire.' 'Nay,' said Chi. 'you are not able to appreciate them.' 'Nevertheless,' was the reply, 'I should like to hear whom you consider deserving that name.' Tsze-sze replied, 'Do you wish to select your officers for the name they may have or for their reality?' 'For their reality, certainly,' said the duke. His guest then said, 'In the eastern borders of your State, there is one Li Yin, who is a man of real worth.' 'What were his grandfather and father?' asked the duke. 'They were husbandmen,' was the reply, on which the duke broke into a loud laugh, saying, ' I do not like husbandry. The son of a husbandman cannot be fit for me to employ. I do not put into office all the cadets of those families even in which office is hereditary.' Tsze-sze observed, 'I mention Li Yin because of his abilities; what has the fact of his forefathers being husbandmen to do with the case? And moreover, the duke of Chau was a great sage, and K'ang-shu was a great worthy. Yet if you examine their beginnings, you will find that from the business of husbandry they came forth to found their States. I did certainly have my doubts that in the selection of your officers you did not have regard to their real character and capacity.' With this the conversation ended. The duke was silent [1]. Tsze-sze was naturally led to Sung, as the K'ung family originally sprang from that principality. One account, quoted in 'The
1 See the 氏姓譜,卷一百二,孔氏,孔伋.
Four Books, Text and Commentary, with Proofs and Illustrations [1],' says that he went thither in his sixteenth year, and having foiled an officer of the State, named Yo So, in a conversation on the Shu Ching, his opponent was so irritated at the disgrace put on him by a youth, that he listened to the advice of evil counsellors, and made an attack on him to put him to death. The duke of Sung, hearing the tumult, hurried to the rescue, and when Chi found himself in safety, he said, 'When king Wan was imprisoned in Yu-li, he made the Yi of Chau. My grandfather made the Ch'un Ch'iu after he had been in danger in Ch'an and Ts'ai. Shall I not make something when rescued from such a risk in Sung?' Upon this he made the Chung Yung in forty-nine p'ien. According to this account, the Chung Yung was the work of Tsze-sze's early manhood, and the tradition has obtained a wonderful prevalence. The notice in 'The Sacrificial Canon' says, on the contrary, that it was the work of his old age, when he had finally settled in Lu, which is much more likely [2]. Of Tsze-sze in Pi, which could hardly be said to be out of Lu, we have only one short notice,— in Mencius, V. Pt. II. iii. 3, where the duke Hui of Pi is introduced as saying, 'I treat Tsze-sze as my master.' We have fuller accounts of him in Lu, where he spent all the latter years of his life, instructing his disciples to the number of several hundred [3], and held in great reverence by the duke Mu. The duke indeed wanted to raise him to the highest office, but he declined this, and would only occupy the position of a 'guide, philosopher, and friend.' Of the attention which he demanded, however, instances will he found in Mencius, II. Pt. II. xi. 3; V. Pt. II. vi. 4, and vii. 4. In his intercourse with the duke he spoke the truth to him fearlessly. In the 'Cyclopaedia of Surnames [4],' I find the following conversations, but I cannot tell from what source they are extracted into that Work.— 'One day, the duke said to Tsze-sze, "The officer Hsien told me that you do good without
1 This is the Work so often referred to as the 四書集證, the full title being 四書經註集證. The passage here translated from it will be found in the place several times referred to in this section. 2 The author of the 四書拓餘說 adopts the view that the Work was composed in Sung. Some have advocated this from ch. xxviii. 5, compared with Ana. III. ix, 'it being proper,' they say, 'that Tsze- sze, writing in Sung, should not depreciate it as Confucius had done out of it!' 3 See in the 'Sacrificial Canon,' on Tsze-sze. 4 This is the Work referred to in note 1, p. 40.