it.-- The ten chapters from the second to the eleventh constitute
the second part, and in them Tsze-sze quotes the words of
Confucius, 'for the purpose,' according to Chu Hsi, 'of illustrating
the meaning of the first chapter.' Yet, as I have just intimated,
they do not to my mind do this. Confucius bewails the rarity of
the practice of the Mean, and graphically sets forth the difficulty
of it. 'The empire, with its component States and families, may be
ruled; dignities and emoluments may be declined; naked weapons
may be trampled under foot; but the course of the Mean can not be
attained to [2].' 'The knowing go beyond it, and the stupid do not
come up to it [3].' Yet some have attained to it. Shun did so,
humble and ever learning from people far inferior to himself [4];
and Yen Hui did so, holding fast whatever good he got hold of, and
never letting it go [5]. Tsze-lu thought the Mean could be taken by
storm, but Confucius taught him better [6]. And in fine, it is only
the sage who can fully exemplify the Mean [7].
All these citations do not throw any light on the ideas
presented in the first chapter. On the contrary, they interrupt the
train of thought. Instead of showing us how virtue, or the path of
duty is in accordance with our Heaven-given nature, they lead us
to think of it as a mean between two extremes. Each extreme may
be a violation of the law of our nature, but that is not made to
appear. Confucius's sayings would be in place in illustrating the
doctrine of the Peripatetics, 'which placed all virtue in a medium
between opposite vices [8].' Here in the Chung Yung of Tsze-sze I
have always felt them to be out of place.
5. In the twelfth chapter Tsze-sze speaks again himself,
and we seem at once to know the voice. He begins by saying that
'the way of the superior man reaches far and wide, and yet is