Text of Confucianism Part 02

SR No.: 007676
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: James Legge
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1882
Total Pages: 2405
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 43 MB

Page 446

CHAP. 2.
APPENDIX IV.
419 hard and strong; it is most still, but is able to give every definite form.
2. “By following, it obtains its (proper) lord,' and pursues its regular (course).
3. It contains all things in itself, and its transforming (power) is glorious.
4. Yes, what docility marks the way of Khwăn! It receives the influences of heaven, and acts at the proper time.
Chapter II. 5. The family that accumulates goodness is sure to have superabundant happiness, and the family that accumulates evil is sure to have superabundant misery. The murder of a ruler by
paragraph were evidently constructed, the one on the model of the other. I think it likely that the breath or air, khî, became the name with the earliest Chinese for their first concept of spirit; then the breath inspired or inhaled was called kwei, and became the name for the grosser part of the spirit, returning to the earth; and shăn, the breath exhaled or expired, the name for the subtler and intellectual spirit, ascending to a state of activity and enjoyment. The explanations of the terms in the R Ya and other dictionaries seem to justify this view. The combination kwei şhăn is sometimes best translated by 'spiritual beings.' The school of the Sung philosophy understand by it—the contracting and expanding of the primary matter, or that matter conceived of in two forms or with two opposite qualities. Khăng-zze says here that 'Heaven and earth are another name for tâo, and kwei shăn another name for “the vestiges of making and transformation;" and that the sage being in harmony with the tâo or practical reason of the universe, how can men or the kwei shăn be contrary to him?' Whatever be thought of the Sung speculations and theories, I think that a translator ought to give an indication of the primary meaning of the name kwei shăn.
Paragraphs 35 and 36 suggest the description of Confucius by Mencius, V, ii, 1, 5, as the one among the sages who was most governed by the consideration of time, doing continually what the circumstances of the time required.
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