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 73

46
THE YÎ KING.
CH. III.
Shan alone.
The single character shăn occurs more than twenty times ;-used now as a substantive, now as an adjective,
and again as a verb. I must refer the reader
to the translation and notes for its various significance, subjoining in a note a list of the places where it occurs 1.
Much more might be said on the third Appendix, for the writer touches on many other topics, antiquarian and speculative, but a review of them would help us little in the study of the leading subject of the Yi. In passing on to the next treatise, I would only further say that the style of this and the author's manner of presenting his thoughts often remind the reader of the Doctrine of the Mean.' I am surprised that 'the Great Treatise' has never been ascribed to the author of that Doctrine, Zzesze, the grandson of Confucius, whose death must have taken place between B.C. 400 and 450.
7. The fourth Appendix, the seventh wing' of the Yi, need not detain us long. As I stated on p. 27, it is con
The fourth fined to an exposition of the Text on the first
Appendix. and second hexagrams, being an attempt to show that what is there affirmed of heaven and earth may also be applied to man, and that there is an essential agreement between the qualities ascribed to them, and the benevolence, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom, which are the four constituents of his moral and intellectual nature.
It is said by some of the critics that Confucius would have treated all the other hexagrams in a similar way, if his life had been prolonged, but we found special grounds for denying that Confucius had anything to do with the composition of this Appendix; and, moreover, I cannot think of any other figure that would have afforded to the author the same opportunity of discoursing about man. The style and method are after the manner of the Doctrine of the Mean' quite as much as those of 'the Great Treatise.' Several paragraphs, moreover, suggest to us the magniloquence of Mencius. It is said, for instance, by Zze-sze, of
1 Section i, 23, 32, 57, 58, 62, 64, 67, 68, 69, 73, 76, 81; Section ii, 11, 15, 33, 34, 41, 45.
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