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PT. III. SECT. II.
THE WRITINGS OF KWANG-SZE.
91
BOOK XXIV. Part III. Section II.
Hsü Wa-kwei? 1. Hsü Wa-kwei having obtained through Nü Shang 2 an introduction to the marquis Wů of Wei 3, the marquis, speaking to him with kindly sympathy 4, said, 'You are ill, Sir ; you have suffered from your hard and laborious toils in the forests, and still you. have been willing to come and see poor me.' Hsü Wa-kwei replied, 'It is I who have to comfort your lordship; what occasion have you to comfort me? If your lordship go on to fill up the measure of your sensual desires, and to prolong your likes and dislikes, then the condition of your mental nature will be diseased, and if you discourage and repress those desires, and deny your likings and dislikings, that will be an affliction to your ears and eyes
1 See vol. xxxix, pp. 153, 154. • A favourite and minister of the marquis Wa.
• This was the second marquis of Wei, one of the three principalities into which the great state of Zin had been broken up, and which he ruled as the marquis Kî for sixteen years, B. c. 386–371. His son usurped the title of king, and was the 'king Hui of Liang,' whom Mencius had interviews with. Wa, or 'martial,' was Kis honorary, posthumous epithet.
* The character () which I thus translate, has two tones, the second and fourth. Here and elsewhere in this paragraph and the next, it is with one exception in the fourth tone, meaning 'to comfort or reward for toils endured.' The one exception is its next occurrence, hard and laborious toils.'
• The appropriate and humble designation of himself by the ruler of a state.
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