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340
THE LÎ xi.
BK. XXIX.
fore, although the superior man abases himself, yet the people respect and honour him.'
27. The Master said, 'The meritorious services of Hâu Ki were the greatest of all under Heaven; could his hands and feet be described as those of an ordinary man? But all which he desired was that his doings should be superior to his name, and therefore he said of himself that he was simply “a man useful to others "."'
28. These were the words of the Master: - • Difficult is it to attain to what is called the perfect humanity of the superior man! It is said in the Book of Poetry?,
“The happy and courteous prince
Is the father and mother of his people." Happy, he (yet) vigorously teaches them; courteous, he makes them pleased and restful. With all their happiness, there is no wild extravagance; with all their observance of ceremonial usages, there is the feeling of affection. Notwithstanding his awing gravity, they are restful; notwithstanding his sonlike gentleness, they are respectful. Thus he causes
1 With this ends the 4th section of the Book, 'On the service of his ruler by an inferior, showing the righteousness between them, and how that righteousness completes the humanity.'
The ode here quoted from can hardly be any other than III, ü, 7. The first character in the former of the two lines in that ode, however, is only the phonetic part of that in the text here, and the meaning of force or vigour' which the writer employs seems incongruous with that belonging to it in the Shih, where it occurs several times, in combination with the character that follows it, used as a binomial adjective. I need not say more on the difficulty. The meaning of the paragraph as a whole is plain:— The superior man,' the competent ruler, must possess, blended together, the strength of the father and the gentleness of the mother,
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