非儒(下)

The Confucians say: 'Loving one's kin has its proper gradations; honoring the worthy has its proper ranks.' They speak of differences in closeness and distance, honor and lowliness. Their Rites say: mourn parents for three years; mourn wife and principal heir for three years; uncles, brothers, and secondary sons for a shorter period; clan members for five months. If the duration of mourning is based on closeness, then the closer should mourn longer and the more distant shorter -- but this makes wife and heir equal to parents. If based on rank, then honoring wife and children equally with parents, while placing uncles and elder brothers of the clan lower than children -- what greater reversal could there be?

Some stubbornly hold to fatalism and argue: 'Longevity and early death, poverty and wealth, safety and danger, order and chaos are all fixed by the Mandate of Heaven and cannot be changed. Success and failure, reward and punishment, fortune and misfortune all have their limits, and human knowledge and strength cannot affect them!' If officials believe this, they grow lazy in their duties; if common people believe it, they grow lazy in their work. When officials do not govern, there is chaos; when agriculture is neglected, there is poverty. Poverty and chaos are the root of political ruin, yet the Confucians teach this as their doctrine -- they are the destroyers of the world's people.

They elaborately adorn rituals and music to corrupt people; they maintain prolonged mourning with false grief to deceive kin; they establish fatalism, are complacent with poverty, and dwell in lofty idleness; they abandon the root of work and are content in laziness and arrogance. Greedy for food and drink, lazy in work, they fall into hunger and cold, endangered by freezing and starvation, with no way to escape. They have the air of rats hiding and peering, of rams staring, of startled pigs leaping up. When gentlemen laugh at them, they angrily say: 'How can crude people understand a true Confucian!'

Duke Jing of Qi asked Yanzi: 'What sort of person is Confucius?' Yanzi did not reply. The Duke asked again, and still Yanzi did not reply. Duke Jing said: 'Many people have spoken to me about Confucius, all calling him a worthy man. Now I ask you and you do not reply -- why?' Yanzi answered: 'I, Ying, am unworthy and insufficient to judge a worthy man. Nevertheless, I have heard that a true worthy man, when entering another's state, must work to strengthen the bond between ruler and ministers and resolve the resentments between upper and lower. When Confucius went to Chu, he knew of the Duke of Bai's conspiracy, yet he assisted it through Shiqi. The ruler was nearly destroyed, and the Duke of Bai was executed. I have heard that a worthy man, when he gains the ruler's trust, does not create hollow alliances, and when he gains the people's trust, does not create danger. His words, when heeded by the ruler, must benefit the people; his teachings, when practiced below, must serve those above.'