{"collection":"cfu","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/cfu/sbe03/sbe03187.htm","path":"cfu/sbe03/sbe03187.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/cfu/sbe03/sbe03187.htm","text":"The disciple \u021c\u0103ng said, 'Immense indeed is the greatness of filial piety!' The Master replied 3,\n'Yes, filial piety is the constant (method) of Heaven, the righteousness of Earth, and the practical duty of Man 1. Heaven and earth invariably pursue the course (that may be thus described), and the people take it as their pattern. (The ancient kings) imitated the brilliant luminaries of heaven, and acted. in accordance with the (varying) advantages afforded by earth, so that they were in accord with all under heaven; and in consequence their teachings, without being severe, were successful, and their government, without being rigorous, secured perfect order.\n'The ancient kings, seeing how their teachings 1 could transform the people, set before them therefore an example of the most extended love, and none of the people neglected their parents; they set forth to them (the nature of) virtue and righteousness, and the people roused themselves to the practice of them; they went before them with reverence and yielding courtesy, and the people had no contentions; they led them on by the rules of propriety and by music, and the people were harmonious and benignant; they showed them what they loved and what they disliked, and the people understood their prohibitions.\n'It is said in the Book of Poetry 2,\n472:2 'The Three Powers' is a phrase which is first found in two of the Appendixes to the Y\u00ee King, denoting Heaven, Earth, and Man, as the three great agents or agencies in nature, or the circle of being.\n472:3 The whole of the reply of Confucius here, down to 'the advantages afforded by earth,' is found in a narrative in the \u021co Kwan, under the twenty-fifth year of duke Kh\u00e2o (B.C. 517), with the important difference that the discourse is there about 'ceremonies,' and not about filial piety. Plainly, it is an interpolation in the Hsi\u00e2o, and is rightly thrown out by K\u00fb and W\u00fb Kh\u0103ng. To my own mind it was a relief to find that the passage was not genuine, and had not come from Confucius. The discourse in the \u021co Kwan, which is quite lengthy, these sentences being only the commencement p. 473 of it, is more than sufficiently fanciful; but it is conceivable that what is here predicated of filial piety might be spoken of ceremonies, while I never could see what it could have to do with filial piety, or filial piety with it. After the long discourse in the \u021co Kwan one of the interlocutors in it exclaims, 'Immense, indeed, is the greatness of ceremonies!'--the same terms with which \u021c\u0103ng-\u021dze is made to commence this chapter, saving that we have 'ceremonies' instead of 'filial piety.' There can be no doubt that the passage is interpolated; and yet the first part of it is quoted by Pan K\u00fb (in our first century), in a note to Li\u00fb Hin's Catalogue, and also in the Amplification of the First Precept of the Khang-hs\u00ee Sacred Edict (in our eighteenth century). Pan K\u00fb may not have been sufficiently acquainted with the \u021co Kwan to detect the forgery; that Chinese scholars should still quote the description as applicable to filial piety shows how liable they are to be carried away by fine-sounding terms and mysterious utterances.\nP. Cibot gives a correct translation of the first part in a note, but adds that it carries the sense of the text much too high, and would bring it into collision with the prejudices of the west, and he has preferred to hold to the more common explanation:--'Ce qu\u2019est la r\u00e9gularit\u00e9 des monuments des astres pour le firmament, la fertilit\u00e9 des campagnes pour la terre, la Pi\u00e9t\u00e9 Filiale l\u2019est constamment pour les peuples!'\n473:1 An amusing translation of this sentence is found in Samuel Johnson's 'Oriental Religions, China,' p. 208, beginning, 'Filial Piety is the Book of Heaven!' Mr. Johnson does not say where he got this version.\n474:1 Sze-m\u00e2 Kwang changes the character for 'teachings' here into that for 'filial piety.' There is no external evidence for such a reading; and the texture of the whole treatise is so loose that we cannot insist on internal evidence.\n474:2 See the Shih, II, iv, ode 7, stanza i.","title":"SBE 3: The Hsi\u00e2o King: Chapter VII. Filial Piety in...","type":"page"}