Book 14: 《憲問》 Xian Wen (Xian Asked)
《憲問》 Passage 14.31
Legge Translation (1861)
The Master said: "He who does not anticipate attempts to deceive him, nor think beforehand of his not being believed, and yet apprehends these things readily (when they occur);— is he not a man of superior worth?"Word by word
- 子曰 zǐ yuē
the Master said
- 子 Master, honorific title for Confucius
- 曰 said, spoke
- 不 bù
not
- 逆 nì
to anticipate, presume in advance
not the common 'disobey, rebel' sense; read as meeting/expecting something before it happens
- 詐 zhà
deceit, deception, trickery
- 不 bù
not
- 億 yì
to conjecture, presume, suspect without evidence
read as a loan for 臆 (to conjecture), not 'hundred million'
- 不信 bù xìn
untrustworthy, in bad faith, lacking good faith
- 不 not
- 信 trustworthy, good faith, sincere
- 抑亦 yì yì
yet, still, all the same: adversative-concessive connector
- 抑 yet, but, however: adversative connective
- 亦 also, still, yet: reinforcing adverb
- 先 xiān
first, before others, in advance
- 覺 jué
to perceive, become aware of, apprehend
- 者 zhě
nominalizing particle: one who, the one who
Legge, Lau and Watson word it with 'he who' or 'who'; the others resume the topic with a demonstrative ('this') and leave the nominaliser unworded.
- 是 shì
this, that: resumptive demonstrative pronoun
- 賢 xián
worthy, virtuous, of superior character
Watson renders this as 'wise' rather than 'worthy'
- 乎 hū
interrogative or exclamatory final particle
only Slingerland supplies an explicit intensifier.
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