Book 17: 《陽貨》 Yang Huo
《陽貨》 Passage 17.14
Legge Translation (1861)
The Master said: "To tell, as we go along, what we have heard on the way, is to cast away our virtue."Word by word
- 子曰 zǐ yuē
the Master said
- 子 master, teacher; title for Confucius
- 曰 said, spoke (introducing a quotation)
- 道 dào
road, street, path
A physical road here, not the abstract Way; it pairs with 塗, a near-synonym, in the parallel construction 道...而塗...
- 聽 tīng
to hear, hear about
- 而 ér
coordinating conjunction: and, and then
- 塗 tú
road, path, byway
Near-synonym of 道; several translators render the pair as one location (road/street) plus the sense of going along it rather than as two distinct nouns.
- 說 shuō
to tell, repeat, spread (hearsay)
- 德 dé
virtue, moral character
- 之 zhī
genitive particle: 's, of
Marks 德 as what is being discarded (德之棄 = 'the discarding of virtue').
- 棄 qì
to abandon, discard, throw away, reject
Parallels 17.13's 德之賊也 (a thief of virtue); here the moralized fault is instead cast as virtue's abandonment.
- 也 yě
final particle of assertion: is, this is
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