Book 17: 《陽貨》 Yang Huo
《陽貨》 Passage 17.12
Legge Translation (1861)
The Master said: "He who puts on an appearance of stern firmness, while inwardly he is weak, is like one of the small, mean people; — yea, is he not like the thief who breaks through, or climbs over, a wall?"Word by word
- 子曰 zǐ yuē
the Master said
- 子 Master; honorific title for Confucius
- 曰 said, spoke (introduces a quotation)
- 色厲 sè lì
stern in appearance, severe in countenance
- 色 outward appearance, countenance, expression
- 厲 stern, severe, forbidding
- 而 ér
contrastive conjunction: but, while, yet
- 內荏 nèi rěn
weak, timid within, soft on the inside
- 內 inside, inwardly (contrasted with outward appearance)
- 荏 weak, soft, timid (of character)
- 譬諸 pì zhū
to liken to, compare to, draw an analogy from
- 譬 to compare, liken
- 諸 fusion of 之 + 於: it + to; introduces the object of comparison
諸 fuses 之 (it, resuming the disposition just described) and 於 (to), giving 譬諸 the sense 'liken it to'.
- 小人 xiǎo rén
the common folk, the lowly (from among whom the comparison is drawn)
- 小 small; of low or common social standing
- 人 person, people
朱熹 reads 小人 here as 細民, the common people, from whose ranks the wall-boring thief is drawn; Slingerland and Chin follow, while Legge, Lau and Watson keep the moral 'petty man'.
- 其 qí
resumptive pronoun: he, it, such a person
- 猶 yóu
to be like, resemble
- 穿 chuān
to bore through, break in
- 窬 yú
to climb over (a wall)
Rare character; paired with 穿 as the burglar's two stock methods, boring through and climbing over a wall.
- 之 zhī
attributive particle: who, that, which
- 盜 dào
thief, robber, burglar
- 也與 yě yú
rhetorical question frame: is it not...?
- 也 final particle paired with the following 與/哉 in a question
- 與 interrogative final particle (equivalent to 歟)
也 asserts and 與 (=歟) marks the question; together they turn the identification into a rhetorical question. Most translators simply end the sentence as a plain statement instead.
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