Book 17: 《陽貨》 Yang Huo
《陽貨》 Passage 17.2
Legge Translation (1861)
The Master said: "By nature, men are nearly alike; by practice, they get to be wide apart."Word by word
- 子曰 zǐ yuē
the Master said
- 子 honorific title for Confucius: 'the Master'
- 曰 said, spoke
- 性 xìng
inborn nature, innate human character
the crux term of this line, later central to the Mencius/Xunzi debate over whether human nature is good or bad
- 相近 xiāng jìn
similar, close to one another
- 相 each other, mutually (adverb marking reciprocal action)
- 近 close, similar, alike
- 也 yě
final particle of assertion, marking the close of a clause
- 習 xí
practice, repeated action
the second crux term: translators split between the activity of practising (Legge, Slingerland, Lau, Watson, Chin) and the resulting disposition of habit (Peimin Ni, Roberts, Ames & Rosemont)
- 相遠 xiāng yuǎn
diverge, grow far apart
- 相 each other, mutually (adverb marking reciprocal action)
- 遠 distant, far apart, divergent
- 也 yě
final particle of assertion, marking the close of a clause
A text file for Anki 2.1.55 or later: File → Import. The cards go to the deck “Analects”, tagged by passage, and importing again updates them instead of adding copies.
Discussion
No one has started on this passage yet.
Start the discussion in r/analects