Book 4: 《里仁》 Li Ren (Dwelling in Ren)
《里仁》 Passage 4.7
Legge Translation (1861)
The Master said: "The faults of men are characteristic of the class to which they belong. By observing a man's faults, it may be known that he is virtuous."Word by word
- 子曰 zǐ yuē
the Master said
- 子 Master, honorific title for a teacher; here, Confucius
- 曰 said, spoke
- 人 rén
people, persons in general
- 之…也 zhī … yě
genitive particle plus topic-marking pause: as for people's (errors)
- 之 possessive/genitive particle: 's, of
- 也 sentence-medial pause / topic-marking particle
之 marks the possessive relation (people's faults); 也 marks a pause after the fronted topic clause. Most translators restructure the sentence and drop both markers.
- 過 guò
fault, transgression
- 各於其黨 gè yú qí dǎng
each according to their own kind, type, or category
Nearly every translator renders this whole clause as one idiom ('true to type', 'characteristic of the class') rather than word for word, so 各, 於, and 其 have no separable renderings of their own; 黨 carries the content and is also glossed on its own below.
- 黨 dǎng
kind, category, type (of person)
- 觀 guān
to observe, examine closely
- 過 guò
fault, transgression
- 斯 sī
then, thereupon
- 知…矣 zhī … yǐ
assertive completion: you will surely come to know
矣 marks the assertion as settled/realized.
- 知 zhī
to know, understand
- 仁 rén
benevolence, humaneness, moral goodness
孔安國 and 朱熹 take 仁 as the virtue, as do Legge, Watson, Roberts and Ames & Rosemont; Peimin Ni and 楊伯峻 read 仁 as 人, a person, a reading supported by the 後漢書 quotation 觀過斯知人矣, and Slingerland, Chin and Lau render it as character or the man. The choice is open.
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