Book 6: 《雍也》 Yong Ye (As for Yong)
《雍也》 Passage 6.17
Legge Translation (1861)
The Master said: "Who can go out but by the door? How is it that men will not walk according to these ways?"Word by word
- 子曰 zǐ yuē
the Master said
- 子 master, teacher (honorific title referring to Confucius)
- 曰 said, spoke
- 誰 shuí
who, which person (interrogative pronoun)
Ames & Rosemont recasts the rhetorical question as a declarative, rendering 誰 as the negative pronoun 'none' rather than an interrogative 'who'.
- 能 néng
can, to be able to
- 出 chū
to go out, exit, leave
- 不 bù
not (negation)
- 由 yóu
by way of, through, via
- 戶 hù
door, doorway
- 何 hé
why, how is it that
- 莫 mò
no one, nobody (negative pronoun)
- 由 yóu
to follow, proceed by way of (a path)
Same character as 由 in 誰能出不由戶 above, here shifting from the coverb 'by way of' to the verb 'to follow, take (a path)'.
- 斯 sī
this, this very
- 道 dào
the Way, the path one ought to follow
道 completes the image begun with 戶 (door): just as one cannot leave a room except through the door, one cannot live rightly except by the Way; translators split between capitalized 'Way' and lowercase 'path/way'.
- 也 yě
final particle marking assertion in a rhetorical question
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