Book 8: 《泰伯》 Tai Bo
《泰伯》 Passage 8.2
Legge Translation (1861)
The Master said: "Respectfulness, without the rules of propriety, becomes laborious bustle; carefulness, without the rules of propriety, becomes timidity; boldness, without the rules of propriety, becomes insubordination; straightforwardness, without the rules of propriety, becomes rudeness.When those who are in high stations perform well all their duties to their relations, the people are aroused to virtue. When old friends are not neglected by them, the people are preserved from meanness."
Word by word
- 子曰 zǐ yuē
the Master said
- 子 master, teacher — honorific title for Confucius
- 曰 said, spoke
- 恭 gōng
reverent, deferential in manner
- 而無禮 ér wú lǐ
yet lacking in ritual propriety
- 而 conjunctive particle: and, yet, but
- 無 to lack, be without, not have
- 禮 ritual propriety, the rites
而 is a light adversative connective here.
- 則 zé
resultative conjunction: then, in that case
- 勞 láo
wearying toil, exhaustion
- 慎 shèn
cautious, careful
- 而無禮 ér wú lǐ
yet lacking in ritual propriety
- 而 conjunctive particle: and, yet, but
- 無 to lack, be without, not have
- 禮 ritual propriety, the rites
Peimin Ni, Roberts, Lau and Chin state the 'lacking ritual' condition once for the whole passage rather than repeating it at each clause.
- 則 zé
resultative conjunction: then, in that case
- 葸 xǐ
timid, fearful
- 勇 yǒng
brave, courageous
- 而無禮 ér wú lǐ
yet lacking in ritual propriety
- 而 conjunctive particle: and, yet, but
- 無 to lack, be without, not have
- 禮 ritual propriety, the rites
Peimin Ni, Roberts, Lau and Chin state the 'lacking ritual' condition once for the whole passage rather than repeating it at each clause.
- 則 zé
resultative conjunction: then, in that case
- 亂 luàn
disorder, unruly chaos
- 直 zhí
straightforward, candid, upright
- 而無禮 ér wú lǐ
yet lacking in ritual propriety
- 而 conjunctive particle: and, yet, but
- 無 to lack, be without, not have
- 禮 ritual propriety, the rites
Peimin Ni, Roberts, Lau and Chin state the 'lacking ritual' condition once for the whole passage rather than repeating it at each clause.
- 則 zé
resultative conjunction: then, in that case
- 絞 jiǎo
biting, caustic sharpness
絞 (lit. to twist tight) is the most contested of the four failure-terms. 馬融 in 集解 glosses it 絞刺, cutting sharpness of speech, the reading kept here; 朱熹 glosses it 急切, impatient severity, behind Slingerland's 'inflexible' and Lau's 'intolerant'.
- 君子 jūn zǐ
exemplary person, gentleman
- 君 lord, ruler; 君子 is literally a lord's son
- 子 son; 君子 is literally a lord's son, one of the ruling class, which the Analects makes a term of character
- 篤 dǔ
deeply devoted, earnest, wholehearted
- 於 yú
to, toward
- 親 qīn
parents, close kin
- 則 zé
resultative conjunction: then, in that case
- 民 mín
the common people
- 興 xīng
stirred, inspired, moved to aspire
- 於 yú
to, toward
- 仁 rén
benevolence, humaneness
a well-known site of translator divergence for 仁 across the corpus; Legge's 'virtue' is an unusually loose choice here.
- 故舊 gù jiù
old friends, long-standing acquaintances
- 故 old, former
- 舊 old, long-standing
Roberts alone reads this as 'the old ways/customs' rather than old friends, an outlier interpretation not shared by any other translator here.
- 不 bù
not
- 遺 yí
to neglect, abandon, forget
- 則 zé
resultative conjunction: then, in that case
- 民 mín
the common people
- 不偷 bù tōu
not cold, not mean-spirited toward one another
- 不 not
- 偷 mean-spirited, careless of one's duties to others
偷 spans a range from 'mean/careless' to 'shirking duty'; Roberts continues its 'old ways' reading of the previous clause, rendering this as the people not departing from those ways.
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