It changed and became the four seasons. It was distributed and became the breathings (thrilling in the universal frame). Its (lessons) transmitted (to men) are called its orders; the law and authority of them is in Heaven.
5. While the rules of ceremony have their origin in heaven, the movement of them reaches to earth. The distribution of them extends to all the business (of life). They change with the seasons; they agree in reference to the (variations of) lot and condition. In regard to man, they serve to nurture (his nature). They are practised by means of offerings, acts of strength, words and postures of courtesy, in eating and drinking, in the observances of capping, marriage, mourning, sacrificing, archery, chariot-driving, audiences, and friendly missions.
6. Thus propriety and righteousness are the great elements for man's (character); it is by means of them that his speech is the expression of truth and his intercourse (with others) the promotion of harmony; they are (like) the union of the cuticle and cutis, and the binding together of the muscles and bones in strengthening (the body). They constitute
the great methods by which we nourish the living,
proceeded to devise the personal name of Tt or God, as the appellation of this; and neither Tâoism, nor any other form of materialistic philosophising, has succeeded in eradicating the precious inheritance of those two terms from the mind of peasant or scholar.
Callery has misconstrued the paragraph by making "Les Rites," or the "toutes choses" of his gloss, the subject of all the predicates in it:—"Les rites ont pour origine essentielle la Grande Unité (principe de toutes choses). Ils se divisent ensuite, les uns pour le Ciel, les autres pour la Terre," &c.
