seem to be in proportion to that energy. In such a case, how could they keep from considering paucity a mark of distinction? Hence the superior men, (the framers), watched carefully over the solitude (of their own thoughts)[1].
17. The ancient sages (thus) gave honour to what was internal, and sought pleasure in what was external; found a mark of distinction in paucity, and one of what was admirable in multitude; and therefore in the ceremonial usages instituted by the ancient kings we should look neither for multitude nor for paucity, but for the due relative proportion.
18. Therefore, when a man of rank uses a large victim in sacrifice, we say he acts according to propriety, but when an ordinary officer does so, we say he commits an act of usurpation.
19. Kwan Kung had his sacrificial dishes of grain carved, and red bands to his cap; fashioned hills on the capitals of his pillars, and pondweed on the small pillars above the beams[2];—the superior man considered it wild extravagance.
20. An Phing-kung, in sacrificing to his father, used a sucking-pig which did not fill the dish, and went to court in an (old) washed robe and cap:—the
superior man considered it was niggardliness[3].
- ↑ Callery thinks that the theory about rites underlying this paragraph is "ééminemment obscure." One difficulty with me is to discover any connection between its parts and what is said in paragraphs 7 and 8 about the "multitude and paucity of rites."
- ↑ See the Analects, V, xvii, and the note there. In that passage the extravagance is charged on the 𝖅ang Wǎn-kung of paragraph 23.
- ↑ An Phing-kung was a Great officer of Khî, and ought not to have been so niggardly.
