duty in ministering to your aged, and serving your ruler, ye may eat and drink freely and to satiety. And to speak of greater things:—when you can maintain a constant, watchful examination of yourselves, and your conduct is in accordance with correct virtue, then may you present the offerings of sacrifice,'* and at the same time indulge yourselves in festivity. In such case you will indeed be ministers doing right service to your king, and Heaven likewise will approve your great virtue, so that you shall never be forgotten in the royal House.'*
2. The king says, 'O Făng, in our western region, the princes of states, and the young (nobles), sons of the managers of affairs, who in former days assisted king Wăn, were all able to obey his lessons, and abstain from excess in the use of spirits; and so it is that I have now received the appointment which belonged to Yin.'
The king says, 'O Făng, I have heard it said, that formerly the first wise king of Yin manifested a reverential awe of the bright principles of Heaven and of the lower people, acting accordingly, steadfast in his virtue, and holding fast his wisdom.* From him, Thang the Successful, down to Tî-yî[1], all completed their royal virtue and revered their chief ministers, so that their managers of affairs respectfully discharged their helping duties, and dared not to allow themselves in idleness and pleasure;—how much less would they dare to indulge themselves in drinking! Moreover, in the exterior domains, (the princes of) the Hâu, Tien,
- ↑ Tî-yî was the father of Kâu-hsin, the twenty-seventh Shang sovereign. The sovereigns between Thang and him had not all been good, but the duke of Kâu chooses here to say so.
