a pattern to (all within) the four seas[1]:—this is the filial piety of the Son of Heaven[2].
It is said in (the Marquis of) Fû on Punishments[3],
'The One man will have felicity, and the millions of the People will depend on (what ensures his happiness).'
Chapter III.
Filial Piety in the Princes of States.
Above others, and yet free from pride, they dwell on high, without peril; adhering to economy, and carefully observant of the rules and laws, they are full, without overflowing. To dwell on high without peril is the way long to preserve nobility; to be full without overflowing is the way long to preserve riches. When their riches and nobility do not leave their persons, then they are able to preserve the altars of their land and grain, and to secure the harmony of their people and men in office[4]:—this is the filial piety of the princes of states.
- ↑ Chinese scholars make 'the people' to be the subjects of the king, and 'all within the four seas' to be the barbarous tribes outside the four borders of the kingdom, between them and the seas or oceans within which the habitable earth was contained—according to the earliest geographical conceptions. All we have to find in the language is the unbounded, the universal, influence of 'the Son of Heaven.'
- ↑ The appellation 'Son of Heaven' for the sovereign was unknown in the earliest times of the Chinese nation. It cannot be traced beyond the Shang dynasty.
- ↑ See the Shû, V, xxvii, 4, and the note on the name of that Book, p. 254.
- ↑ In the Chinese Repository we have for this:—'They will be able to protect their ancestral possessions with the produce of their lands;' 'They will make sure the supreme rank to their
