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THE HSIÂO KING.
CH. VII.
afforded by (different) soils[1]; they are careful of their conduct and economical in their expenditure;—in order to nourish their parents:—this is the filial piety of the common people.
Therefore from the Son of Heaven down to the common people, there never has been one whose filial piety was without its beginning and end on whom calamity did not come.
Chapter VII.
Filial Piety in Relation to the Three Powers[2].
The disciple Zăng said, 'Immense indeed is the greatness of filial piety!' The Master replied[3],
- ↑ These two sentences describe the attention of the people to the various processes of agriculture, as conditioned by the seasons and the qualities of different soils.With this chapter there ends what Kû Hsî regarded as the only portion of the Hsiâo in which we can rest as having come from Confucius. So far, it is with him a continuous discourse that proceeded from the sage. And there is, in this portion, especially when we admit Kû's expurgations, a certain sequence and progress, without logical connexion, in the exhibition of the subject which we fail to find in the chapters that follow.
- ↑ 'The Three Powers' is a phrase which is first found in two of the Appendixes to the Yî King, denoting Heaven, Earth, and Man, as the three great agents or agencies in nature, or the circle of being.
- ↑ The whole of the reply of Confucius here, down to 'the advantages afforded by earth,' is found in a narrative in the Zo Kwan, under the twenty-fifth year of duke Khâo (B.C. 517), with the important difference that the discourse is there about 'ceremonies,' and not about filial piety. Plainly, it is an interpolation in the Hsiâo, and is rightly thrown out by Kû and Wû Khăng. To my own mind it was a relief to find that the passage was not genuine, and had not come from Confucius. The discourse in the Zo Kwan, which is quite lengthy, these sentences being only the com-
