DOI Artikel:
Waley, Arthur: Confucius
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.29343#0014
THROUGH THE AGES
WOODCUT BY CECIL FRENCH
liberty to keep as many mistresses as his purse
permitted; and, if we may believe the Book of
Rites, he bundled away his official wife after a
very short experience of married life. Certainly
he would have regarded our obsession about
the details of sexual behaviour as in the highest
degree morbid and ridiculous.
HIS starting point was the belief in a
Golden Age of the past. Every moral
problem solves itself if we can only
discover how it was dealt with by the cmen of
old.’ He made no attempt to discover general
principles upon which the ancients had acted
and to apply them generally; the terms bene-
10
volence, righteousness, etc., which occur so*
often are never satisfactorily defined. On the
contrary, it was his aim to catalogue, as far as
possible, instances of good and bad behaviour
in every conceivable contingency. Similarly,.
his own life was used as a pattern by his dis-
ciples, hence that fantastically detailed account
of his behaviour which occupies Book 20 of
the Analects:
£CWhenthePrincesummonedhimhisexpression
seemed to change and his legs as it were bent
under him; . . . on entering the palace gate he:
appeared to stoop as though the gate were not
high enough to admit him. . . . As he passecf
the Throne, he wore a constrained expression..
WOODCUT BY CECIL FRENCH
liberty to keep as many mistresses as his purse
permitted; and, if we may believe the Book of
Rites, he bundled away his official wife after a
very short experience of married life. Certainly
he would have regarded our obsession about
the details of sexual behaviour as in the highest
degree morbid and ridiculous.
HIS starting point was the belief in a
Golden Age of the past. Every moral
problem solves itself if we can only
discover how it was dealt with by the cmen of
old.’ He made no attempt to discover general
principles upon which the ancients had acted
and to apply them generally; the terms bene-
10
volence, righteousness, etc., which occur so*
often are never satisfactorily defined. On the
contrary, it was his aim to catalogue, as far as
possible, instances of good and bad behaviour
in every conceivable contingency. Similarly,.
his own life was used as a pattern by his dis-
ciples, hence that fantastically detailed account
of his behaviour which occupies Book 20 of
the Analects:
£CWhenthePrincesummonedhimhisexpression
seemed to change and his legs as it were bent
under him; . . . on entering the palace gate he:
appeared to stoop as though the gate were not
high enough to admit him. . . . As he passecf
the Throne, he wore a constrained expression..