Shu-sun Wu-shu was disparaging Confucius. Tzŭ Kung said: It is no good. Confucius is proof against detraction. The wisdom of other men is like hills and mountain-peaks, which however high can still be scaled. But Confucius is like the sun or the moon, which can never be reached by the foot of man. A man may want to cut himself off from their light, but what harm will that do to the sun or the moon? It only shows very plainly that he has no notion of the measurement of capacity.
[1] This was on the borders of the Wei State, whither Confucius, with a small band of disciples, was retiring, heavy of heart, after his discomfiture in Lu.
[2] Literally, "is going to use him as a bell with a wooden clapper"--this being the instrument used in making announcements or to call the people together. The friendly prefect's prophecy was to be fulfilled more wonderfully than ever he could have imagined. Never, perhaps, in the history of the human race has one man exerted such an enormous influence for good on after generations.
[3] Legge's rendering, "My doctrine is that of an all-pervading unity," is quite untenable, and no other translator has followed him here. The logic of the passage obviously requires the meaning given above.
[4] This saying should be compared with those on pp. 91 and 69. It is generally acclaimed as the best epitome of Confucian teaching, yet it was reserved for Mr. Ku Hung-ming, a Chinaman, to give the first correct translation of it in English. The two important words are _chung_ and _shu_, "conscientiousness" and "charity," for which see notes on pp. 58 and 69. Legge's version, "To be true to the principles of our nature and the benevolent exercise of them to others," though ponderous, would seem to have hit the true meaning, had he not spoilt it by a note to the effect that shu is "duty-doing on the principle of reciprocity." It has nothing on earth to do with reciprocity, being in fact that disinterested love of one's neighbour which was preached five hundred years later in Palestine. The other precept, embodied in the word chung, is exactly Shakespeare's "To thine own self be true"--a noble moral conception for which, obscured as it has been by bungling translators, Confucius has never yet received full credit.