| Shuaixing: |
Wang Liang and Zao Fu were famous as charioteers: out of unruly and vicious animals they made good ones. Had they only been able to drive good horses, but incapable of breaking bad ones, they would have been nothing more than jockeys and ordinary equerries. Their horsemanship would not have been remarkable nor deserving of world-wide fame. Of Wang Liang the saying goes that, when he stepped into a chariot, the steeds knew no exhaustion. Under the rule of Yao and Shun people were neither seditious nor ignorant. Tradition says that the people of Yao and Shun might have been invested with fiefs house by house, whereas those of Jie and Zhou were worthy of death door by door. The people followed the way prescribed by the three dynasties. That the people of the holy emperors were like this, those of the wicked emperors otherwise, was merely the result of the influence of their rulers, not of the people's original nature. The covetous hearing of Bo Yi's fame became disinterested, and the weak resolute. The news of Liu Xia Hui's reputation made the niggardly generous and the mean liberal. If the spread of fame alone could bring about such changes, what then must be the effect of personal intercourse and tuition? |
