| Autobiography: |
The world courts those who have been successful, and disdains those who have failed. It hails the victor, and spurns the defeated. As long as Wang Chong was rising, and holding rank and office, all the people swarmed around him like ants, but, when he had lost his position and was living in poverty, his former friends abandoned him. He pondered over the heartlessness of the world and in his leisure he wrote twelve chapters "Censures on Common Morals", hoping that the reading of these books would rouse the public conscience. For this purpose he expressly wrote it in an easy, popular style. Should anybody condemn it as shallow, I would reply that if the style of the Sacred Institutions be employed for the Lesser Odes, or if an elegant speech be addressed to rustics, they would not understand anything, and therefore not agree. Thus Su Qin spoke very elegantly in Zhao, but Li Tui was not enchanted at all. Shang Yang spoke in Qin, as if he had addressed an emperor, but Duke Xiao did not follow his advice. If no attention be paid to the individuality and inclinations of the hearers, one may exhaust the eloquence of Yao and Shun, it would be like giving an ox wine to drink and feeding a horse on preserved meat. A refined, rhetorical, and scientific style is fit for the upper classes of society, but out of place for small-minded people. It happens very seldom, that those who must hear something nolens volens, take it to heart.
When Confucius had lost a horse in the country, the country-people locked it up, and did not return it. Zi Gong spoke to them in well turned sentences, but only made them angry, but when the groom addressed them in a familar, jocular tone, they relented.
To use high-flown expressions at all costs instead of the plain and simple language of the people is like mixing an elixir, as the spirits use, to cure a cold or a cough, and to put on a fur-coat of sable or fox to fetch firewood or vegetables. As regards propriety, a thing is often out of place, and many an action is often better left undone. To give a decision, and understand a grievance, one must not be a Gao Yao, and to cook sunflower-seed and onions, no Yi Di or Yi Ya is required. In a side-alley one does not play the music of Shun and Wu, and to the Village Mother one does not sacrifice a whole ox. What is unnecessary, is also inadequate.
To carve a fowl with a butcher's knife, to reap sun-flowers with a Shu spear, to cut chop-sticks with an iron halberd, and to pour a glassful into a basin or a tureen would be incongruous, and few would recommend it. What is the principle of debating? To illustrate deep thoughts by simple ones. And how do we prove that we possess knowledge? By illustrating difficult points by easy ones. Sages and worthies use to weigh, what suits the different talents. Hence the difference of style, which may be difficult or easy. |
