| Shuaixing: |
Beans and wheat are different from rice and millet, yet their consumption satisfies the appetite. Are the natures of low and superior men then of a different kind? They resemble the Five Grains, all have their use. There is no fundamental difference between them, only their manifestations are unlike. The fluid men are endowed with, is either copious or deficient, and their character correspondingly good or bad. The wicked have received but a small dose of kindness, the irascible, plenty of temper. If kindness be unsufficient, people do wrong, and there is not much hope for an improvement. With plenty of temper, people become violent, and have no sense of justice. Moreover, their feeling of sympathy is defective, joy and anger do not happen at the proper time, and they have baseless and irreasonable fears. Reckless men like that commit outrages, therefore they are considered bad. Man has in his body the Five Qualities and the Five Organs. If he got too little of them, or if they are too small, his actions do not attain to goodness. Man himself is either accomplished or deficient, but accomplishment and deficiency do not mean a difference of organisation. Use leaven in big, or in small quantities, and the result will be similar. In rich as well as in poor wine there is the same leaven. Good men as well as bad ones are permeated by the same original fluid. According to its greater or smaller volumen the mind of the individual is bright or dull. Ximen Bao would tighten his leathern belt, whenever he wanted to relax himself. Dongan Yu loosened his girdle strings, when he was going to rouse himself. Yet neither passion nor indolence is the right medium. However, he who wears a belt or a girdle on his body is properly dressed. When the question arises, how deficiencies can be made good by means of belts and strings, the names of Ximen Bao and Dongan Yu must be mentioned together. Houses of poor, wretched people are not in a proper state. They have holes in the walls under the roof, to which others take objection. When rich and well-to-do people build houses, they have the walls made in a way, that they find there real shelter. The whole house is in good repair, and nobody could say anything against it. |
| Shuaixing: |
In Wei the land was divided in lots of a hundred mu, in Ye alone the lots measured two hundred mu. Ximen Bao irrigated his land with water from the Zhang and made it so fertile, that it yielded one bushel per mu. Man's natural parts are like the fields of Ye, tuition and education, like the water from the Zhang. One must be sorry for him that cannot be transformed, but not for a man whose character it is difficult to govern. In the streets of the city of Luoyang there was no water. It was therefore pulled up from the Luo by watermen. If it was streaming quickly day and night, it was their doing. From this point of view kindness and justice must increase manifold in him who comes into close contact with an excellent man. Mencius' mother changed her domicile, for she had ascertained this truth. |
