Analects 11.19: 先進 (Xian Jin)
Confucius and his disciples · Classical Chinese original · new English translation and commentary by Text Atlas
Overview
Book 11 studies the people around the Master through remembered companionship, distinct abilities, rebukes, and grief. The death of Yan Yuan brings intense mourning beside disputes over what a fitting burial requires. Other exchanges test how to judge character, when to act, and what limits service to a ruler must keep. The same advice cannot serve every temperament: one student needs encouragement, another restraint. In the long final conversation, four wishes reveal different ways of imagining a life. The Master’s approval of Dian’s spring outing remains beside his judgment that governing requires ritual and a willingness to yield.
Analects 11.19
子張問善人之道。子曰、不踐(ji1、迂+亦、與跡同)、亦不入於室。
Zizhang asked about the way of a good person. The Master said, “Such a person does not tread in others’ footsteps, but does not enter the inner room either.”
Commentary
source variant The missing character for footprints The printed description labels the missing character as equivalent to 跡, a track or footprint. The English therefore reads 踐 with it as treading in footsteps. Legge also uses the footprint image. The character description is retained in the Chinese.
Basis: translation-comparison
Confidence: high
philology Goodness and the inner room The two negatives hold together independence from others’ tracks and failure to enter the inner room. That room recalls the earlier assessment of Zilu’s progress. “Others’” is supplied in the English: the Chinese names footprints without an owner. The saying may distinguish untrained goodness from deeper cultivation, but it does not identify whose tracks or room these are. Legge makes the room the sage’s; the English leaves that owner unstated.
Basis: translation-comparison
Confidence: medium