Analects 15.40: 衛靈公 (Wei Ling Gong)
Confucius and his disciples · Classical Chinese original · new English translation and commentary by Text Atlas
Overview
Book 15 tests exemplary conduct under pressure: hunger, going unrecognized, bad government, and the pull of clever speech. Its sayings ask how learning becomes judgment, how humaneness directs action, and how ritual gives that action form. The portraits of unwavering straightness and timely withdrawal leave room for different responses to public disorder. Praise must answer to examination, and responsibility repeatedly returns to oneself. Short assurances sit beside difficult tensions about reputation and the cost of humaneness. The book closes with the Master guiding a visitor through a room, giving the call for consideration a precise human setting.
Analects 15.40
子曰、辭、達而已矣。
The Master said, “Words need only get the meaning across.”
Commentary
philology Words that reach 達 is reaching or getting through. The saying gives words the task of carrying meaning to another person and closes with 而已矣, “that is all.” The next scene makes speech useful in just this way: the Master names steps, a mat, and the people present.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: high