Analects 15.5: 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 15.5
子張問行。子曰、言忠信、行篤敬、雖蠻貊之邦、行矣、言不忠信、行不篤敬、雖州里、行乎哉。立、則見其參於前也、在輿、則見期倚於衡也、夫然後行。子張書諸紳。
Zizhang asked how to make his way. The Master said, “Be wholehearted and trustworthy in speech, earnest and reverent in action. Then you can make your way even in the lands of the Man and Mo. If your speech is not wholehearted and trustworthy, and your actions not earnest and reverent, could you make your way even in your own neighborhood? When standing, see these before you; when in a carriage, see them leaning against the crossbar. Only then can you make your way.” Zizhang wrote this on his sash.
Commentary
translation Conduct that can go anywhere 行 links Zizhang’s question, his actions, and the repeated promise of making his way. Legge adds the idea of being appreciated; the Chinese can concern the effectiveness and practicability of conduct more broadly. The Man and Mo stand at the far side of the contrast with one’s own neighborhood. The English keeps their names rather than Legge’s regional labels and disparaging description.
Basis: translation-comparison
Confidence: medium
source variant Keeping the counsels before the eyes The displayed Chinese has 其, “them,” when standing, but prints 期 in the parallel carriage clause. The Chinese comparison text has 其 in both places, and Legge likewise makes the same counsels visible in both settings. The English follows that pronoun reading while leaving the displayed 期 intact. Seeing the counsels before oneself, and then writing them on a sash, turns the instruction into a continuing reminder.
Basis: translation-comparison
Confidence: medium