Analects 4.22: 里仁 (Li Ren)
Confucius and his disciples · Classical Chinese original · new English translation and commentary by Text Atlas
Overview
Book 4 asks what it means to make humaneness a settled home. Love and hatred, poverty and wealth, haste and adversity test that commitment. The exemplary person’s concern with what is right is set beside the petty person’s concern with gain. Master Zeng explains the Master’s single thread as wholeheartedness and consideration for others. A cluster of sayings then places devotion to parents under the pressure of disagreement, distance, continuity, and aging. The closing sayings connect restraint in speech with action, return to the image of neighbors, and consider the cost of pressing correction on rulers and friends.
Analects 4.22
子曰、古者言之不出、恥躬之不逮也。
The Master said, “People in ancient times held back their words, ashamed that their own conduct might fail to match them.”
Commentary
ethics Conduct must catch up with words 不逮 is failing to reach or catch up. The image makes spoken words a demand that one’s own conduct must meet. Shame attaches to that possible shortfall, which explains holding back speech. This contrasts with the earlier scholar’s shame about clothes and food.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: high