Analects 6.24: 雍也 (Yong Ye)
Confucius and his disciples · Classical Chinese original · new English translation and commentary by Text Atlas
Overview
Book 6 asks how character becomes visible in governing, learning, giving, and answering other people. Judgments of practical ability sit beside a refusal of office. Yan Hui’s love of learning, steadiness in humaneness, and joy under hardship are framed by grief at his early death. The short sayings test relations between substance and refinement, knowledge and delight, reverence and distance. The closing exchange moves from the achievement of helping the people on a vast scale to a nearby method of humaneness: using one’s own desire for a firm footing and progress to help others find theirs.
Analects 6.24
宰我問曰、仁者雖告之曰、井有仁焉、其從之也。子曰、何為其然也、君子可逝也、不可陷也、可欺也、不可罔也。
Zai Wo asked, “Suppose a humane person is told, ‘There is someone in the well.’ Wouldn’t they go in after that person?” The Master said, “Why would they do that? An exemplary person can be made to go there, but cannot be lured into the pit. They can be deceived, but cannot be led into folly.”
Commentary
source variant Who or what is in the well? The Chinese prints 仁, “humaneness,” in 井有仁焉, rather than 人, “person.” Legge’s English gives a person in the well. The translation follows that concrete reading of a reported emergency. Taking 仁 as “a humane person” is another possible reading; taking it as humaneness itself would make the proposed lure more paradoxical. The printed wording leaves this distinction unresolved.
Basis: translation-comparison
Confidence: medium
ethics Going to the well and falling in Zai Wo tests whether concern for another person commits a humane person to entering the well. The reply separates going to the place from being trapped there, and being deceived from being led into folly. An unverified report can reasonably bring someone to investigate; it need not override their judgment about entering the well. The two contrasts give humaneness practical discrimination.
Basis: textual-inference
Confidence: medium