弟子 English

I

A certain reckless fellow of Lu, one of the wandering swordsmen of Bian, named Zhong You, styled Zilu, took it into his head that he would go and humiliate this scholar Kong Qiu of Zou, a teacher whose reputation for wisdom had lately grown so loud.

Thinking, what can such a sham sage amount to, he set off for Confucius's house in a towering rage, hair disheveled and cap askew, wearing the short-tailed coat of a fighting man, a rooster dangling from his left hand and a boar from his right.

He meant to drown out, with the shaking of his rooster and boar and the clamor of his own shouting mouth, the Confucians' droning chant of odes and texts to the lute.

To the shrill screeching of the animals a young man came bursting in, eyes blazing, and there began an exchange between him and Confucius — who sat leaning on his armrest, calm-faced, his round cap set loosely, his jade pendant hanging at ease.

"What is it you are fond of?"

asked Confucius.

"I am fond of the long sword."

the young man declared, head held high.

Confucius could not help but smile.

For in the young man's voice and bearing he saw a boastfulness so brimming with childish innocence.

Yet in the face of this ruddy, thick-browed, clear-eyed, plainly fierce young man there seemed to shine, of itself, some lovable candor.

Confucius asked again,

"And what of learning?"

"Learning — of what use could it possibly be?"

Since this was, after all, the very thing he had come to say, Zilu answered as though shouting it out, full of vigor.

When the authority of learning itself was called into question, Confucius could no longer merely smile.

He began, patiently and at length, to expound on the necessity of learning.

A ruler without a remonstrating minister loses the right course; a gentleman without instructive friends loses discernment.

Does not even a tree grow straight only once it has taken the carpenter's line?

Just as the horse needs the whip and the bow the corrective frame, so too does man need the discipline of learning to rein in his unruly nature — how could it be otherwise?

Only when corrected, ordered, and polished does a thing become material of true use.

Confucius possessed a persuasiveness in speech so utterly compelling that one could never guess it from the bare characters of the sayings later handed down.

Not only in the substance of his words, but in the very calm of his voice and its cadence, and in the manner — brimming with conviction — in which he spoke them, there was something that could not fail to win over the listener.

From the young man's bearing the color of defiance gradually faded, and by degrees he came to look as though he were listening with respect.

"And yet,"

Zilu still had not lost the spirit to counterattack.

He had heard that the bamboo of the southern mountains, straight without need of bending, could pierce the thick hide of a rhinoceros once cut and put to use.

If that is so, what need has one of superior natural gifts for learning at all?

For Confucius, nothing could be easier than to demolish so childish an analogy.

When Confucius told him that if that southern bamboo of his were fitted with feathered shaft and arrowhead and then polished, it would pierce not merely rhinoceros hide but far more besides, the lovable, simple-hearted young man found himself at a loss for an answer.

He flushed red, and stood a while before Confucius saying nothing, seeming lost in thought; then all at once he flung down the rooster and the boar, bowed his head low, and said, "I shall receive your teaching with reverence."

and so surrendered.

It was not merely that he had run out of words.

In truth, the moment he had entered the room, seen Confucius's form, and heard his first utterance, he had at once felt how out of place his rooster and boar were, and had been overwhelmed by the sheer scale of a man so far beyond himself.

That very day, Zilu observed the rites due from disciple to master and entered the gate of Confucius.

II

Never had Zilu seen a man like this.

He had seen brave men who could lift a tripod weighing a thousand jun.

He had heard tell of wise men whose sight discerned things a thousand li away.

And yet, what Confucius possessed was never any monstrous, extraordinary quality of that kind.

It was, rather, only the most ordinary sort of completeness.

From wisdom, feeling, and will down to his very bodily powers, every faculty had developed with a splendor that was, in truth, quite unremarkable — yet developed freely and fully, without constraint.

A richness so evenly balanced, without excess or deficiency, that no single ability stood out — this was something Zilu was seeing, truly, for the first time.

Zilu was astonished that a man so free and unconstrained in spirit should carry not the faintest whiff of the moralizing pedant.

This man has seen the world, Zilu felt at once.

Absurdly enough, even in the martial arts and the sheer physical strength that Zilu so prided himself on, Confucius surpassed him.

It was only that he made no ordinary use of it.

On this point alone the swashbuckler Zilu was first left utterly dumbfounded.

Confucius possessed so keen a psychological insight into every sort of man that one might almost suppose he had known a life of dissolute abandon himself.

And when Zilu considered the breadth that stretched from that side of him all the way to an idealism of the loftiest and most unsullied kind, he could not help but groan from the very bottom of his heart.

In any case, this was a man one could bring anywhere and be certain of.

Certain by the most scrupulous ethical standard, and certain too by the most worldly one.

Every great man Zilu had met until now had been great only in proportion to his usefulness.

Great, that is, merely because he served this purpose or that.

With Confucius it was altogether different.

It was enough, simply, that a man called Confucius existed in the world.

So it seemed to Zilu, at least.

He had become utterly enthralled.

Not a month had passed since he entered the gate, and already he felt himself unable to part from this pillar of the spirit.

Through all the long hardship of Confucius's later years of wandering exile, none followed him so joyfully as Zilu did.

It was not that he sought, by being a disciple of Confucius, some path to office; nor was it, absurd as it may seem, even that he stayed at his master's side to polish his own talent and virtue.

It was a pure devotion, seeking nothing to an extreme degree, that never once wavered until death, and it was this alone that kept the man at his master's side.

Just as once he could not bear to be parted from his long sword, so now Zilu found that, come what may, he could no longer part from this man.

At that time Confucius had not yet reached the age of forty, the age of which he would later say that at forty he was no longer perplexed.

He was older than Zilu by a mere nine years, yet Zilu felt that gap in age as an almost infinite distance.

Confucius, for his part, was astonished at how singularly unmanageable this disciple was.

There were plenty enough men who simply loved courage or simply disdained softness, but a disciple who so despised the outward form of things was rare indeed.

Though it is said that all things return in the end to the spirit, propriety must nonetheless always be entered through its outward forms — yet this man Zilu would not easily accept that path of entering through form.

"They say rites, they say rites — but is it jade and silk that are meant? They say music, they say music — but is it bells and drums that are meant?"

Sayings such as these he listened to with great delight, but the moment the discussion turned to the fine points of ceremonial detail, his face would suddenly turn bored.

To teach this man rites and music while battling his instinctive aversion to formalism was, even for Confucius, no small task.

But more than that, it was for Zilu himself a still greater labor to learn it.

The only thing Zilu relied upon was the sheer weight of the man Confucius.

That this weight was itself the accumulation of countless small and scrupulous acts in daily life was something Zilu could not bring himself to imagine.

Only when the root exists, he would say, does the branch spring forth.

Yet for his lack of any practical concern with how that root itself was to be nourished, he was forever being scolded by Confucius.

That he was utterly won over by Confucius was one thing.

Whether he readily absorbed Confucius's influence was quite another matter.

When Confucius said that the highest wisdom and the lowest folly alone do not change, he was not thinking of Zilu.

Full of faults as he was, Confucius did not think Zilu the lowest sort of fool.

Confucius prized, more highly than anyone else did, the unmatched virtue of this fierce disciple.

That virtue was the man's pure disinterestedness — his utter indifference to self-advantage.

So rare was beauty of this kind among the people of this land that no one but Confucius recognized this tendency of Zilu's as a virtue at all.

To everyone else it appeared, rather, as a strange and baffling foolishness.

But Confucius alone understood well that Zilu's courage and his political talent, set beside this rare foolishness, amounted to nothing at all.

The one place where Zilu, obeying his master's word, restrained himself and made some effort, at least, to conform to outward form, was in his conduct toward his parents.

Word had gone round among the relatives that ever since entering Confucius's gate, this once unruly Zilu had suddenly become a model of filial devotion.

Being praised for it left Zilu with an odd feeling.

Far from filial devotion, he could not shake the sense that he was doing nothing but telling one lie after another.

However he thought it over, he had been more honest back in the days when he vexed his parents with his own selfish willfulness.

It struck him as rather pitiful, in fact, that his parents should now be made happy by his own pretense.

He was no subtle analyst of the human heart, but he was an exceedingly honest man, and so even a thing like this did not escape his notice.

Long afterward, there came a time when he suddenly noticed how old his parents had grown, and, recalling how vigorous they had been in his own childhood, found the tears coming to his eyes without warning.

From that time on, Zilu's filial devotion became a thing of unmatched, self-sacrificing depth — but in any case, this was the state of his hastily assumed filial piety up until then.

III

One day, as Zilu was walking through the streets, he ran into two or three old friends of his.

They were not quite ruffians, but men of the wandering, freewheeling sort who cared for nothing and no one.

Zilu stopped and talked with them a while.

Presently one of them looked Zilu's clothing up and down and said, well now, is this what they call the Confucian robe?

Quite a shabby getup, isn't it, he said.

Don't you miss your long sword, he added.

When Zilu paid him no heed, the man went on to say something that could not be let pass.

Well now,

they say this teacher of yours, this Kong Qiu, is a rare piece of work, don't they.

Put on that solemn face of his and preach earnest-sounding nonsense he doesn't even believe himself, and it seems he manages to suck up quite a bit of easy money that way.

There was no real malice in it — only the man's usual barbed teasing, born of easy familiarity — but Zilu's face changed color.

He seized the man by the collar without a word and sent his right fist hard into the side of his face.

After landing two or three blows in quick succession he let go, and the man crumpled to the ground without a fight.

Zilu turned a challenging eye on the others, who stood dumbfounded, but knowing Zilu's fearsome strength, none of them dared come at him.

They hoisted their beaten friend up between them and slunk away without so much as a parting word.

Somehow, word of this affair seems to have reached Confucius's ears.

When Zilu was summoned and came before his master, though the matter was never mentioned directly, he found himself made to listen to the following.

The noble men of antiquity took loyalty as their substance and benevolence as their guard.

When there was wrongdoing, they transformed it through loyalty; when there was violence and outrage, they held firm against it through benevolence.

This is why they had no need of brute force.

Petty men are all too apt to mistake insolence for courage, but the courage of the noble man means, rather, the establishing of righteousness — and so on.

Zilu listened to all this with meek attention.

A few days later, as Zilu was again walking through the streets, he caught the sound of idlers arguing heatedly in the shade of the roadside trees.

It seemed, somehow, to be talk about Confucius. —

Old times, old times, they say, dragging out antiquity to run down the present.

No one's ever actually seen the old times, so you can say whatever you like about them.

But if simply following the ways of the ancients to the letter were enough to set the world in order, nobody would have any trouble at all.

For men like us, the living Lord Yang Hu counts for more than the dead Duke of Zhou.

It was an age when the low overthrew the high.

Real political power had passed from the lord of Lu into the hands of his minister the Ji clan, and now it was passing further still, into the hands of Yang Hu, an ambitious man who served the Ji clan as a retainer.

The one doing the talking might well have been some relation of Yang Hu's.

— And now, they say, this Lord Yang Hu has sent for Kong Qiu again and again these past days, wanting to make use of him, and what does Kong Qiu do but avoid him every time.

For all his grand talk, he must have no confidence at all when it comes to real, living politics.

That's how his sort always is.

Zilu pushed his way through the crowd from behind and strode straight up to the man doing the talking.

The onlookers recognized at once that he was one of Confucius's followers.

The old man who had been so smugly holding forth until then went pale, bowed his head before Zilu for no particular reason, and hid himself behind the wall of bystanders.

The look on Zilu's face, eyes blazing with fury, must have been terrible to behold.

For some time afterward, the same sort of thing happened here and there about the town.

Once people saw, from a distance, the figure of Zilu approaching with shoulders squared and eyes glittering fiercely, they would fall silent about Confucius at once.

For this Zilu was scolded by his master again and again, but he could do nothing about it himself.

In his own heart, he had, after his own fashion, something to say for himself.

If the so-called noble man felt anger just as fierce as mine and still managed to hold it in check, then that would indeed be admirable.

But in truth, he probably never feels anger so strongly as I do.

At the very least, he must feel it only weakly enough to be able to hold it in.

Surely that must be it. . . .

About a year later, Confucius remarked with a wry smile

that ever since You had entered his gate, he no longer had to hear abusive talk about himself.

IV

One day Zilu was in a room playing the se.

Confucius, listening from another room, said after a while to Ran You, who sat beside him,

listen to the sound of that se.

Does it not brim, of itself, with an air of violent fierceness?

The music of the noble man should be gentle and mild, dwelling always in the mean, and should nourish the spirit of growth and life.

Long ago Shun played the five-stringed lute and composed the Song of the South Wind.

The fragrance of the south wind — let it dissolve the resentment of my people.

The timeliness of the south wind — let it enrich the wealth of my people, he sang.

Now when I listen to the sound You makes, it is truly savage and violent, nothing at all like the music of the south, but altogether resembling the sound of the north.

Nothing could reflect more plainly the wild, slack, and unruly state of the player's heart. —

Afterward Ran You went to Zilu and reported the Master's words.

Zilu had long known that he himself had little gift for music.

And he had always attributed this to his own ear and hand.

But on hearing that it actually sprang from some far deeper disposition of the spirit, he was struck with sudden dread.

What mattered was not practice of the hand.

He must think more deeply still.

He shut himself in a room, sat in silent thought without eating, until his frame grew gaunt to the bone.

After several days, believing at last that he had grasped it, he took up the se once more.

And he played it now with the utmost trepidation.

Confucius, catching the sound of it, this time said nothing at all.

Nor did his face show any sign of censure.

Zigong went to Zilu and reported as much.

Hearing that the Master had found no fault, Zilu smiled with evident delight.

Seeing the happy, guileless smile of his good-natured elder fellow disciple, young Zigong could not help smiling himself.

But the perceptive Zigong knew perfectly well

that the sound Zilu produced was still filled with the same savage northern tone as before.

And that the Master's silence was nothing more than pity for the single-minded devotion with which Zilu had tormented himself, wasting away to nothing, over the matter.

V

Among all the disciples, none was scolded by Confucius so often as Zilu.

Nor was there any who so freely talked back and questioned his master.

"Might I ask — suppose I were to cast aside the way of the ancients and act instead according to my own notion? Would that do?"

He would ask such things knowing full well he was bound to be scolded for it, and there was no one else who would say straight to Confucius's face, bluntly, "Here is a fine thing! How roundabout you are, Master!"

No one but Zilu would ever say such a thing.

And yet, for all that, there was no one who leaned on Confucius with his whole being as completely as Zilu did.

That he questioned his master back so relentlessly was simply because his nature would not let him assent, even outwardly, to something he could not truly accept in his heart.

And it was also because, unlike the other disciples, he never troubled himself over avoiding ridicule or reproof.

That Zilu, who elsewhere would never for the life of him consent to stand beneath any man, an independent and unbridled fellow, a gallant whose single word was worth a thousand pieces of gold, should nonetheless wait upon Confucius looking every bit the meek, ordinary disciple — this struck people, without fail, as a strange and curious sight.

In truth, there was even, in him, a somewhat comical tendency: only in Confucius's presence did he leave every complex deliberation and weighty judgment entirely to his master and rest utterly at ease himself.

It was much the way a small child, in front of its mother, has things done for it that it is perfectly capable of doing itself.

Stepping back to think it over, he would sometimes laugh at himself, wryly, for it.

And yet even so great a master as this was not permitted to touch a certain innermost recess of his heart.

A last, unyielding point beyond which he would not give way, no matter what.

That is to say, there was, for Zilu, one single thing of supreme importance in this world.

Before it, even life and death were not worth debating, let alone such petty matters as gain and loss.

To call it mere chivalry would be to make it too light a thing.

To call it fidelity, or righteousness, has a regrettable air of the moralist's jargon, lacking the free, vital surge of the thing itself.

Names of that sort hardly mattered.

To Zilu, it was something more like a kind of visceral pleasure.

In any case, whatever gave him that feeling was good, and whatever lacked it was bad.

It was utterly clear to him, and he had never once felt a doubt about it.

This stood at some remove from what Confucius meant by benevolence, but from among his master's teachings Zilu picked out and took to heart only those that reinforced this simple ethical sense of his.

Sayings such as: clever words, a fawning face, an excess of servile courtesy — these Confucius himself was ashamed of; and: there are those who seek life at the expense of harming benevolence, and those who give up their lives to accomplish it; and: the reckless press ever forward, while the overscrupulous hold back from certain things — these were the very sayings he chose.

At first Confucius had made some effort to file down these horns of his, but in later years he gave it up and let the matter rest.

After all, this was, for what it was, one splendid ox in its own right.

Some disciples need the whip, and others need the rein.

Confucius understood that Zilu's flaws of character, so hard to hold in check by ordinary means, were at the same time precisely what made him so greatly useful, and he came to think it enough to give Zilu only the broad direction and leave the rest to him.

Sayings such as: reverence without the tempering of ritual becomes mere coarseness, and courage without the tempering of ritual becomes insubordination; or: a man who loves good faith but not learning is undone by credulity, a man who loves straightforwardness but not learning is undone by harshness — these, in the end, were more often reproofs aimed less at Zilu the individual than at Zilu in his role as head disciple, the model for the rest.

For a trait that could become, in a singular man like Zilu, a source of charm was, for the general run of disciples, more often than not simply a harm.

VI

It was said that in the land of Weiyu in Jin, a stone had spoken.

Some wise man explained it by saying that the voices of the people's resentment must have borrowed the stone to make themselves heard.

The house of Zhou, already in decline, had split further still and fell to fighting within itself.

More than ten great states allied with one another and warred with one another by turns, and the weapons of war never ceased.

One of the lords of Qi carried on an affair with the wife of one of his own vassals, stealing into her house night after night, until at last that very husband murdered him.

In Chu, one of the royal kinsmen strangled the king as he lay ill in bed and seized the throne.

In Wu, criminals whose feet had been cut off in punishment rose up and attacked the king; in Jin, two ministers exchanged wives with one another.

Such was the world of that time.

Duke Zhao of Lu, attempting to strike down his high minister Ji Pingzi, was driven from his own state instead, and after seven years of exile died in wretched poverty in a foreign land.

Even when, during his exile, terms for his return seemed nearly settled, the retainers who had followed him, fearing their own fate once home, held the duke back and would not let him return.

The state of Lu passed from the rule of the three houses of Ji, Shu, and Meng into the still more willful hands of Yang Hu, steward to the Ji clan.

But when that schemer Yang Hu at last fell by his own scheming and was driven from power, the political winds of the state suddenly shifted.

Unexpectedly, Confucius was taken into service as governor of Zhongdu.

In an age when there was not a single official who was impartial and disinterested, nor a single statesman who did not busy himself with harsh exactions from the people, Confucius's fair-minded policies and thoroughgoing plans achieved, in a remarkably short time, results that astonished everyone.

His lord, Duke Ding, thoroughly amazed, asked him:

"If I were to govern the whole state of Lu by the methods with which you governed Zhongdu, how would that be?"

Confucius replied,

"Why should it stop at Lu alone?"

"Even to govern all under Heaven would be possible."

That Confucius, a man utterly removed from any tendency to boast, should utter so grand a claim in so composed and deferential a tone, left Duke Ding all the more astonished.

He at once raised Confucius to Minister of Works, and soon after advanced him to Minister of Justice, entrusting him as well with the duties of chief minister.

On Confucius's recommendation, Zilu was made steward to the Ji clan — a post amounting, in effect, to that of chief secretary of the state cabinet of Lu.

Needless to say, it was Zilu who moved first and foremost as the executor of Confucius's plans for domestic reform.

Confucius's first policy was the centralization of power — that is, the strengthening of the authority of the lord of Lu.

For this, it was necessary to cut down the power of the three houses of Ji, Shu, and Meng, the three Huan clans, whose strength at that time exceeded even that of the lord himself.

Among the private strongholds of these three houses were the three towns of Hou, Bi, and Cheng, whose walls exceeded a hundred zhi in extent — three zhang thick and one zhang high.

Confucius resolved first to tear down these fortifications, and it was Zilu who took direct charge of carrying it out.

That the results of his own labor should show themselves so promptly and clearly, and moreover on a scale grander than any he had known before, was surely, for a man like Zilu, a source of real delight.

In particular, to smash apart, one by one, the corrupt structures and entrenched customs that the established politicians had spread about them gave Zilu a sense of purpose in life such as he had never known before.

And it was, indeed, a happy thing merely to look upon the face of Confucius, alive with energy and bustling activity, as the ambitions of so many years came at last to realization.

To Confucius's own eyes as well, Zilu appeared now not merely as one disciple among others, but as a dependable figure in his own right — a politician of genuine capability for action.

When they set about tearing down the walls of Bi, a man named Gongshan Buniu rose in defiance, leading the men of Bi in an attack on the capital of Lu.

For a time things grew perilous indeed, with arrows from the rebel army reaching even the vicinity of Duke Ding, who had taken refuge in the Wuzi Tower, but through Confucius's timely judgment and command, disaster was narrowly averted.

Zilu found himself once again filled with admiration for his master's practical skill.

He had known well enough Confucius's talent as a statesman, and had known too the strength of his own body, but he had never imagined that Confucius would show, in the midst of actual battle, so brilliant a display of command.

Needless to say, Zilu himself fought at the very front of the line on this occasion.

The taste of wielding the long sword again after so long was not, after all, a thing to be lightly dismissed.

In any case, grappling with the rough face of reality seemed to suit this man's nature far better than picking apart the phrases of the classics or drilling in the ancient rites.

On one occasion, for the sake of a humiliating peace settlement with the state of Qi, Duke Ding, with Confucius in attendance, met Duke Jing of Qi at Jiagu.

On that occasion Confucius rebuked Qi for its discourtesy, and berated Duke Jing and the assembled ministers and officers without ceremony.

It is said that the lord and ministers of Qi — who by rights should have been the victorious party — trembled to a man.

It was an event well suited to draw a shout of heartfelt triumph from Zilu, but from that time on, the powerful state of Qi began to feel real dread — of Confucius's presence as chief minister of a neighboring state, and of the strength that Lu, under his administration, was steadily gaining.

After much anxious deliberation, a stratagem was adopted that was, in every respect, thoroughly characteristic of ancient China.

That is to say, Qi sent to Lu, as a gift, a troupe of beautiful women skilled in song and dance.

In this way they sought to melt the heart of the lord of Lu and drive a wedge between Duke Ding and Confucius.

Yet what was still more characteristic of ancient China was that this childish scheme, combined with the machinations of the anti-Confucius faction within Lu, took effect with astonishing speed.

The lord of Lu grew so absorbed in the singing girls that he ceased altogether to attend court.

Ji Huanzi and the other high officials began to follow his example.

Zilu was the first to be outraged; he clashed openly with the court and resigned his office.

Confucius was not so quick as Zilu to give up hope, and continued to exhaust every means still open to him.

Zilu, for his part, longed for nothing so much as to see his master resign at once.

It was not that he feared his master would sully the integrity due a minister — he simply could not bear to see him remain amid so debauched an atmosphere.

When at last even Confucius's tenacity had to give way to resignation, Zilu felt a rush of relief.

And gladly he followed his master in departing from the state of Lu.

Confucius, who was himself a composer of both music and verse, looked back at the capital receding ever farther behind them, and sang.

The mouths of those fair women can drive a gentleman into exile;

the pleadings of those fair women can bring a gentleman to ruin and death... ...

Thus began Confucius's long wandering, which was to last for years to come.

VII

There is one great question.

It has puzzled him since childhood, and even now, grown to manhood and nearing old age, he is no closer to any answer.

It is a matter that no one else seems inclined to question at all.

It concerns that commonplace fact: that the wicked flourish while the righteous are oppressed.

Every time Zilu comes up against this fact, he cannot help giving vent to heartfelt grief and indignation.

Why is it so?

Why must it be so?

People say that evil, though it may flourish for a time, receives its due reward in the end.

No doubt such cases do exist.

But is this not merely one instance of the general case — that every human being comes to ruin in the end regardless?

Of a good man winning final victory — whatever may have been true in ages long past — in the present age one scarcely even hears of such a case.

Why is it so?

Why?

For Zilu, that great overgrown child, no amount of indignation over this one thing could ever be enough.

Stamping his foot in frustration, he asks himself what Heaven can possibly be.

What is Heaven looking at?

If it is Heaven that fashions such destinies, then he cannot help but rise up in defiance of Heaven.

Does Heaven, just as it makes no distinction between man and beast, likewise draw no line between good and evil?

Are "right" and "wrong," after all, nothing more than provisional arrangements agreed upon among men themselves?

Whenever Zilu goes to Confucius to ask about this problem, he is invariably given, instead, a lecture on the true nature of human happiness.

Is the reward for doing good, then, nothing more in the end than the satisfaction of having done it?

In his master's presence he feels, for the moment, more or less persuaded, but once he withdraws and thinks it over alone, something still refuses to come clear.

He cannot be satisfied with a happiness arrived at only by such strained interpretation.

Unless a clear, unmistakable reward for goodness comes to the righteous man — a reward no one could possibly dispute — he simply cannot find it satisfying.

This dissatisfaction with Heaven he feels most of all in regard to his master's own fate.

Why must this man of scarcely human genius and virtue resign himself to such misfortune?

Why should ill fortune await such a man — denied even happiness in his own household, forced in his old age to set out on a wandering journey?

One night — "The phoenix does not come. The river yields no chart. It is over, then."

When he heard Confucius murmur these words to himself, Zilu could not hold back the tears that welled up unbidden.

Confucius's lament was for the common people of the realm, but Zilu's tears were not for the realm — they were for Confucius alone.

From the moment he wept, seeing this man and the age that awaited him, Zilu's mind was made up.

To become a shield, protecting this man from every affront of a corrupt age.

In exchange for being guided and sheltered in spirit, to take upon himself every worldly trouble and disgrace.

Presumptuous though it might be, he believed this to be his own charge.

In learning and in talent he might well fall short of the gifted younger men who had come after him.

But he believed, deeply and firmly, that if ever the moment came, he would be the very first — before anyone else — to throw away his life for the Master without a second thought.

VIII

"Here is a fine piece of jade. Should we lay it away in a chest and hide it, or seek a good price and sell it?"

When Zigong said this, Confucius answered at once, "Sell it! Sell it! I am one who waits for the right price."

So he said.

It was with just this intention that Confucius set out on his journey around the states of the realm.

Most of the disciples who followed him naturally wished to be sold as well, but Zilu did not necessarily wish for that himself.

He already knew, from his recent experience, the pleasure of holding a position of power and carrying out one's convictions — but that required, absolutely, the special condition of having Confucius set above him.

If that could not be had, he preferred rather "to wear coarse cloth while cherishing jade within" —

such was the way of life he found preferable.

Even should he end his days as nothing more than Confucius's watchdog, he would not feel the slightest regret.

It was not that he was entirely without worldly vanity, but he believed that a half-hearted post in office would only damage the very thing that was truly his own — his open, unrestrained, large-hearted nature.

All manner of men followed Confucius on his travels.

Ran You, the brisk and capable man of affairs.

Min Ziqian, the gentle elder.

Zixia, the antiquarian fond of minute inquiry.

Zai Yu, something of a sophist and a lover of pleasure.

Gongliang Ru, a man of sharp-edged integrity and passionate indignation.

Zigao, an honest simpleton of a man, said to stand barely half the height of Confucius — who himself, it was said, measured nine feet six inches.

In age as in weight of presence, it was naturally Zilu who stood as their leader.

Though twenty-two years younger than Zilu, the young Zigong was truly a man of outstanding talent.

Zilu, if anything, felt more inclined to favor Zigong than Yan Hui, whom Confucius never tired of praising to the skies.

Zilu was not overly fond of that young man Yan Hui — who seemed like Confucius with his tough vitality and political instinct stripped clean away.

It was by no means jealousy.

(Zigong and Zizhang and the others, faced with their master's extraordinary devotion to Yan Yuan, seemed quite unable to help feeling exactly that.)

Zilu, for his part, was too far apart in age to feel it, and besides, it was simply not in his nature to be troubled by such things.

It was only that he could not, for the life of him, grasp the merit of Yan Yuan's passive, pliant sort of talent.

For one thing, he disliked the way the man seemed to lack vital force somewhere at his core.

By contrast, Zigong — a bit shallow perhaps, but always brimming with wit and energy — suited Zilu's own temperament far better.

Zilu was not the only one taken aback by the sharpness of this young man's mind.

That his character had not yet caught up to his intellect was plain to anyone, but that, after all, was simply a matter of age.

There were times when Zilu, exasperated by his sheer glibness, would give him a sharp scolding, but on the whole he regarded the young man with the sense that here was one of those juniors truly worth being wary of.

Once, Zigong said something of the following import to two or three of his fellow disciples—

They say the Master abhors clever talk, but I think the Master himself is altogether too skillful a talker.

This calls for caution.

It is nothing at all like the cleverness of a man such as Zai Yu.

Zai Yu's kind of eloquence wears its cleverness so plainly that, however much pleasure it gives the listener, it can never earn his trust.

For that very reason, it can be called safe enough.

The Master's is something else entirely.

In place of fluency, it carries a gravity that never once lets a listener doubt it; in place of wit, it uses parables rich with suggestion — and against such eloquence no one, whoever he may be, can hold his ground.

Of course, I believe that what the Master says is, ninety-nine parts in a hundred, always the unerring truth.

And what the Master does is likewise, ninety-nine parts in a hundred, something every one of us ought to take as our model.

And yet the one part remaining — that single hundredth of the Master's speech, which never fails to command a listener's trust — carries at times, I fear, the risk of being turned to the defense of his own character, in that tiny portion of it which does not always coincide with absolute, universal truth.

It is here that caution is called for.

Perhaps this is only the presumption of a man grown too familiar, too overly intimate, with his master, speaking through me.

Indeed, should later generations come to revere the Master as a sage, that would be a thing so natural as to need no explanation at all.

I myself have never seen a man come so close to perfection, and it is unlikely that such a man will appear again anytime soon.

All I wish to say is only this: that even the Master, being what he is, still leaves this one point — small though it is — that calls for wariness.

For a man like Yan Hui, whose temperament so closely resembles the Master's own, he must feel not the slightest trace of the dissatisfaction I feel.

Is it not, in the end, precisely this kinship of temperament that lies behind the Master's so frequent praise of Yan Hui... ...

Zilu was angered that a mere green youth should presume to criticize their master, and though he knew well enough that jealousy of Yan Yuan lay behind it, he nonetheless sensed in these words something he could not simply dismiss as foolishness.

For as to this matter of a difference in temperament, Zilu too had, in truth, something that came to mind.

This impudent young pup seemed to possess some strange gift for giving clear shape to things the rest of them only sensed vaguely — and Zilu felt, at once, both admiration and contempt.

Once Zigong put a strange question to Confucius.

"Do the dead retain awareness, or do they not?"

It was a question about whether perception survives death — about whether the soul perishes or endures.

Confucius, in turn, gave a strange answer.

"If I were to say that the dead retain awareness, I fear that filial sons and dutiful grandsons might neglect the living in order to attend upon the dead. If I were to say that the dead have no awareness at all, I fear that unfilial sons might abandon their parents and leave them unburied."

It was so wide of the mark as an answer that Zigong was thoroughly dissatisfied.

Confucius, of course, understood perfectly well what Zigong meant by his question, but being to the core a realist, a man centered wholly on everyday life, he had meant only to turn this gifted disciple's attention elsewhere.

Still dissatisfied, Zigong related the whole exchange to Zilu.

Zilu himself had no particular interest in such questions, but it struck him that he would rather like to know his master's view of life and death than death itself, and so on one occasion he asked him about it directly.

"You do not yet understand life. How, then, could you understand death?"

This was Confucius's answer.

How true!

Zilu thought, thoroughly impressed.

Zigong, however, once again felt as though he had been neatly sidestepped.

That may well be so.

But that is not what I was asking about.

So Zigong's expression plainly said.

IX

Duke Ling of Wei was a lord of exceedingly weak will.

He was not so foolish as to be unable to tell the worthy from the incompetent, but in the end he always let himself be pleased by sweet flattery rather than bitter remonstrance.

It was the inner palace that truly governed the affairs of state in Wei.

Lady Nanzi had long been notorious for her promiscuity.

While still a princess of Song, she had carried on an affair with her half-brother Chao, a man famous for his good looks, and even after becoming consort to the lord of Wei, she summoned this same Song Chao to Wei, had him appointed a court minister, and continued the disgraceful liaison.

She was a remarkably sharp-witted woman who meddled even in matters of state, and there was nothing she said that Duke Ling would not nod along to.

Anyone who wished to be heard by Duke Ling made it a rule to first curry favor with Nanzi.

When Confucius arrived in Wei from Lu, he was summoned and granted audience with Duke Ling, but he did not go separately to pay his respects to the lady.

Nanzi took offense.

At once she sent someone to convey a message to Confucius.

"Gentlemen from every quarter who wish to be counted as brothers to our humble lord invariably present themselves also to our humble lord's consort."

"Our humble lady wishes to receive you" — so the message ran, and more besides.

Confucius, having no choice, went to pay the visit.

Nanzi received him from behind a fine hempen curtain.

When Confucius bowed low, facing north, in the proper form of greeting, Nanzi returned the courtesy with a double bow, and it is recorded that the jade pendants at her waist rang out with a clear, chiming sound.

When Confucius returned from the ducal palace, Zilu wore an expression of open displeasure.

He had wanted Confucius simply to ignore a demand from the likes of Nanzi.

It was not that he imagined for a moment that Confucius could be bewitched by such a scheming woman.

But merely that the Master, who ought to have been utterly untouched by impurity, had bowed his head to so filthy and licentious a woman was enough, in itself, to displease him.

It was, perhaps, the same feeling as that of a man who treasures a fine piece of jade and cannot bear even to see the shadow of something unclean fall across its surface.

Confucius, for his part, found it both amusing and troublesome to see how the great overgrown child living side by side within Zilu, next door to a rather capable man of practical affairs, showed no sign whatsoever of ever growing up.

One day a messenger came to Confucius from Duke Ling.

He wished to ride together through the capital in his carriage and hear Confucius speak on various matters.

Confucius, delighted, changed his robes at once and set out without delay.

It displeased Nanzi that Duke Ling should so unreservedly revere this tall, gruff old man as a sage.

That the two of them should ride out together through the capital, leaving her out entirely, was not to be endured.

When Confucius had had his audience with the duke and came outside to board the carriage together with him, Lady Nanzi was already seated within it, decked out in all her finery.

There was no seat left for Confucius.

Nanzi looked at Duke Ling with a spiteful little smile.

Even Confucius could not help feeling displeased, and he watched the duke's face with a cold, appraising eye.

Duke Ling, looking thoroughly ashamed, lowered his eyes, but could say nothing at all to Nanzi.

In silence, he pointed Confucius to the carriage behind.

The two carriages made their way through the capital of Wei.

In the ornate four-wheeled carriage that went ahead, the ravishing figure of Lady Nanzi, seated beside Duke Ling, shone like a peony in full bloom.

In the shabby two-wheeled ox-cart that followed behind, Confucius's face, touched with loneliness, sat composed and looking straight ahead.

Among the crowds lining the road there arose, understandably, a hushed murmur of dismay and disapproval.

Mingling among the crowd, Zilu too watched this scene.

Having seen with his own eyes the Master's delight upon receiving the duke's summons, he felt his very insides boil over.

Nanzi passed before his eyes, tossing out some coquettish laugh.

He flared up before he knew it, clenched his fists, and made to shove through the crowd and burst forward.

Someone caught hold of him from behind.

He turned around, eyes blazing with anger, meaning to shake the hand off.

It was the two of them — Ziruo and Zizheng.

Zilu saw that the eyes of the two men clinging desperately to his sleeve were brimming with tears.

Slowly, he lowered the fist he had raised.

The following day, Confucius and his party left Wei.

"I have yet to see a man who loves virtue as much as he loves beauty."

Such was Confucius's lament on that occasion.

X

Lord She, Zigao, was passionately fond of dragons.

He had dragons carved into his living quarters and dragons embroidered on his curtains, and lived out his daily life surrounded, morning and night, by dragons.

Hearing of this, a real dragon of Heaven was greatly pleased, and one day descended to Lord She's house to catch a glimpse of this admirer of his.

So immense was the creature that its head peered in through the window while its tail trailed the length of the hall.

The moment Lord She saw it, he trembled with fear and fled.

He lost his very wits, his face draining of all color — so utterly spineless was he.

The various lords were fond of Confucius's reputation for wisdom, but took no pleasure in the substance of it.

In this they were all of a kind with Lord She and his dragon.

The actual Confucius seemed, to them, altogether too large a thing to bear.

There were states willing to receive Confucius as an honored guest.

There were states that took a few of his disciples into their employ.

But nowhere was there a single state willing to put his policies into practice.

At Kuang they came near to suffering outrage at the hands of a violent mob; at Song they met persecution from a treacherous minister; and at Pu they were set upon by a band of ruffians.

The cold distance of the various lords, the jealous eyes of court-sponsored scholars, and the rejection of career politicians — these were all that awaited Confucius wherever he went.

Even so, he never ceased his lectures, nor neglected the sharpening of himself and his disciples, and they pressed on, untiring, from state to state.

"The bird chooses well which tree to settle in; how could the tree choose the bird?"

So he would say, in a tone of the loftiest pride — yet he had by no means turned his back on the world in bitterness; he sought, to the very end, to be put to use.

And they believed, in perfect earnest — astonishingly, quite in earnest — that their seeking to be put to use was not for their own sake at all, but for the sake of the realm, for the sake of the Way.

However poor their circumstances, they remained ever cheerful; however hard the going, they never abandoned hope.

It was, in truth, a most remarkable company.

When the party, having been invited, set out for the court of King Zhao of Chu, the ministers of Chen and Cai conspired together and secretly gathered a band of ruffians to surround Confucius and his followers on the road.

They feared that Confucius might be taken into service by Chu, and sought to prevent it.

This was not the first time they had been attacked by a mob, but on this occasion they fell into the direst hardship yet.

Their supply of food was cut off, and the whole company went seven days without so much as a cooked meal.

Even so hardy a band grew hungry and exhausted, and one after another began to fall ill.

Amid the exhaustion and terror of his disciples, Confucius alone showed not the slightest failing of spirit, and went on, as always, playing his strings and singing without pause.

Unable to bear the sight of his fellow travelers' exhaustion any longer, Zilu, his face showing a trace of anger, went up to Confucius as he sang to his strings.

And he asked him:

Was it fitting, he asked, for the Master to be singing now?

Confucius made no answer.

Nor did his hand pause upon the strings.

Only when the piece had ended did he at last speak.

"You, let me tell you this. The gentleman loves music so that he may be free of arrogance; the small man loves music so that he may be free of fear. Whose son can it be, then, who follows me without understanding me at all?"

For a moment Zilu could hardly believe his ears.

Even in such dire straits, was the Master making music only to keep himself free of arrogance?

But the moment he grasped what lay in his master's heart, joy overtook him at once, and before he knew it he had seized a battle-axe and begun to dance.

Confucius took up his instrument again in accompaniment, and the tune went round three times over.

Those standing nearby, too, forgot for a while their hunger and their weariness, caught up in this rough, unrehearsed dance.

During this same ordeal at Chen and Cai, seeing no sign that the siege would soon be lifted, Zilu spoke up.

Can even a gentleman fall into such straits?

— so he asked.

For according to what his master had always taught, a gentleman ought never to be reduced to such extremity.

Confucius answered at once.

"Does not extremity mean being at the end of the Way itself? I, Qiu, hold to benevolence and righteousness, and have only met the troubles of a disordered age — how could that be extremity? If by extremity you mean a lack of food and a wearied body, then the gentleman too knows extremity. The difference is only this: the small man, reduced to extremity, gives way to license."

So he said.

That, he said, was the only difference between them.

Zilu could not help flushing red.

He felt as though the small man within himself had just been singled out and named.

Seeing Confucius's bearing — knowing even extremity to be a matter of destiny, showing not the faintest trace of agitation in the face of great calamity — he could not help but sigh, what true courage this is.

And he thought how pitifully small a thing was that courage which had once been his own pride — the sort that would not so much as blink before a drawn blade.

XI

On the road from Xu to She, Zilu, having fallen behind the rest of Confucius's party, was walking alone along a path through the fields when he came upon an old man carrying a basket on a pole over his shoulder.

Zilu greeted him lightly and asked whether he had seen his master pass by.

The old man stopped and answered curtly, "You keep saying 'the Master, the Master' — how am I supposed to know which one you mean by that?"

and, after giving Zilu's whole appearance a slow, appraising look, he added, "From the looks of you, you're one of those men who never toils with his own four limbs, never does an honest day's work, and spends his days on nothing but empty theorizing."

and he gave a scornful little laugh.

Then, without so much as a backward glance, he stepped into the field beside the path and set busily to work pulling weeds.

Zilu, certain this must be one of the recluses, bowed with hands folded and stood waiting on the road for whatever might come next.

The old man worked on in silence for a while, then came out onto the road, and led Zilu along with him to his own house.

By then, the day was already drawing toward evening.

The old man killed a chicken and cooked millet to entertain his guest, and introduced Zilu to his two sons as well.

After the meal, the old man, a little flushed with the modest unstrained wine he had drunk, took up a zither at his side and began to play.

His two sons joined in, singing along.

Abundant lies the dew,

unless the sun comes, it does not dry.

Contentedly, into the night we drink;

until we are drunk, we do not go home.

Though their life was plainly a poor one, the whole household overflowed with a warmth of true, easy abundance.

And in the peaceful, contented faces of the father and his two sons, one could not help noticing, now and then, a flash of something distinctly intelligent.

When he had finished playing, the old man spoke to Zilu.

Since ancient times it has been settled that one travels the land by cart and the water by boat.

Now, what would happen if one tried to cross the land in a boat?

To try to apply the old laws of Zhou in the present age must be called much the same thing as trying to sail a boat across dry land.

Dress a monkey in the robes of the Duke of Zhou, and it is certain to tear them off in fright and fling them away.

And so on... It was plain enough that he spoke this way knowing full well that Zilu was a follower of the school of Confucius.

The old man went on.

"Only when one's joy is complete can one be said to have attained one's purpose. To attain one's purpose has nothing to do with carriage and cap of office."

So he said.

Something like tranquil, boundless detachment must have been this old man's ideal.

This was not the first time Zilu had encountered such a philosophy of withdrawal from the world.

He had met the two men Changju and Jieni as well.

He had also once met a man of Chu named Jieyu, who feigned madness.

But never before had he actually stepped inside such a man's daily life and spent a night in his company.

Listening to the old man's calm words and looking upon his cheerful, contented bearing, Zilu could not help feeling, even with a certain envy, that here too was surely a beautiful way to live.

Even so, he had not simply sat there nodding in silence at everything the man said.

"To cut oneself off from the world may well be a pleasant thing, but what makes a man truly a man does not lie in the perfecting of his own pleasure alone. To keep one small self pure while throwing the great bonds between men into disorder is not the way of humankind. We too know full well, and have known for a long time, that the Way does not prevail in the present age. We know, too, how dangerous it is to preach the Way in such times. But is it not precisely because this is an age without the Way that there is a need to preach it still, even at the risk of danger?"

The next morning, Zilu took his leave of the old man's house and hurried on his way.

As he walked, he found himself weighing Confucius and the old man of the night before, one against the other.

There was no reason to suppose Confucius's insight was inferior to that old man's.

There was no reason to suppose Confucius harbored more worldly desire than that old man did.

And yet, thinking how Confucius had abandoned the path of perfecting himself alone and instead wandered the realm for the sake of the Way, Zilu began, all at once, to feel toward that old man a hatred he had not felt in the least the night before.

Toward noon, at last, he made out a knot of figures far ahead, on a road running through fields of deep green wheat.

The instant he recognized, standing out clearly among them, the tall figure of Confucius, Zilu felt a sudden pain, as though something had seized his chest and wrung it tight.

XII

Aboard the ferry crossing from Song to Chen, Zigong and Zai Yu fell into an argument.

"In a hamlet of ten households, there must surely be men as loyal and trustworthy as I, Qiu — but none who loves learning as much as I do."

Around this saying of their master's, Zigong argued that, despite these words, Confucius's greatness of accomplishment owed itself to the extraordinary quality of his innate gifts, while Zai Yu insisted that no, it was rather his acquired effort at self-perfection that counted for far more.

According to Zai Yu, the difference between Confucius's abilities and those of his disciples was a matter of degree, not of kind.

What Confucius possessed was nothing other than what every man possesses.

It was only that Confucius, through ceaseless and painstaking effort, had brought each one of these qualities to its present magnitude — nothing more.

Zigong, however, argued that once a difference of degree becomes great enough, it amounts, in the end, to nothing different from a difference of kind.

And besides, the very fact that Confucius could sustain such effort at self-perfection for so long was itself, he said, the surest proof of an extraordinary gift given from birth.

But if one were to ask what, above all else, lay at the very core of Confucius's genius — "it is"

Zigong went on.

"that superb instinct for the mean — the flawless instinct for the mean which, in every circumstance whatever, makes the Master's every move and stillness a thing of beauty."

So he said.

What nonsense is this, Zilu thought sourly, sitting nearby with a scowl.

These fellows, all mouth and no guts!

If this boat were to capsize right now, how pale their faces would go!

Whatever they might say, when real trouble came, he was the one who could actually be of use to the Master.

Facing these two clever young men so free with their brilliant talk, he called to mind the saying that clever speech corrupts virtue, and proudly placed his trust in the single shard of icy sincerity within his own breast.

Yet even Zilu was not entirely without some dissatisfaction toward his master.

When Duke Ling of Chen carried on an affair with the wife of one of his own vassals, and stood at court wearing that woman's undergarment to flaunt it, a minister named Xie Ye remonstrated with him for it, and was put to death.

Concerning this incident, which had taken place roughly a hundred years before, one of the disciples once asked Confucius about it.

Was Xie Ye's death for speaking honest remonstrance any different from the famous minister of antiquity, Bi Gan, who died for the same reason?

Could it be called an act of benevolence?

Confucius answered.

No — in the case of Bi Gan and King Zhou, the two were blood relations, and Bi Gan besides held the office of junior tutor; he therefore cast away his own life to remonstrate forcefully, hoping that after his death King Zhou might come to his senses and repent.

This may indeed be called benevolence.

But Xie Ye was no blood relation to Duke Ling, and his rank was no more than that of an ordinary minister.

Knowing that the lord was corrupt and the whole state corrupt with him, he ought simply to have withdrawn with a clear conscience; instead, without measuring his own standing, he tried, with his one small self, to set right the licentious disorder of an entire state.

He threw his life away for nothing.

It was nowhere near the matter of benevolence.

That disciple, hearing this, was satisfied and withdrew, but Zilu, who had been sitting nearby, could not bring himself to agree at all.

He spoke up at once.

Let benevolence and its absence be set aside for the moment.

But surely, in the fact that he forgot the danger to himself in trying to set right the disorder of an entire state, there is something splendid that goes beyond mere wisdom or the lack of it.

Something that cannot simply be dismissed as throwing his life away for nothing.

Whatever the outcome may have been.

"You, it seems your eye is caught only by the splendor found in such small acts of righteousness, and you cannot see beyond it. The gentlemen of old, when their state possessed the Way, gave their utmost loyalty to assist it; when their state lacked the Way, they withdrew themselves and kept clear of it. It seems you have not yet come to understand the splendor in such a manner of coming forward and withdrawing. The Odes say: when the people are given over to much wickedness, do not set up your own standard of right. That, I think, is a fitting description of Xie Ye's case."

"Then"

Zilu said, after a long while spent in thought.

Is the single most important thing in this world, in the end, simply to secure one's own safety?

Is it not to be found in casting away one's own life to accomplish righteousness?

Is whether one man's coming forward or withdrawing is fitting or not truly more important than the safety of the common people of the realm?

For if Xie Ye, disgusted at the depravity before his eyes, had simply withdrawn, that might well have served his own person well enough, but what good would it have done the people of Chen at all?

Surely it would have meant far more — even knowing it was in vain — for him to die in remonstrance, if only for the effect it might have on the temper of the people.

"I never said that preserving one's own person is the only thing that matters. If that were so, I would hardly have praised Bi Gan as a man of benevolence. It is only that, even when one gives up one's life for the sake of the Way, there is a right time and a right place for giving it up. To discern that with wisdom is not for the sake of any private profit. Rushing to die is not, by itself, any great virtue."

Hearing this, Zilu felt for the moment that it might well be so, and yet something still refused to come entirely clear.

Even while teaching that one should sacrifice one's own body to accomplish benevolence, his master's words at times seemed to carry, somewhere within them, a tendency to regard prudent self-preservation as the highest wisdom of all.

It was this, somehow, that troubled him.

That the other disciples felt nothing of this at all was, he thought, simply because the doctrine of prudent self-preservation clung to them as a kind of instinct.

Unless benevolence and righteousness were grounded, first and foremost, in that instinct for self-preservation, they must have seemed to those disciples nothing but dangerous folly.

As Zilu walked off, his face still unconvinced, Confucius watched him go and said, with a troubled look.

"When the state possesses the Way, he is straight as an arrow."

"When the state lacks the Way, he is straight as an arrow still."

"That man is of the same stamp as Shi Yu of Wei."

"He will not, I fear, die an ordinary death."

When Chu attacked Wu, a man named Gongyin Shangyang gave chase to the retreating army of Wu; his fellow rider, Prince Qiji, said to him, "This is the king's business — you may take your bow in hand."

and only then did he take up his bow; when urged again, "Shoot him,"

he finally shot down one man.

But he at once put his bow back into its case.

Urged once more, he took the bow out again and killed two more men, but each time he shot one down he covered his eyes.

When he had killed three men, he said, "For a man of my present rank, this much should be more than enough to report back."

and turned his carriage back.

Confucius, hearing this story secondhand, said, "Even in the killing of men, there is a kind of propriety."

and admired him for it.

As far as Zilu was concerned, however, there was no more preposterous story than this.

Above all, in words like "three men killed is quite enough for a man of my rank"

he could see, all too plainly, that very way of thinking he most despised — placing one's own personal conduct above the fortunes of the state — and it made him furious.

He turned on Confucius, flushed with indignation.

"The duty of a minister, when his lord faces a great crisis, is simply to exhaust every ounce of strength he has, and only in death does his duty end. Why should the Master approve of such a man?"

Even Confucius, for once, had not a word to say to this.

He answered with a laugh.

"Just so. It is as you say. I only value in him the heart that could not bear to go on killing."

XIII

Four times they passed in and out of Wei; three years they stayed in Chen; and through Cao, Song, Cai, She, and Chu, Zilu followed Confucius on his travels.

By now there was no longer any hope of a lord appearing who would put Confucius's Way into practice, and yet, strangely, Zilu no longer felt any impatience over it.

After years of repeated indignation and frustration at the muddiness of the age, the incompetence of its lords, and Confucius's own ill fortune, it seemed that only now, however vaguely, had he begun to grasp the meaning of Confucius's fate — and the fate of those, like himself, who followed him.

It was a thing far removed from the passive resignation of simply telling oneself, it is fate.

Even so, it was a far more active kind of fate — the dawning sense of a mission as "a wooden bell tolling for all the realm, through every age, bound to no single small state"

— such was the sense in which he had come, at last, to understand it.

The words Confucius had spoken with such lofty confidence when surrounded by the mob at Kuang — "If Heaven has not yet let this culture perish, what can the men of Kuang do to me?"

— these too Zilu now understood, truly and thoroughly, at last.

He could now grasp the greatness of his master's wisdom — never despairing under any circumstance, never scorning reality, always doing his utmost within whatever bounds were given him — and only now could he truly understand the meaning behind Confucius's bearing, which always seemed conscious of being watched by generations yet to come.

Perhaps hindered by his own overabundance of worldly talent, the sharp-witted Zigong showed little awareness of this timeless mission of Confucius's.

It was, rather, the plain and honest Zilu who, perhaps precisely because of his simple, uncomplicated devotion to his master, seemed to have grasped the true, vast significance of Confucius after all.

Through all these years of wandering piled one upon another, Zilu had by now turned fifty.

One could hardly say the sharp edges of his character had been worn smooth, yet he had, at last, gained a certain weight and gravity as a man.

The spirit of what later ages would call, "What could ten thousand measures of grain add to me?"

and the fierce brightness of his gaze had, by now, cast off the empty bravado of a lean and hungry wanderer, and taken on instead the dignified bearing of a man who had come fully into his own.

XIV

When Confucius visited Wei for the fourth time, at the urging of the young lord of Wei and his chief minister Kong Shuyu, he recommended Zilu, and had him take service in that state.

And when Confucius himself was at last summoned back to his native state after more than ten years away, Zilu parted from him and remained behind in Wei.

For ten years now, Wei had been racked by one dispute after another, all centered on the misconduct of Lady Nanzi.

First a man named Gongshu Shu plotted to drive Nanzi out, but instead fell victim to her slander and fled into exile in Lu.

Next, Duke Ling's own son, the crown prince Kuaikui, attempted to assassinate his stepmother Nanzi, failed, and fled to Jin.

With the crown prince gone, Duke Ling died leaving the succession vacant.

There was no choice but to set up the exiled prince's young son, Zhe, as his successor.

This was Duke Chu.

The exiled former crown prince Kuaikui, borrowing the strength of Jin, slipped into the western part of Wei and, like a tiger crouched to spring, watched hungrily for a chance to seize the throne.

The reigning lord of Wei, Duke Chu, who sought to keep him out, was the son.

The man scheming to seize the throne was the father.

Such was the state of Wei when Zilu entered its service.

Zilu's task was to govern the district of Pu as steward on behalf of the house of Kong.

The Kong family of Wei was a great house, the equivalent in Wei of the Ji clan in Lu, and its head, Kong Shuyu, had long enjoyed a reputation as a distinguished minister.

Pu had formerly been the fief of Gongshu Shu, the man recently driven into exile by Nanzi's slander, and its people accordingly took a defiant stance in everything toward the present government that had driven their lord out.

It was, to begin with, a place of unruly temperament, and Zilu himself had once, while following Confucius, been set upon there by a violent mob.

Before setting out for his post, Zilu went to Confucius and described the difficulty of Pu, where, it was said, "there are too many fierce men in the town to govern easily."

and asked for his master's guidance.

Confucius said:

"If you are respectful and reverent, you can make the bold stand in awe of you; if you are lenient and upright, you can win over the strong; if you are gentle yet decisive, you can restrain the wicked."

So he said.

Zilu bowed twice in gratitude and set out for his post in high spirits.

On arriving at Pu, Zilu first summoned the local men of influence and the leaders of the resistance, and spoke with them without holding anything back.

It was not simply a tactic to win them over.

Knowing well what Confucius had always taught — that it was wrong to punish men before instructing them —

he made it his first business to make plain to them exactly where his own intentions lay.

His unaffected directness seemed to strike the right chord with the rough temper of the local people.

The fierce men of the district came, to a man, to admire Zilu's clear-headed, open-hearted manner.

And by this time, too, Zilu's name had already spread throughout the realm as that of the most splendid, forthright man in Confucius's whole school.

"He who could settle a lawsuit on the strength of a single word — would that not be You?"

Even such words of praise from Confucius had spread far and wide, embellished along the way with all manner of exaggerated flourishes.

It was, in part, certainly this reputation that had won over the fierce men of Pu as well.

Three years later, Confucius happened to pass through Pu.

As soon as he crossed into the district, he said, "Excellent, this — You is respectful, reverent, and trustworthy."

So he said.

Going further, as he entered the town itself, he said, "Excellent, this — You is loyal, trustworthy, and generous."

So he said.

And finally, on entering Zilu's own residence, he said, "Excellent, this — You is clear-sighted and decisive."

So he said.

Zigong, who was holding the reins, asked why he praised Zilu so before even having seen him, and Confucius answered.

Once one entered the district, every field and paddy lay well tended, the wasteland thoroughly cleared, the irrigation ditches deep and well ordered.

This was because, the governor being respectful and trustworthy, the people gave their full strength to the work.

On entering the town, the walls and houses of the people stood complete and sound, and the trees grew thick and lush.

This was because, the governor being loyal, trustworthy, and generous, the people did not neglect their own affairs.

And finally, on arriving at his very courtyard, all was utterly quiet and orderly, with not a single servant or attendant who disobeyed a command.

This was because, the governor's words being clear-sighted and decisive, his governance never fell into disorder.

Have I not, then, come to know the whole of his governance without so much as having seen You himself?

XV

Around the time Duke Ai of Lu, hunting in the wilds of Daye to the west, captured a qilin, Zilu happened to have returned briefly from Wei to Lu.

At that time a minister of Xiaozhu named Yi rebelled against his own state and fled to take refuge in Lu.

This man, who had once met Zilu, said, "If Jilu will simply give me his word, I will need no formal oath."

So he said.

According to the custom of the time, a man who fled into exile in another state could only settle there in peace once that state had sworn a formal oath guaranteeing his life; but this minister of Xiaozhu insisted that, so long as Zilu himself stood surety for him, no oath from the state of Lu was necessary at all —

such was his claim.

So widely known, indeed, was Zilu's reputation for trustworthiness and honesty — that he never let a promise given lie overnight unfulfilled.

Zilu, however, flatly refused the request.

Someone said to him:

Here is a man who trusts not even the sworn oath of a state of a thousand chariots, but trusts the word of you alone.

Surely there could be no greater fulfillment for a man than this — why should you consider it something to be ashamed of?

Zilu answered.

If Lu were ever to go to war with Xiaozhu, and I were told to die beneath its city walls, I would answer the call gladly, whatever the circumstances.

But this man Yi is a disloyal minister who has sold out his own state.

If I were to stand surety for him, I would be endorsing a traitor with my own hands.

Is that something I could possibly do, or not? Is there even any need to think it over!

Those who knew Zilu well, on hearing this story, could not help but smile.

It was, after all, exactly the sort of thing he would do, exactly the sort of thing he would say.

That same year, Chen Heng of Qi assassinated his own lord.

Confucius, after purifying himself for three days, appeared before Duke Ai and asked that Qi be attacked for the sake of righteousness.

He made the request three times over.

Duke Ai, fearing the might of Qi, would not consent to listen.

He told Confucius to report the matter to the Ji family and let them decide.

There was no chance whatever that Ji Kangzi would agree to it.

Confucius withdrew from the lord's presence, and afterward said to those around him.

"It is only because I follow behind the ranks of the ministers that I dared not fail to speak."

He meant that his position required him to speak out at least once, even knowing it would be in vain.

(Confucius at that time held the honorary status of an elder statesman of the realm.)

Zilu's face clouded, just for a moment.

Was what the Master had done nothing more than a formality carried through for its own sake?

Was his righteous indignation, then, of a kind that could rest content so long as the proper form had been observed, even if nothing came of it in the end?

Even after nearly forty years of receiving his teaching, this one gap between them still remained, and there was nothing to be done about it.

XVI

While Zilu was visiting Lu, Kong Shuyu, the great pillar of Wei's political world, died.

His widow — a shrewd woman schemer named Boji, elder sister to the exiled crown prince Kuaikui — now came to the fore of politics.

Her son Kui had officially succeeded his father Yu, but this was a matter of title only.

To Boji, the reigning lord of Wei, Zhe, was her nephew, and the former crown prince eyeing the throne was her own younger brother — in principle equally close to her either way — but through some tangled history of love, hatred, and self-interest, she had come, oddly, to work solely for her brother's advantage.

Since her husband's death she had taken to favoring a handsome young man risen from a page's post, one Hun Liangfu, and now used him as her go-between, sending him back and forth to her brother Kuaikui, secretly plotting to drive the reigning lord out.

When Zilu returned once more to Wei, he found the strife between father and son over the throne grown still more heated, and he could sense, somehow, a thick air of impending upheaval hanging over everything.

On a certain day in the intercalary twelfth month of the fortieth year of King Zhao of Zhou.

As evening drew near, a messenger came rushing breathlessly into Zilu's house.

He came from Luan Ning, the steward of the Kong household.

"This very day the former crown prince Kuaikui has slipped into the capital. He has just now entered the Kong residence, and together with Boji and Hun Liangfu has threatened the head of the house, Kong Kui, forcing him to have himself set up as lord of Wei. The tide has already turned too far to stem. I, Luan Ning, am even now taking the reigning lord and fleeing to Lu. I leave the rest in your hands."

Such was the message.

So it has come at last, Zilu thought.

In any case, on hearing that Kong Kui, his own direct lord, had been seized and threatened, he could not simply stand by in silence.

Snatching up his sword, he rushed to the ducal palace.

Just as he was entering the outer gate, he collided with a short, stumpy man coming out.

It was Zigao.

A junior member of the school, an honest, faint-hearted man who had become a minister of this state on Zilu's own recommendation.

Zigao spoke.

The inner gate is already shut.

Zilu:

No — in any case, I will at least go and see.

Zigao:

But it's already useless.

And besides, you might well only run into trouble yourself.

Zilu raised his voice.

Am I not a man who eats the salary of the house of Kong?

For what reason should I avoid danger now?

Shaking Zigao off, he came to the inner gate, and sure enough found it barred from within.

He pounded on it hard, again and again.

"You are not to enter!"

a voice cried from within.

Recognizing the voice, Zilu shouted back.

That's you, Gongsun Gan, isn't it.

I am not the sort of man who changes his principles to escape danger.

Having profited from that house's salary, I must now come to its aid in its hour of trouble.

Open up!

Open up!

Just then a messenger happened to come out from inside, and in the moment the gate opened, Zilu slipped past him and sprang in.

Looking around, he saw the whole wide courtyard filled with a crowd.

These were the assembled ministers, hastily summoned because a proclamation was to be made, in Kong Kui's name, establishing a new lord of Wei.

Every face among them showed some mixture of shock and bewilderment, and all seemed uncertain which way to turn.

On a terrace overlooking the courtyard, the young Kong Kui, held fast between his mother Boji and his uncle Kuaikui, appeared to be forced to announce the change of regime to the assembly and explain it to them.

From behind the crowd, Zilu shouted loudly toward the terrace.

What good does it do you to hold Kong Kui captive!

Let Kong Kui go.

Killing Kong Kui alone will not destroy the party of righteousness!

What Zilu wanted, first of all, was to rescue his own lord.

Then, sensing that the stir in the great courtyard had fallen silent for a moment and that everyone had turned to look at him, he began at once to rouse the crowd.

The crown prince is a coward, notorious far and wide!

If we set fire to the terrace from below and burn it, he is bound to take fright and release Lord Kong at once.

Let us set it ablaze!

Fire!

It was already dusk, and bonfires were burning in every corner of the courtyard.

Pointing toward them, Zilu cried, "Fire! Fire!"

So he shouted.

"Let all those who remember their debt of gratitude to the late Lord Kong Wenzi (Yu) take up fire and burn the terrace! Save Lord Kong!"

The usurper up on the terrace, thoroughly alarmed, ordered the two swordsmen Shi Qi and Yu Yan to strike Zilu down.

Zilu fought fiercely against the two of them, blade against blade.

But even Zilu, that valiant man of former years, could not overcome his own age.

Little by little exhaustion crept over him, and his breath came ragged.

Seeing that the tide was turning against Zilu, the crowd, only now, at last made their true colors plain.

Curses flew at Zilu, and countless stones and clubs struck against his body.

The tip of an enemy halberd grazed his cheek.

The cord of his cap snapped, and the cap itself began to slip.

The instant he raised his left hand to catch it, the other man's blade bit deep into his shoulder.

Blood spurted, Zilu fell, and his cap dropped to the ground.

Even as he fell, Zilu reached out, snatched up his cap, set it straight upon his head, and swiftly tied the cord.

There, beneath the enemy's blades, drenched crimson in his own blood, Zilu wrung out his last strength and cried aloud.

"Look! A gentleman dies with his cap set straight!"

Hacked and cut until his whole body was like minced flesh, Zilu died.

Confucius, far away in Lu when he heard news of the upheaval in Wei, said at once, "Chai [Zigao] will come home safely. You will die."

So he said.

When word came that things had turned out exactly as he had said, the old sage stood still for a while with his eyes closed, and then at last the tears streamed down his face.

On hearing that Zilu's corpse had been made into minced pickled meat, it is said that he had every last piece of pickled meat in his house thrown out, and from that day on, never again allowed such minced pickle to be set upon his table.

(February, Showa 18 [1943])