To take a rod and line, and go to a pool, and catch small fry is a very different thing from catching big fish. And by means of a little show of ability to secure some small billet is a very different thing from really pushing one's way to the front. So that those who do not imitate the example of Jên Kung Tzŭ will be very far from becoming leaders in their generation.
- Also spurious.
When some Confucianists were opening a grave in accordance with their Canons of Poetry and Rites, the master shouted out, "Day is breaking. How are you getting on with the work?"
"Not got off the burial-clothes yet," answered an apprentice. "There is a pearl in the mouth."
Now the Canon of Poetry says—
The greenest corn
Grows over graves.
In life, no charity;
In death, no pearl.
So seizing the corpse's brow with one hand, and forcing down its chin with the other, these Confucianists proceed to tap its cheeks with a metal hammer, in order to make the jaws open gently and not injure the pearl!
- The above, pronounced by Lin Hsi Chung to be spurious, is aimed at the Confucianists, who are ready to commit any outrage on natural feeling so long as there is no violation of the details of their own artificial system.
