SBE 3: The Hsiâo King: Chapter XVI. The Influence of Filial Piety and the Response to It

CHAPTER XVI. THE INFLUENCE OF FILIAL PIETY AND THE RESPONSE TO IT.

'The Master said, 'Anciently, the intelligent kings served their fathers with filial piety, and therefore they served Heaven with intelligence; they served their mothers with filial piety, and therefore they served Earth with discrimination 3. They pursued

1).

'Therefore even the Son of Heaven must have some whom he honours; that is, he has his uncles of his surname. He must have some to whom he concedes the precedence; that is, he has his cousins, who bear the same surname, and are older than himself. In the ancestral temple he manifests the utmost reverence, showing that he does not forget his parents; he cultivates his person and is careful of his conduct, fearing lest he should disgrace his predecessors.

'When in the ancestral temple he exhibits the

1. Perfect filial piety and fraternal duty reach to (and move) the spiritual intelligences, and diffuse their light on all within the four seas; they penetrate everywhere.

'It is said in the Book of Poetry 2,

"From the west to the east,
From the south to the north,
There was not a thought but did him homage."'

 

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Footnotes

484:3 This chapter is as difficult to grasp as the seventh, which treated of Filial Piety in Relation to 'the Three Powers.' It is indeed a sequel to that. Heaven and Earth appear as two Powers, or as 485:1 'The Spiritual Intelligences' here are Heaven and Earth conceived of as Spiritual Beings. They responded to the sincere service of the intelligent kings, as Hsing Ping says, with 'the harmony of the active and passive principles of nature, seasonable winds and rain, the absence of epidemic sickness and plague, and the repose of all under heaven.' Compare with this what is said in 'the Great Plan' of the Shû, pp. 147, 148.

486:1 The reader will have noticed many instances of this, or what were intended to be instances of it, in the translations from the Shih, pp. 365-368, &c.

486:2 See the Shih, III, i, ode 10, stanza 6.