Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 27.djvu/445

 the east; the moon makes her appearance in the west. Such are the different ways in which the processes of darkness and light are distributed in nature, and such are the arrangements for the positions (corresponding thereto) of husband and wife. The ruler fills his cup from the jar with an elephant represented on it; his wife fills hers from that with clouds and hills. With such reciprocation do the ceremonies proceed above, while the music responds in the same way below;—there is the perfection of harmony.

14. It is the object of ceremonies to go back to the circumstances from which they sprang, and of music to express pleasure in the results which first gave occasion to it. Thus it was that the ancient kings, in their institution of ceremonies, sought to express their regulation of circumstances, and, in their cultivation of music, to express the aims they had in mind. Hence by an examination of their ceremonies and music, the conditions of order and disorder in which they originated can be known. Kü Po-yü said, "A wise man, by his intelligence, from the sight of any article, knows the skill of the artificer, and from the contemplation of an action knows the wisdom of its performer." Hence there is the saying, "The superior man watches over the manner in which he maintains his intercourse with other men."

15. Within the ancestral temple reverence prevailed. The ruler himself led the victim forward,