Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 27.djvu/63

 of the Master;" and these are followed by a number of others, more or fewer as the case may be, in which the words of the Master ("The Master said") are adduced to substantiate what has been stated in that introductory passage. The arrangement is uniform, excepting in one instance to which I have called attention in a note, and suitably divides the whole into eight chapters.

But no one supposes that "the words of the Master" are really those of Confucius, or were used by him in the connexion which is here given to them. They were invented by the author of the Treatise, or applied by him, to suit his own purpose; and scholars object to many of them as contrary to the sentiments of the sage, and betraying a tendency to the views of Tâoism. This appears, most strikingly perhaps, in the fifth chapter. On the statement, for instance, in paragraph 32, that the methods of Yin and Kâu were not equal to the correction of the errors produced by those of Shun and Hsîa, the Khien-lung editors say:—"How could these words have come from the mouth of the Master? The disciples of Lâo-Зze despised forms and prized the unadorned simplicity, commended what was ancient, and condemned all that was of their own time. In the beginning of the Han dynasty, the principles of Hwang and Lâo were widely circulated; students lost themselves in the stream of what they heard, could not decide upon its erroneousness, and ascribed it to the Master. Such cases were numerous, and even in several paragraphs of the Lî Yun (Book VII) we seem to have some of them. What we find there was the utterance, probably, of some disciple of Lâo-Зze."

No one, so far as I have noticed, has ventured to assign the authorship of this Book on example. I would identify him, myself, with the Kung-sun Nî-Зze, to whom the next is ascribed.

It is a disappointment to the reader, when he finds after reading the title of this Book, that it has nothing to do with the Black Robes of which he expects it to bean account.