Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 3.djvu/171

 scale. He gave offices only to the worthy, and employments only to the able. He attached great importance to the people's being taught the duties of the five relations of society, and to measures for ensuring a sufficient supply of food, attention to the rites of mourning, and to sacrifices.* He showed the reality of his truthfulness, and proved clearly his righteousness. He honoured virtue, and rewarded merit. Then he had only to let his robes fall down, and fold his hands, and the kingdom was orderly ruled.

Great Plan, ordinarily classed among the 'Counsels' or among the 'Instructions' of the Shû, might as well have a place among the 'Canons.' It is a remarkable production, and though it appears among the documents of the Kâu dynasty, there is claimed for the substance of it a much greater antiquity. According to the introductory sentences, king Wû, the founder of Kâu, obtained it from the count of Khî in the same year, the thirteenth of his dignity as Chief of the West, that he took the field against the tyrant of Shang. The count of Khî, it is understood, was the Grand-Master at the court of Shang, who appears in the concluding Book of the last Part. He says there, that, when ruin overtook the House of Shang, he would not be the servant of another dynasty. Accordingly, he refused to acknowledge the sovereignty of king Wû, who had delivered him from the prison in which he had been confined by Kâu-hsin, and fled—or purposed perhaps to flee—to Corea. Wû respected and admired his fidelity to the fallen dynasty, and invested him with that territory. He then, it is said, felt constrained to appear at the court of Kâu, when the king consulted