Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 3.djvu/185

 he ruins his aims. His aims should repose in what is right; he should listen to words (also) in their relation to what is right.

'When he does not do what is unprofitable to the injury of what is profitable, his merit can be completed. When he does not value strange things to the contemning things that are useful, his people will be able to supply (all that he needs). (Even) dogs and horses that are not native to his country he will not keep. Fine birds and strange animals he will not nourish in his state. When he does not look on foreign things as precious, foreigners will come to him; when it is real worth that is precious to him, (his own) people near at hand will be in a state of repose.

'Oh! early and late never be but earnest. If you do not attend jealously to your small actions, the result will be to affect your virtue in great matters;—in raising a mound of nine fathoms, the work may be unfinished for want of one basket (of earth). If you really pursue this course (which I indicate), the people will preserve their possessions, and the throne will descend from generation to generation.'

chest or coffer, that was fastened with bands of metal, and in which important state documents were deposited, plays an important part among the incidents of the Book, which is therefore called 'the Metal-bound Coffer.' To what class among the documents of the Shû it should be assigned is doubtful.

King Wû is very ill, and his death seems imminent. His brother, the duke of Kâu, apprehensive of the disasters which such an