Page:Sacred Books of the East - Volume 3.djvu/235



and the short reigns of others, as illustrating how the blessing of Heaven rests on the diligent monarch. In the third, the example of their own kings, Thâi, Kî, and Wăn, is adduced with the same object. In the fourth, the duke addresses the king directly, and exhorts him to follow the pattern of king Wăn, and flee from that of Kâu-hsin. In the fifth, he stimulates him, by reference to ancient precedents, to adopt his counsels, and shows the evil effects that will follow if he refuse to do so. In the sixth, he shows him, by the cases of the good kings of Yin and of king Wăn, how he should have regard to the opinions of the common people, and gird himself to diligence. The seventh chapter is a single admonition that the king should lay what had been said to heart.

The duke of Kâu said, 'Oh! the superior man rests in this,—that he will indulge in no luxurious ease. He first understands how the painful toil of sowing and reaping conducts to ease, and thus he understands how the lower people depend on this toil (for their support). I have observed among the lower people, that where the parents have diligently laboured in sowing and reaping, their sons (often) do not understand this painful toil, but abandon themselves to ease, and to village slang, and become quite disorderly. Or where they do not do so, they (still) throw contempt on their parents, saying, "Those old people have heard nothing and know nothing."'

The duke of Kâu said, 'Oh! I have heard that aforetime Kung ung, one of the kings of Yin, was grave, humble, reverential, and timorously cautious. He measured himself with reference to the decree of Heaven, and cherished a reverent apprehension in governing the people, not daring