Page:The sayings of Confucius; a new translation of the greater part of the Confucian analects (IA sayingsofconfuci00confiala).pdf/16

pretation of the more important sayings in the Analects, in translating which he had the oral help of native scholars, besides the benefit of voluminous standard commentaries. Thus equipped for his task, it cannot but appear strange that he, admittedly a great sinologue, should have gone so far astray as to miss the very core and essence of the doctrines to the elucidation which he devoted most of his life. The explanation may lie in the fact that he was a Christian missionary in the first place, and only secondly a scientific student; he had come to teach and convert the heathen, not to be taught or converted by them. This preconceived idea acted as a drag on the free use of his understanding, and prevented him from entering whole-heartedly into his subject. We are told that the Master himself had "no foregone conclusions," but Legge's whole attitude to Confucianism bespoke one comprehensive and fatal foregone conclusion—the conviction that it must at every point prove inferior to Christianity. A certain inelasticity of mind showed itself also in the way in which he approached the work of translation. He was too apt to look upon a Chinese word as something rigid and unchanging in its content, which might be uniformly rendered by a single English equivalent. Delicate shades of meaning he too often ruthlessly ignored. Now there is a certain number of Chinese terms which