piety, and I answered that it consisted in there being no falling off. Fan Ch'ih said: What did you mean?—The Master replied: That parents should be served in the proper spirit while living, buried with the proper rites after death, and worshipped thereafter with the proper sacrifices.
Mêng Wu Po[1] asked for a definition of filial piety. The Master said: There is filial piety when parents are spared all anxiety about their children except when they happen to fall sick.[2]
Tzǔ Yu put a question on the subject of filial piety. The Master said: The filial piety of to-day reduces itself to the mere question of maintenance. Yet this is something in which even our dogs and horses have a share.[3] Without the feeling of reverence, what is there to distinguish the two cases?
- ↑ The eldest son of Mêng I Tzǔ.
- ↑ It is astonishing that Chu Hsi should have tried to improve on the old commentators here, and almost equally astonishing that Legge should have followed him, with this result: "The Master said, Parents are anxious lest their children should be sick" (and therefore children should take care of their persons)!
- ↑ Here again it is almost incredible that Legge should have adopted such a ridiculous interpretation as the following—without the authority, this time, of Chu Hsi: "The filial piety of nowadays means the support of one's parents. But dogs and horses likewise are able to do something in the way of support." The image conjured up by this sentence is grotesque, to say the least.
