bad ones. Men of small mind do the reverse of
this."

Ki K[']ang was consulting him about the direction of public affairs.
Confucius answered him, "A director should be himself correct. If you,
sir, as a leader show correctness, who will dare not to be correct?"

Ki K[']ang, being much troubled on account of robbers abroad,
consulted Confucius on the matter. He received this reply: "If you,
sir, were not covetous, neither would they steal, even were you to
bribe them to do so."

Ki K[']ang, when consulting Confucius about the government, said,
"Suppose I were to put to death the disorderly for the better
encouragement of the orderly--what say you to that?"

"Sir," replied Confucius, "in the administration of government why
resort to capital punishment? Covet what is good, and the people will
be good. The virtue of the noble-minded man is as the wind, and that
of inferior men as grass; the grass must bend, when the wind blows
upon it."

Tsz-chang asked how otherwise he would describe the learned official
who might be termed influential.

"What, I wonder, do you mean by one who is influential?" said the
Master.

"I mean," replied the disciple, "one who is sure to have a reputation
throughout the country, as well as at home."

"That," said the Master, "is reputation, not influence. The influential
man, then, if he be one who is genuinely straightforward and loves what
is just and right, a discriminator of men's words, and an observer of
their looks, and in honor careful to prefer others to himself--will
certainly have influence, both throughout the country and at home. The
man of mere reputation, on the other hand, who speciously affects
philanthropy, though in his way of procedure he acts contrary to it,
while yet quite evidently engrossed with that virtue--will certainly
have reputation, both in the country and at home."

Fan Ch[']i, strolling with him over the ground below the place of the
rain-dance, said to him, "I venture to ask how to raise the standard
of virtue, how to reform dissolute habits, and how to discern what is
illusory?"

"Ah! a good question indeed!" he exclaimed. "Well, is not putting duty
first, and success second, a way of raising the standard of virtue?
And is not attacking the evil in one's self, and not the evil which is
in others, a way of reforming dissolute habits? And as to illusions,
is not one morning's fit of anger, causing a man to forget himself,
and even involving in the c