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Sketch of the Life of Confucius
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and prying into everything, will run himself into danger because he loves to satirize and slander men; and he who wishes to thoroughly understand recondite things will jeopard his safety, because he loves to publish the failings of men.” Confucius replied, "I respectfully receive your instructions," and thus left him. Láutsz' advice seemed directed against a too inquisitive philosophy, and meddling too much in the affairs of the world; he was rather of the Budhistic school of quietists, while Confucius wished men to endeavor to make each other better.
Confucius, like Socrates and other teachers, used to teach his dis- ciples while walking with them, deriving instruction from 'vhat he saw. Ile was once walking with them by the bank of a stream, and stop- ped from time to time to look very intently at the water, until their attention was excited and aroused to ask him the reason.
"You say well," said he, "that the running of water in its bed is a very simple thing, the reason of which everybody knows; I was however rather making a comparison in my own mind between the running of water and doctrine. The water, I reflected, runs unceasingly, by day and by night, until it is lost in the bosom of the mighty deep. Since the days of Yau and Shun, the pure doctrine has uninterruptedly des- cended to us; let us in our turn transmit it to those who come after us, that they from our example may give it to their descendants to the end of time. Do not initate those isolated men (referring to Láutsz') who are wise only for themselves; to communicate the mo- dicum of knowledge and virtue we possess to others, will never im- poverish ourselves. This is one of the reflections I would make upon the running of water.'
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This peripatetic habit, and the aptitude for drawing instruction from whatever would furnish instruction, was usual with the philoso- pher, and he seldom omitted to improve an occasion. Once when walking the fields, he perceived a fowler, who having drawn in his nets, distributed the birds he had taken into different cages. On coming up to him to ascertain what he had caught, Confucius atten- tively remarked the vain efforts of the captive birds to regain their liberty, until his disciples gathered round him, when he addressed the fowler, "I do not see any old birds here, where have you put them?" "The old birds,” said he "are too wary to be caught; they are on the lookout, and if they see a net or a cage, far from falling into the snare, they escape it and rever return. Those young ones which are in company with them likewise escape, but such as only separate into a flock by themselves and rashly approach, are the birds I catch.