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Aus dem Chinesischen von Richard Wilhelm

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In ancient China, after completing the lesser studies, a pupil entered the high school in the capital at the age of fifteen, where he learned the great science. The pupils were the sons of the nobility, who were educated publicly. The great science was precisely the science of the ordering of state and society.

Confucius was the first to establish a private school, in which he treated the subjects of the state schools from his own point of view, both theoretically and practically. What was new in Confucius’ position was that he criticized and revitalized the transmitted form from the standpoint of the moral law. The foundations of this Confucian science are compiled in this work. In terms of date it is probably fairly close to Maß und Mitte, although it is less metaphysical and more economically oriented. In the Sung period this chapter, too, was taken out of the context of the Records of Rites and published as one of the “Four Books”. In this connection Dschu Hi advances the theory that the section “The Foundations” derives from Confucius and “The Elaborations” from Dseng Schen, though without any historical basis. He then thoroughly rearranged the text and interpreted it from the standpoint of Sung philosophy. Wang Yang Ming’s opposition to the school of Dschu Hi in the Ming period is likewise largely bound up with a new explanation of the text. During the Manchu period the historical school (Han school) then returned to the original text, the translation of which is reproduced here.