Page 115 - Gan's Family History

113 | P a g e
intelligence won him the admiration
of his fellow disciples.
Yan Hui exemplified the
concept of the true gentleman or JUN
ZI (Lord's Son) which Confucius
constantly held out to his disciples.
The gentleman may be of
humble origin and poor, but more
essential is that, his heart must be
sincerely set on “The Way”. He is
modest, polite and deferential,
avoiding unseemingly contention
with his fellows. Steadfast in success
and failure alike, his concern is
always with “What is morally right”
and his education is an unending
refinement and affirmation of the
moral sense of practical
accomplishment.
Confucius was heartbroken
when Yan Hui died at an early age of
32 as he had looked upon Yan Hui as
his successor who would carry on his
work of teaching after he was gone.
31
Extract Four
BELOVED DISCIPLE
IT is impossible to be sure of the size
of the group of persons that
surrounded Confucius as disciples or
more or less loosely attached
adherents. But the interesting thing
is not whether the "outer circle"
numbered three thousand odd, as
Ssu-ma Ch'ien, the Master's
biographer, averred; or the "inner
circle" some threescore and ten,
which is the traditional figure and
31 Extracted from the book “A Confucian Notebook”
by Edward Herbert. / Published by John Murry
(Publishers) Ltd. 50 Albemarle Street, London W1X 4BD
represented, according to Ssu-ma,
those who were "masters of the polite
arts". It is that in a few, a very few
cases, the references in the records
to intimates of the Master contain the
strokes and touches of a living
portraiture, so that certain
individuals--Tza Lu especially,
appear, not as conventional
disciples, but as real human beings
with their graces and imperfections.
In the case of Yan Hui the
portrait that emerges, particularly
from the Analects, is tantalizingly
slight and only partially explains the
admiration, amounting almost to
awe, felt by Confucius for this saint-
like disciple, who lived in poverty and
died early. This admiration seems to
have been directed mainly to three
special qualities in Yan Hui:--a
passion for "learning" (that is,
acquiring moral knowledge), an
exceptional teachability (or capacity
for absorbing moral lessons without
effort) and a power of perseverance in
virtue (which Hui was able to sustain
"for three months on end" without
once lapsing from it).
What all these qualities come
to is really an innate apprehension of
goodness, and in this probably lay
the secret of the young man's
"nearness to perfection "--of his
superiority, in the eyes of Confucius,
to the other disciples and even to
Confucius himself.
For in classifying different
kinds of knowledge Confucius gave
the intuitive perception of moral
truth the highest place, though he