Excerpt from The Sayings of Confucius

I have tried to make the translation in the present edition more nearly word for word than it was in the first.

It has been pointed out to me that I expect a great deal of my readers. To a large extent this cannot be helped. The Chinese text is often hard to understand and is sometimes open to more than one interpretation. An English version that always made easy reading would not be a true translation. The book being meant for English readers, long notes explaining points that are of little interest to anyone except a Chinese scholar would be out of place.

But there are two words about which some explanation is perhaps due. These are the Chinese words chun-tzu and jen. They are the two most important words in the book. They have always exactly the same meaning in Chinese, and I have thought it better always to use the same words for them in English. The first I have translated gentleman, the second love.

The word gentleman presents little difficulty. It is not surprising that the Chinese idea of a gentleman over two thousand years ago should not be quite the same as the English idea to-day. It is rather to be wondered at that the two ideas should be so much alike.

But for love the case is different.

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