The Master said, "Superior men, and yet not always virtuous, there have been, alas! But there never has been a mean man, and, at the same time, virtuous."

6. EMINENT PROWESS CONDUCTING TO RUIN; EMINENT VIRTUE LEADING TO EMPIRE. THE MODESTY OF CONFUCIUS. Nan-kung Kwǒh is said by Choo He to have been the same as Nan Yung in V. 1. But this is doubtful. See on Nan Yung there. Kwǒh, it is said, insinuated in his remark an inquiry, whether Conf. was not like Yu or Tseih, and the great men of the time so many Es and Ngaous; and the sage was modestly silent upon the subject. E and Ngaou carry us back to the 22nd century before Christ. The first belonged to a family of princelets, famous, from the time of the emperor 喾(B.C. 2432), for their archery, and dethroned the emperor How Seang(后相), B.C. 2145. E was afterwards slain by his minister, Han Tsuh (寒浞), who then married his wife, and one of their sons(尧, Keaou) was the individual here named Ngaou, who was subsequently destroyed by the emperor Shaou-k'ang, the posthumous son of Howseang. Tseih was the son of the emperor 喾, of whose birth many prodigies are narrated, and appears in the Shoo-king as 后稷, the minister of agriculture to Yaou and Shun, by name 弃. The Chow family traced their descent lineally from him, so that though the empire only came to his descendants more than a thousand years after his time, Nan-kung Kwǒh speaks as if he had got it himself, as Yu did. 君子哉若人,—comp. V. 2.

7. THE HIGHEST VIRTUE NOT EASILY ATTAINED TO, AND INCOMPATIBLE WITH MEANNESS. Comp. IV. 4. We must supply the 'always' to bring out the meaning.