For
instance, on news of a British victory, the American would
telegraph: "Victory stayeth not always with the righteous"; on
which President Kruger would promptly rejoin: "Yet shall I smite
him, even unto the end." This was the plan followed by Chinese
envoys, statesmen, and princes in their intercourse with each
other: no matter what event transpired, Ki-chah, or Tsz-ch'an, or
Shuh Hiang would illustrate it with an ode, or with a reference to
the "Book" (of history), or by an appeal to the Rites of Chou, or
to some obscure astrological or cosmogonical development extracted
from the mystic diagrams of "The Changes." As often as not, the
quotations given from the Odes and Book no longer exist in the
editions of those two classics which have come down to us. This
fact is interesting as proving that the _Tso Chwan_--or Commentary of
Confucius' pupil Tso K'iu-ming on Confucius' own bare notes of history--
must have been written before Confucius' expurgated Book of Odes
reduced and fixed the number of selected songs; or, at all events,
the records from which Tso K'iu-ming took his quotations must have
existed before either he or Confucius composed their respective annals
and comments.
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