Les dialecticiens et les autres types humains
♦ Common people, true Sages, great Dialecticians,
small Dialecticians and Ideal man.
Teng HsiFORKE
Teng Hsi Tse, I. Unkindness, § 11
(11) […] To say that honour is not like disgrace is no correct statement, and to pretend that obtaining is not like losing no true saying. Not advancing one goes back; not enjoying one’s self, one is sad; not being present, one is absent. This is what common people always think.
The true sage changes all these ten predicates into one32.
The great dialecticians distinguish between actions in general, and embrace all the things of the world. They choose what is good, and reject what is bad. They do what must be done in the right moment, and thus become successful and virtuous.
The small dialecticians are otherwise. They distinguish between words and establish heterogeneous principles. With their words they hit each other, and crush one another by their actions. They do not let people know what is of importance. There is no other reason for this than their own shallow knowledge.
The ideal man33, on the other hand, takes all the things together and joins them, combines all the different ways and uses them. The five flavours, he discerns in his mouth, before he has tasted them. The five virtues, though residing in his body, are nevertheless extended to others. There is no certain direction which he follows. He rejects justice before the eyes. Measures to suppress disorder, he does not take. He is contented, having no desires; serene, for he takes everything easy. His devices are unfailing, his perspicacity enters into the smallest minutiae.
Notes Forke
Note 32 — The true sage does not care the least for honour and disgrace, obtaining or losing and all these contraries, which play such an important role in the world. To him they are all one and the same.
Note 33 — The bad dialecticians and controversialists multiply distinctions and differences, which exist but in their imagination, the great dialecticians distinguish only between some few general principles. The ideal man, i.e., the mystic does mot make any distinctions at all. He has no fixed purpose, but instinctively always hits the right and knows things, which others do not understand after long study.
Alfred Forke 1901.The Chinese Sophists 1901. Journal of the North-China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, XXXIV, Changhai, 1901, p. 1-100.
Cité d’après Les classiques des sciences sociales, Chicoutimi, Québec, p. 58.
https://classiques.uqam.ca/classiques/forke_alfred/the_chinese_sophists/forke_sophists.pdf