123. 作中庸

Tso 4 chung 1 yung 1 

Make middle course 

The Chung Yung was written 

Tso is composed of 人 jen man as radical, and 乍 cha which originally meant to stop, and now means suddenly, etc. It covers all kinds of doing and making, even to writing a book (lines 153, 326). [The Peking dialect, here as elsewhere, fails to exhibit the true phonetic. Cha should be tsa.'] 

Chung see line 64. 

Yung is composed of 庚 keng to change, as phonetic, with 用 yung to use, as radical, which in turn was composed of 卜 pu to divine and 中 chung the middle. "Get your middle," says one luminary of the 1st cent. A.D., a not unworthy prototype of the famous Mrs. Glasse, "and then vou can use it." It originally meant to use; hence the method to be used or followed, a course. [The Chung Yung is a short philosophical treatise in one section of thirty-three chapters. Its title has been rendered by Legge as The Doctrine of the Mean, by Julien as L' Invariable Milieu] 

124. 子思筆

Tzu ssu brush 

by the pen of Tzti-ssn; 

Tzu 3 

Tzu see line 11. 

Ssu is composed of 心 hsin heart, the seat of intelligence, as radical, below an old word (not 田 t'ien fields) for the crown of the head, the fontanelle, and originally meant perspicacity. Read ssu4 it means thoughts; read sai1 the jowl. [Tzu-ssu was the style of 孔伋 K'ung Chi, grandson of Confucius.] 

Pi is composed of 竹 chu bamboo, its modern radical, and 聿 lu or yu a stylus, the old radical, the latter being used to scratch characters on bamboo tablets until the invention of the brush which has been assigned to the 3rd cent. B.C. [In some editions this line reads 乃孔伋, nai k'ung chi, with the same meaning.] 

125 中不偏

Chung1 pu4 pi'en1 

Middle not deflected 

the middle being that which does not lean towards any side, 

Chung see line 64. 

Pu see line 5. 

P'ien is composed of 人 jen man as radical, with 扁 pien flat as phonetic. See line 116. 

126. 庸不易

Yung1 pu1 i4

Course not change

Yung (the course) being that which cannot be changed. 

Yung see line 123. 

Pu see line 5. 

I is composed of 日 jih sun as radical and 勿 wu, which originally meant a kind of flag with three streamers for signalling, and so came to signify a negative, not, do not. Its primary sense seems to have been a chameleon, the creature of change, of which the character is thought by some to be a picture; hence its meaning as above, derived however by others from the radical sun, which brings about the changes of day and night. Here again the question discussed in line 116 arises. Was the word i change developed from the idea suggested by i a chameleon, or was the animal so called from a pre-existing word i to change? It would seem that the spoken word change must have preceded chameleon, and that the written character may well have been applied first to the animal and then to the idea. See also line 135. [The aim of the Chung Yung is to trace the ruling motives of human conduct from their psychological source. It originally formed § 31 of the Book of Rites (line 136), being taken thence to form one of the Four Books by Chu Hsi (line 113).]