The book of filial duty

Chapter 44: CHAPTER XVII

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About This Book

The work offers a Confucian guide to filial piety, combining doctrinal instruction on respect, ritual care for ancestors, and the family's role as the basis of moral order with twenty-four short exempla and commentaries that model practical devotion. It emphasizes reciprocal duties between generations, the cultivation of reverence in daily conduct, and the idea that domestic harmony underpins wider social and political harmony. Framed as pedagogical material, the text aims to shape personal character and public behavior by teaching youth and families how ritual observance, respect for elders, and familial responsibility foster social cohesion.

CHAPTER XVII

SERVING THE SOVEREIGN

Confucius said: “A good man always endeavours, while he is in the service of his sovereign, to express the utmost loyalty during audience with his August Master, and thinks at his leisure how to repair any wrong his August Master may have done. He will carry out any praiseworthy schemes projected by his master, and will correct any fault which he may commit. In this way a great affection will be fostered between them.

“Thus in the Shih Ching it is written: ‘Although the minister may be far away from his master, yet his affection will not be affected by the distance. He is so attached to him that he thinks of him every day.’”