Zhu Xi’s Commentarial Work

This chapter presents a translation of chapters 1–11 of Abiding in the Mean and the Constant (sometimes translated as the Doctrine of the Mean), one of the Four Books, along with Zhu Xi’s commentary. For Zhu Xi all thirteen classics were precious, but he developed a graded curriculum. At the top he placed the Four Books: the Great Learning (Daxue大學‎), Analects (Lunyu論語‎), Mengzi (孟子‎), and Abiding in the Mean and the Constant (Zhongyong中庸‎). Their appeal, he wrote, was their “ease, immediacy, and brevity.” Pattern-principle could be more readily investigated and accessed in these four works than in any other text, or in any other thing. Only when they had fully mastered these four texts would Zhu encourage students to turn to the previously authoritative Five Classics (the Classic of Changes, Odes, Book of Documents, Book of Rites, and Spring and Autumn Annals).