PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

The Master said, "I am thinking of giving up speech." Tzu-kung said, "If you do not speak, what would there be for us, your disciples, to transmit?" The Master said, "What does Heaven ever say? Yet there are the four seasons going round and there are the hundred things coming into being. What does Heaven ever say?"

"James, I have examined your paper on plagiary, and I must give you an 'F' for your own plagiary," Professor Kung softly declared over his bifocals from behind his desk at Pacifica.



"Plagiary? Where?" James anxiously inquired, shifting his weight from his right foot to his left and back again, wavering in trepidation before the professor's dignified demeanor.



"Please sit down, son," the professor gently commanded, made a sweeping gesture with uplifted palm towards the old wooden chair nearest his desk, and waited for James to be seated. "Thank you." He lowered his eyes and gazed at James' paper. "I see plagiary everywhere I look, for almost all discourse is developed from a few platitudes, but your concluding remark is especially egregious since you did not even bother to paraphrase. I quote your misappropriated words: 'I dislike those in whom plagiarizing passes for wisdom.' As you know only too well, that is an often repeated quote from the The Analects of Confucius as translated by D.C. Lau. Besides that, your other borrowings from Confucius without the customary attributions are obvious, even though I must give you credit off the record for taking the individual initiative to reword them as you pawned off his thoughts as your own."



"But, but.. but excuse me, Professor Kung, with all due respect I must say you have attributed both the words and the thought to the wrong man," James contended as he jumped up from his seat to his self-defense.  "Those are not the Chinese words of Confucius. The English translation is an interpretation of a thought expressed in Chinese by his student, Ssu, when the Master asked him what he disliked. So the thoughts are Ssu's and the words themselves are the translator's. Someone familiar with the Chinese at the time the sentence was first written might conclude that the translation actually presents an entirely different idea than intended by Ssu. Maybe there was no such thing as plagiary five centuries before Christ and therefore there would be no Chinese word for it. Our text says Confucius was not an original thinker or a creative writer, but a teacher of old ideas and an editor. I recall Confucius said, 'I transmit but do not innovate; I am truthful in what I say and devoted to antiquity. I venture to compare myself to our old P'eng.' Anyway, the capitalist idea of private ownership of linguistic community property or truth did not appear..."



"Please sit down, James, and hold your horses," Professor Kung interjected. "Run those ponies in your next paper, and you might get somewhere with me providing you do not remain confused by the modern confusion of names for things. That is something we must all try to rectify. As for plagiary, plagiary is the appropriation of someone else's writing or thoughts as your own. The underlying idea is the same whenever the name for it in any language is properly understood and employed. In any case, you have in fact tried to pass someone else's basic thought off as your own, not in Confucius' time, but in this day and age, and you get an 'F' today." The professor was gentle, almost deferential, yet sternly adamant in his judgement.



"But I've heard you say the same things Confucius said many times over, and you did not provide your source. You did not say 'Confucius says.'" James raised hypocrisy as an objection, wondering why he should be punished for what is a daily ritual among his professors.



"Nice try, young man, but there is a difference between teacher and student, just as there is a similar difference between parent and child, according to their respective principles. We must not confuse teacher with student, but remain true to the ideas signified by their names as defined in terms of privileges and duties," Professor Kung looked at his right hand, then at his left, then clasped them together, with right hand on top of left.



"Excuse me?" James leaned forward in his chair as if hard of hearing.



"Common treatment of certain subjects by teachers without definite attribution to originating authors is customary. But you are the student in this case, and you must comply with the formalities of your position. You knew the applicable rules, but you did not comply. A wise man knows the difference between right and wrong, acts rightly and is happy with his position no matter what the circumstances are. I saw from your shifty stance at the beginning of this interview that you are at least wise enough to know the difference between right and wrong, and felt some remorse for your shiftless plagiary. As for what Ssu says or thinks, that is what Ssu says or thinks. What he says or thinks you must attribute to him, and credit the translator," Professor Kung stated with a slight bow of his head.



"Who cares who said what first? Who cares if Confucius or Ssu said it? What difference does that make? To what purpose is it to go around saying 'Confucius says' when everyone is saying the same thing, anyway? And where did he get his wisdom? From man or from Heaven?" Upset, James had raised his querulous voice to a high-pitched whine, then regretted it. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be rude."



Professor Kung smiled broadly. "You are not rude, for this is the proper place to make your complaint with pointed questions. In fact I am glad to hear so many indignant statements posed deferentially as questions. If you have the patience to listen, I shall do my best to answer a couple of them and rectify any misprision couched in respect."



"Miss who?"



"Misprision, in the sense of treacherous mistakes. A question may be employed to propound a lie or a truth. Tamelane loved the truth, but he beheaded questioners not descended from the Prophet."



"I'm sorry, professor, it is the end of the day and you probably have something else to do." James thought of Nancy, his girlfriend, and his right leg began to swing back and forth.



"Oh, no, make no mistake, for this occasion is meet and you are of right descent. Hence I have nothing better to do than to teach and to learn - therefore it is my duty to teach and to learn. And I just may learn more from your questions than I knew before, discomfiting though that might be.  So I am at your service if you are ready for it. If we are not eager to learn and to express our ideas we shall learn nothing."



"I'm ready," James asserted, thinking Professor Kung might allow him to rewrite the paper if he went along. Besides, the old man looked lonely, and James could not help liking him - James' father was murdered when James was a toddler.



"Good. if we do not love learning, we will be foolish, intolerant, disobedient, unruly, immoral and harmful. There is nobody as foolish as those who do not study when they encounter trouble. And you are in trouble. I have given you an 'F' and have marked your record for plagiary. I will answer a few of your questions in due time, but allow me to ask a few of my own.  Why do you study at Pacifica, James?"



"To get my degree so I can get a good job. I don't want to be poor." James reflexively imagined he was in a luxurious mansion, in the cavernous master bedroom fondling Nancy's pert breasts after adorning them with a string of perfectly matched pearls.



"Alas, students used to study to improve themselves, but now they study to impress others..."



"What? Excuse me, I was thinking of something."



"I see," the professor observed, looking askance at James leg as its swinging accelerated. "James, you know how often I have stressed the importance of being a gentlemen no matter what one's occupation is."



"Yes, I know, the stuffy stuff about good will and moral excellence and the like." James responded a bit impatiently, and thought: Here comes the lecture about how a poor man can be a gentleman too, even more so than a lord of the manor descended from the old land-grabbing knights - but I'd better be patient.



Professor Kung was silent for awhile, as if he were counting to ten or more. "Stuffy stuff, you say, instead of substance. All right, let's say stuff, the right stuff. The gentlemen is made of the right stuff, then. He learns not for profit, but because he ought to learn for learning's sake. He worries not about being poor but about the truth. The vulgar man is after profits and what they will buy, while the gentleman wants to lead a moral life."



"I don't want to wind up homeless, professor, that's not why my mother sent me to school. I want to get into technology and make some money."



Professor Kung rose slowly from his chair. He was seventy-three years old, almost totally bald. He wore a little silk cap on his head indoors. Tufts of black hair grew oddly out of his ears, in stark contrast to his gray mustache and goatee. He never stood erect, but was always slightly bowed over to a height of about five and one-half feet. He seemed to look up to people with his gray eyes rather than down on them. Yet he rarely looked directly into anyone's eyes; when he did, people were utterly dumbfounded by his gaze. He always wore one of three old ankle-length gowns to class. Today he wore the threadbare, tan gown. He now came out from behind his desk and placed himself near the window, from whence he further addressed James.



"Homeless? Oh, James, by the way,  please save bouncing your leg up and down for your prayers. Thank you. The truth must be your home, and where the truth does not reside, there you must not be. As a matter of fact, someone who is attached to a fixed abode cannot be a true gentleman. A gentleman does not fear homelessness: he welcomes it. I know you want to be a computer programmer, and that is fine menial work..."



"Menial?" James interjected, alarmed.



"I mean servile, serving the machine at its lowest functional level as a technological servant motivated by the vulgar interest."



"But, professor, this is the Information Age. I want to make some money and help others sell knowledge. What's wrong with that?"



"Nothing. I do not denigrate menial, technological work or demean the mean as useless, nor do I imply society does not need its feet to walk on. I propose that every person should be a gentleman or gentlewoman first of all. For a gentleman's learning is the broadest. He by no means has the easiest task, because his main occupation is to carry humanity itself from cradle to crave. The gentleman will make a name for himself in any field as a leader. Do you understand me now?"



Professor Kung pulled back the curtains, turned and stood before the Sun setting in the window behind him. James' leg was under control now. His involuntary fancies of Nancy nude had vanished. He squinted at his professor's silhouette in the window, and saw a yellow dragon taking shape in the red sunset.



"Professor, I know the liberal arts are a big deal to you, and you are always saying the gentleman must study them because that is the broad way, but you know people do not believe in gentlemen any more, and only a few people can make a living being liberal. I really don't know why we are made to study this stuff. I mean, it's interesting, but I, uh, well, I want to know about technology, make a living, be somebody."



"The liberal arts are for your liberation, son, and I believe you are missing the boat. Knowledge is of things. Wisdom is of man, he-who-thinks, the foundation of knowledge for whom all knowledge exists. The broad way is humanity, and the first course of self-development as a man is grammar, in the sense of the best that has ever been said by man for man's sake. I want to engage my students in the great conversation recorded in great literature, and to help each student find his own meaning in that history. If priority is given to humanity in education, we will find good leaders in every field and every follower will aspire to leadership of his own life as a matter of course, for how can one lead or support another well unless he first leads himself? As for being somebody in terms of having real power, James, if you study those who lead our democratic republic you will notice most of them are supported by the trivium."



"Trivium?"



"The sacred tripod, or the ceremonial bowl or ting of education. Grammar, rhetoric, dialectics. And the quadrivium appended thereto makes the seven liberal arts."



"Oh."James looked puzzled.



"By the way, are you enjoying your dance classes?"



"Yeah, well, not that much. I am so clumsy, but I hate sports, so I keep in shape, and the music is cool. It's getting dark in here. Do you want me to turn on the lights?"



"No, lights irritate me at this time of day. I feel like singing a song. I love heavenly music. It brings my emotions into joyful order. Would you like to do an earthly dance as I sing a heavenly song? Together we can bring Heaven and Earth together."



"Uh, no, sir, it's too dark in here." What, is he gay or something? James speculated.



"I see. Light that candle there. The one on my desk. Yes. Now where were we?" the candlelight flickered, barely illuminating the study.  "Yes, you have asked about Confucius and Heaven in respect to your plagiarism, but what does a gentleman want to know first and foremost?"



"The truth."



"Good. And does the truth make the gentleman great?"



"No, sir, the gentleman makes the truth greater and broadens himself as he becomes true. He favors the truth only, and he is not an ideologue."



"Excellent! By golly, you were paying attention after all. I suspected as much. And whom does the gentleman want to know first all?"



"Himself. Know thyself, like Socrates said. Maybe Confucius met Socrates. Maybe we have the dates messed up, maybe we are a century off, either East or West." James fancied.



"Aha! You see the connection, " Professor Kung chuckled. "But let's not get too carried away. Indeed, you say: Know thyself. Others want to know others, and lose themselves in the process. And what does a gentleman want to leave behind, James?"



The professor had his attention, but James was stumped. "I don't know."



"I am pleased by your answer. But take a guess," the professor smiled.



"Some real estate? A trust fund? Many children to remember him?"



"To remember his good name, James. A gentleman wants to leave a good name behind. Gentle means family. A man's gentleness is in family, and family is the foundation of civilization. The genteel principle of the family is in the gens, the community, the nation, the universe. So when the family member is true to the good name of his own family, he has by knowing himself come to know the universe. And the gentleman is well known for his familial virtue and filial piety. What is the old way of saying 'known-man'?"



"I don't know."



"Nobleman. You see, a nobleman was a 'Name', and by that Name he was known."



"You mean like Confucius' hero the Duke of Chou?" James offered.



"Exactly."



"Noblemen are not politically correct today."



"But gentlemen will always be politically correct even when they do not succeed in politics, for they have acted rightly on the truth. Let us reveal this secret of ultimate success and happiness, so that every true man can be true to himself in truth, that every man can by persevering in truth be a nobleman in fact if not in title. Let us call that man a gentleman and recognize the importance of his good name to his successors in goodness, the name he has earned for himself. Now, since our gentleman is devoted to truth, how may he obtain that good name?"



"Telling the truth?"



"Yes, by being trustworthy. It is not merely that he knows the truth, he acts on it, he is righteous. His word must be trusted. He is a man of his word. And when you erase a man's good name and insert yours over his words, in order to take credit for his thoughts and deeds, you have deprived the words of their significance in the context of his life, directing attention to the wrong man, making it less likely that the truth will be known and believed. Would you want your name erased? Then why erase another name and insert your own in its stead? You have robbed the gentleman of his good name, or, foolishly, of a bad one. You have also robbed the society of the gentleman you might have become for your generation and future generations, " the wizened old professor promulgated to his student, staggered a bit, and sat down on the chair he had been leaning on. But his voice, although mellow with age, was still strong:  he did not hesitate for words but sang them out clearly as if his tongue were a wood clapper set in motion by the

swinging of a universal bell.



"I see what you are saying," James offered, "but you also said people have to think for themselves. Truth has its own authority. Truth is not the private property of anyone. Nobody owns the truth. I'll bet Confucius could care less about people going around saying 'Confucius says.' "



"Good actions including the symbolic action of thinking are remembered by respecting the people who performed them, and people are known by their names. Of course all ideas belong to the universe of discourse, yet still they find their best expression in the superior person, in the true man or woman who, for the good of the community, will take the initiative to act in accordance with the Way. I have no doubt Confucius himself would agree that the right name be given to all things, that the name of a true man and woman is best remembered and should be remembered in connection with their virtuous works, lest the world be led into confusion and discord. Confucius restored the wisdom of the ages, therefore his name appears with the restoration. But note carefully, James, that Confucius' work was an attribution and tribute to his predecessors, and he named names when they were known. Furthermore, what was his own was his because of the application of his will to his teachers' guidance."



James was getting sleepy. He thought of Nancy, stood up,  and prepared to leave. "I have to go, it's getting really late. I understand why you won't change my grade. Can I ask a final question?"



"I know you can, and you may."



"Why is plagiary called stealing when students buy their term papers from ghost writers?"



"That is easy. The theft is from the community. The student has not gone through the process. He has not taken the individual initiative required for the community to benefit, for the community comprises individuals. So he has cheated the society. He is a thief in the night. Before you leave, I want you to know there is a way for the 'F' I gave you to be set aside, and the notation of plagiary on your record deleted."



'Really?" James came alive. "How?"



Professor Kung's eyes twinkled in the candlelit office as a full moon rose on the horizon outside, the second full moon that month. "You must appear before my class at a designated time next month and recite from memory The Analects of Confucius, as translated by D.C. Lau."