Ki K'ang, when consulting Confucius about the government, said, "Suppose I were to put to death the disorderly for the better encouragement of the orderly--what say you to that?" "Sir," replied Confucius, "in the administration of government why resort to capital punishment? Covet what is good, and the people will be good. The virtue of the noble-minded man is as the wind, and that of inferior men as grass; the grass must bend, when the wind blows upon it." Tsz-chang asked how otherwise he would describe the learned official who might be termed influential. "What, I wonder, do you mean by one who is influential?" said the Master. "I mean," replied the disciple, "one who is sure to have a reputation throughout the country, as well as at home." "That," said the Master, "is reputation, not influence. The influential man, then, if he be one who is genuinely straightforward and loves what is just and right, a discriminator of men's words, and an observer of their looks, and in honor careful to prefer others to himself--will certainly have influence, both throughout the country and at home. The man of mere reputation, on the other hand, who speciously affects philanthropy, though in his way of procedure he acts contrary to it, while yet quite evidently engrossed with that virtue--will certainly have reputation, both in the country and at home." Fan Ch'i, strolling with him over the ground below the place of the rain-dance, said to him, "I venture to ask how to raise the standard of virtue, how to reform dissolute habits, and how to discern what is illusory?" "Ah! a good question indeed!" he exclaimed. "Well, is not putting duty first, and success second, a way of raising the standard of virtue? And is not attacking the evil in one's self, and not the evil which is in others, a way of reforming dissolute habits? And as to illusions, is not one morning's fit of anger, causing a man to forget himself, and even involving in the consequences those who are near and dear to him--is not that an illusion?" The same disciple asked him what was meant by "a right regard for one's fellow-creatures." He replied, "It is love to man." Asked by him again what was meant by wisdom, he replied, "It is knowledge of man." Fan Ch'i did not quite grasp his meaning. The Master went on to say, "Lift up the straight, set aside the crooked, so can you make the crooked straight." Fan Ch'i left him, and meeting with Tsz-hiá he said, "I had an interview just now with the Master, and I asked him what wisdom was. In his answer he said, 'Lift up the straight, set aside the crooked, and so can you make the crooked straight.' What was his meaning?"