Hëen-k‘ëw Mung asked Mencius, saying, "There is the old saying, 'An officer of complete virtue cannot be employed as a minister by his ruler, nor treated as a son by his father.' Shun stood with his face to the south, and Yaou, at the head of all the feudal princes, appeared in his court with his face to the north. Koo-sow also appeared at Shun's court with his face to the north; and when Shun saw him, his countenance assumed a look of distress. Confucius said, 'At this time the empire was in a perilous condition indeed! How unsettled was its state!' I do not know whether what is thus said really took place." Mencius said, "No. These are not the words of a superior man, but the sayings of an uncultivated person of the east of Ts‘e. When Yaou was old, Shun took the management of affairs for him. It is said in the Canon of Yaou, 'After twenty-eight years, Fang-heun demised, and the people mourned for him as for a parent three years. All within the four seas, the eight instruments of music were stopped and hushed." Confucius said, "'There are not two suns in the sky, nor two sovereigns over the people. If Shun had already been in the position of the son of Heaven, and had moreover led on all the feudal princes of the empire to observe the three years' mourning for Yaou, there must in that case have been two sons of Heaven.'" Hëen-k‘ëw Mung said, "On the point of Shun's not employing Yaou as a minister, I have received your instructions. But it is said in the 'Book of Poetry,' 'Under the wide heaven, All is the king's land; Within the sea-boundaries of the land, All are the king's servants.' When Shun became emperor, I venture to ask how it was that Koo-sow was not one of his servants." Mencius replied, "That Ode is not to be understood in that way; it speaks of being laboriously engaged in the king's business, and not being able to nourish one's parents, as if the subject of it said, 'This is all the king's business, but I alone am supposed to have ability, and made to toil in it.' Therefore those who explain the Odes must not insist on one term so as to do violence to a sentence, nor on a sentence so as to do violence to the general scope. They must try with their thoughts to meet that scope, and then they will apprehend it. If we simply take single sentences, there is that in the Ode called the 'Yun Han,' 'Of the remnant of Chow, among the black-haired people, There will not be half a man left.' If it had really been as thus expressed, then not an individual of the people of Chow would have been left. "Of all that a filial son can attain to, there is nothing greater than his honoring his parents. Of what can be attained to in honoring one's parents, there is nothing greater than the nourishing them with the empire. To be the father of the son of Heaven is the height of honor. To be nourished with the empire is the height of nourishment. In this was verified the sentiment in the 'Book of Poetry,'