under the heading, 'The Title of the Work,' I have given the
received account of its authorship, which precedes the catalogue

1 ±i«J½×.
2 ¤åÄm³q¦Ò, Bk. clxxxiv. p. 3.
3 ¾G¥È, ¦r±d¦¨.
4 §µÄm¬Ó«Ò.


of Liu Hsin. According to that, the Analects were compiled by the
disciples if Confucius coming together after his death, and
digesting the memorials of his discourses and conversations
which they had severally preserved. But this cannot be true. We
may believe, indeed, that many of the disciples put on record
conversations which they had had with their master, and notes
about his manners and incidents of his life, and that these have
been incorporated with the Work which we have, but that Work
must have taken its present form at a period somewhat later.
In Book VIII, chapters iii iv, we have some notices of the
last days of Tsang Shan, and are told that he was visited on his
death-bed by the officer Mang Ching. Now Ching was the
posthumous title of Chung-sun Chieh [1], and we find him alive (Li
Chi, II. Pt. ii. 2) after the death of duke Tao of Lu [2], which took
place B.C. 431, about fifty years after the death of Confucius.
Again, Book XIX is all occupied with the sayings of the
disciples. Confucius personally does not appear in it. Parts of it,
as chapters iii, xii, and xviii, carry us down to a time when the
disciples had schools and followers of their own, and were
accustomed to sustain their teachings by referring to the lessons
which they had learned from the sage.