An old Confucian scholar in Shanxi once walked past an ancient tomb.
When a fellow traveler mentioned a fox inhabited it, he blurted out some
words of abuse, but nothing unusual happened to him at the time.
The old scholar was good at cutting corners. He had neither a fur
coat in winter nor any hemp garments in summer. He ate no meat and
drank no tea, and his wife and children were often hungry. In this
way he managed to save forty taels of silver, which he melted into four
ingots and kept in a secret place. He was always saying that he had
barely enough food at home. After he swore at the fox, his four silver
ingots sometimes emerged on the roof of the house or at the top of a tree,
so that he had to get them back by using a ladder. Sometimes they
appeared in a marshy pond, so he had to wade over to pick them up.
Sometimes they were thrown into the cesspool, so he had to scoop them out
and wash them carefully. Sometimes they were moved to another hiding
place, so he had to spend a long time searching for them. Sometimes
they disappeared for several days, and then suddenly dropped from the sky.
The old scholar was once talking with a guest when the ingots appeared
on the hem of his hat. On another occasion, he was bowing to someone
with clasped hands when the ingots slipped out from his sleeves.
There seemed to be an endless variety of antics. One day the four
ingots suddenly leapt into the air and danced like butterflies. As
they soared higher and higher and were about to vanish, the old scholar
was compelled to burn incense to pay respects to the fox and beg its forgiveness.
Only then did the ingots fall back into his lap. After that they
never disappeared again, and the old scholar no longer dared to admonish
others in high-sounding words. Someone commented, “According to what
I have heard, one defeats demons and evil spirits by cultivating his own
virtue, not by swearing at them. That old scholar should blame himself
for the disgrace.” Another one said, “If a great Confucian should
swear at a fox, it would not dare to make trouble. Unfortunately
the old scholar did not possess high morals in spite of his solemn airs.”
“A truly great Confucian would never swear at anyone unprovoked,” commented
a third man. “It was precisely because he lacked in moral cultivation
that the old scholar put on such a belligerent front.” I think his
words hit the bull’s-eye.
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