6.29
The Master said, “How transcendent is the moral power of the Middle Use! That it is but rarely found among the common people is a fact long admitted.”
子曰：「中庸之為德也，其至矣乎！民鮮久矣。」
Notes
Confucius said: “The virtue of the Golden Mean (moderation) is supreme indeed! But among the people, it has long been rare.”
This statement from the Analects reflects Confucius’ profound reverence for the Golden Mean as the highest moral ideal. It embodies the Confucian pursuit of moderation, balance, and situational appropriateness. The passage highlights the supreme status of the Golden Mean while lamenting its scarcity in practice.
The Golden Mean is a core Confucian concept:
- “Hitting the mark” — unbiased, most appropriate
- “Constancy” — consistent practice in ordinary life
It signifies maintaining perfect appropriateness in all contexts — neither excessive nor deficient, neither left nor right — while integrating this balance into daily persistence. Today, the Golden Mean remains vital wisdom for resisting extremism and pursuing equilibrium: True maturity lies not in binary choices but in finding the pivot of appropriateness amid complexity; true strength manifests not in radicalism but in unwavering stability and moderation.
The Master said: “To go too far is as bad as to fall short.”(Analects 11.16)
This remark was Confucius’ comment on Zilu’s tendency to “go too far” and Ran You’s inclination to “fall short” in their conduct. It means that overstepping the proper limit and failing to reach it are equally undesirable.
This is the most direct expression of the doctrine of the mean. The mean is not “eclecticism”; rather, it is a “principle of moderation” – it opposes both radical recklessness and timid hesitation, and is fully consistent with the supreme value of “the mean as a moral virtue”.
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