3.12 Of the saying, “The word ‘sacrifice’ is like the word ‘present’; one should sacrifice to a spirit as though that spirit was present.”
3.4 Lin Fang asked for some main principles in connexion with ritual. Confucius said, “A very big question. In ritual at large it is a safe rule always to be too sparing rather than too lavish; and in the particular case of mourning-rites, they should be dictated by grief rather than by ease.”