The people of a great country

Are like a blank sheet of paper:

Love them, and they respond with affection;

Benefit them, and they come to you;

Praise them, and they are stimulated

To please you; make them to experience

What they dislike, and they disperse at once.

When the benefiting proceed from love and justice,

Those who forget them are few, and those

Who make a profit of them are many.

In this way the practice of love and justice

Comes to be without sincerity and is like

A borrowing of the implements with which

Men catch birds of prey and trap furious beasts.

In all this the one man's seeking to win the world

By his decisions and enactments of such a nature

Is as if he were to cut through the nature of all

By one single operation -- he knows how wise

And superior men can benefit the world,

But he does not know how they injure it.

It is only those who stand out of such men

That know this for certain, and so they oppose.