Confucius said:
“It’s more difficult to penetrate a person’s heart than to get into a mountain gorge.” It is easier to know Heaven than the human heart.
The sky established spring and autumn, summer and winter, day and night. A person’s face is impenetrable, feelings are deeply hidden. It happens that a person is kind in appearance, but by nature is greedy; seemingly capable, but in reality worthless; businesslike in appearance, but idle at heart; soft on the outside, rough on the inside. That is why it turns out that a person either strives for virtue, like someone dying of thirst for water, or runs away from it like a forest fire.
That is why a wise ruler sends a man on a long journey to test his devotion, and sends him close to test his reverence; gives a difficult assignment to test his abilities; asks him unexpected questions to test his intelligence; orders to act quickly in order to test his trust; trusts him with wealth to test his conscience; informs him of danger in order to test his composure; makes him drunk to test his inclinations; puts him together with women to see if he is lustful.
These are the nine tests by which people can be judged.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru