The contrast between the superior man and the small man runs through the Analects like a spine. It is not a contrast of birth or social rank but of moral orientation. The superior man directs his attention to virtue and to the claims of righteousness; the small man directs his attention to personal comfort and the favours he might obtain. The distinction is not about what circumstances one finds oneself in, but what one is attending to within those circumstances.
The superior man is not merely polite or accomplished. Righteousness — yi — is the essential quality from which everything else flows. The superior man expresses righteousness through the forms of propriety, brings it forth with humility, and completes it with sincerity. These are not four separate virtues but four aspects of a single act, each checking and completing the others.
The superior man is satisfied and composed while the mean man is always full of distress — not because the superior man faces no hardship, but because his ground is internal. When provisions run out in Ch'an and his followers are too ill to rise, Confucius tells Tsze-lu: the superior man may indeed have to endure want, but the mean man gives way to unbridled license. Adversity reveals character; it does not create it.
The most compact description of the superior man may be this: "What the superior man seeks, is in himself. What the mean man seeks, is in others." The superior man does not depend on recognition, circumstance, or the opinions of the crowd. He is concerned not that others do not know him, but that he may not be worthy of being known.
The junzi ideal pervades the Analects. The passages here are drawn from Books IV and XV (Chapters 1 and 8 of this edition). Confucius himself explicitly refuses the title of superior man, applying it only to those who fully carry out what they profess.
