Neville and Confucius: Self-discipline

Emulating Neville’s worldview needs self-scrutiny and reconstituting of the most fundamental ideas about our nature and identity.

Here is an excerpt which describes the same process of inner refinement, taken from poet Ezra Pound’s translation of Confucian thought:

The men of old wanting to clarify and diffuse throughout the empire that light which comes from looking straight into the heart and then acting, first set up good government in their own states; wanting good government in their states, they first established order in their own families; wanting order in the home, they first disciplined themselves; desiring self-discipline, they rectified their own hearts; and wanting to rectify their hearts, they sought precise verbal definitions of their inarticulate thoughts [the tones given off by the heart]; wishing to attain precise verbal definitions, they set to extend their knowledge to the utmost.

~Confucius: the Great Digest , tr. Ezra Pound, Peter Owen Limited, 1969