Confucius on his own life, and the source of the Chinese idiom for each decade of age. 'The decrees of Heaven' renders tianming, which is also the mandate by which dynasties rule. The e-text of Legge used here prints the running translation without book and chapter numerals, so the reference follows Legge's standard printed division rather than a mark in the file.
Facts
Passage
TextThe Master said, "At fifteen, I had my mind bent on learning. At thirty, I stood firm. At forty, I had no doubts. At fifty, I knew the decrees of Heaven. At sixty, my ear was an obedient organ for the reception of truth. At seventy, I could follow what my heart desired, without transgressing what was right." 1 ReferenceAnalects 2:4 (Legge numbering) 1 Reference SchemeCollection, Book, Section 1 Translation
TranslationThe Chinese Classics, vol. 1: Confucian Analects 1 Learn More
The Line a Song Dynasty Editor Turned Into a Curriculum
Mark Csikszentmihalyi's Stanford Encyclopedia entry on Confucius treats this verse as more than reminiscence. Later commentators, especially the Song dynasty synthesizer Zhu Xi, read it as a staged program of moral cultivation rather than as a private memory offered for its own sake. On that reading, each age Confucius names marks an achieved level of understanding a student can aim at in sequence, standing firm at thirty, freedom from doubt at forty, knowledge of Heaven's decree at fifty, culminating in the capacity at seventy to act rightly without effort or calculation, moral action and desire finally aligned rather than desire held in check by will.
The entry's broader discussion of Confucius places this verse's mention of the decrees of Heaven, tianming, alongside its more familiar political sense, the mandate by which a ruling house is understood to hold or lose the right to govern. Applied here to one man's inner life rather than to a dynasty, the same term describes an ethical rather than a political horizon, the point at which a person's private understanding comes to align with a moral order the tradition treats as built into the world rather than invented by any one teacher, Confucius included.
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This source names Confucius directly: "Confucius on his own life, and the source of the Chinese idiom for each decade of age."
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