Newsletter No. 47

CUHK Newsletter No.47 October 1993 The college motto, 'sincerity (誠） and intelligence (明)', is taken from the Doctrine of the Mean (中庸), another one of the Four Books, which offers such an explanation of the two words and their reciprocal connection: 'Sincerity is the way of Heaven. The attainment of sincerity is the way of men.... When we have intelligence resulting from sincerity, this condition is ascribed to nature; when we have sincerity resulting from intelligence, this condition is to be ascribed to instruction. But given the sincerity, and there shall be the intelligence; given the intelligence, and there shall be the sincerity.' (James Legge's translation of the Four Books) To the minds of the founders of the college, intellectual enlightenment and character-building are mutually reinforcing. The way of Heaven and the way of men are one. Unite d CollegeEmble m The United College emblem, also circular in shape, depicts a torch and a book written with the college motto 明德新民, meaning 'to illustrate illustrious virtue' and 'to renovate the people'. While no document can be found in the archives of the college that contains an interpretation of the emblem design, the connection between the torch and the word 'illustrious' is obvious, and books are not an uncommon symbol for academic institutions. One may also have noticed that the college motto is taken from the same passage in The Great Learning (大學) that carries the motto of Chung Chi College. According to James Legge's translation, the 'illustrious virtue' is the virtuous nature which man derives from Heaven. This is perverted as man grows up, through defects of the physical constitution, through inward lusts, and through outward seductions; and the great business of life should be to bring the nature back to its original purity, i.e. to illustrate illustrious virtue. When a man has entirely illustrated his own illustrious nature, he has to proceed to bring about the same result in every other man, until under heaven there be not an individual who is not in the same condition as himself. That's the meaning of the phrase 'to renovate the people'. Sha w Coleg e Emble m The Shaw College emblem was designed by Mr. Kingsley Ma, production manager of The Chinese University Press. Like most coats of arms, it bears the shape of a shield, on the chief of which is written the name of the college in Chinese. And on the scroll beneath the shield can be found the college name in English. The key motif of the emblem is again books, five small and one big, all set against a background of vertical stripes. The big book on the lower part of the shield carries the college motto 修德講學, which means 'to cultivate virtue' and 'to go deeply into what one has learned'. The motto is, as clever readers may already have guessed, also taken from one of the Four Books, this time from the Confucian Analects (論語), in which the Master was recorded to have thus said: 'It is these things that cause me concern: failure to cultivate virtue, failure to go more deeply into what I have learned, inability, when I am told what is right, to go over to where it is, and inability to reform myself when I have defects.' The cultivation of virtue and the going more deeply into what one has learned thus top the list of things that occasioned the great sage solicitude. The reason is not far to seek. The former concerns one's moral character, while the latter is the way to new knowledge. A man of sound moral character eager to make new discoveries on the strength of existing knowledge is, in the eyes of Confucius, close to the ideal of the gentleman. 6