Did Confucius say: “It is difficult to find a black cat in the dark room, especially if it is not there”?

For many years, the people have been walking aphorism, allegedly invented by the Chinese philosopher. We checked whether its author is really Confucius.

The expression “it’s hard to find a black cat in the dark room, especially if it is not there” is usually used in relation to futile attempts to prove something obviously incorrect. With a reference to Confucius, it can be heard in the series "The meeting place cannot be changed"(1979) and in the film Tengiz Abuladze"Repentance"(1987), read in art literature, collections aphorisms and media publications, such as "RIA Novosti","Parliamentary newspaper" And "Komsomolskaya Truth".

Chinese thinker Kun Fu-tzu (Confucius - the Latinized form of his name) lived in the VI - V centuries BC. e., and all the works, the author of which he is considered to be one or another, is considered reached Before us in the editorial offices of much later. Notes fixing the statements and actions of Confucius, as well as dialogs with his participation, were collected by the philosopher's students in a book entitled "Lun Yu"(" Conversations and judgments "). However, neither in this work, nor in other texts available today, which, as scientists suggest, could write Confucius, “verified” did not find statements about the black cat in the dark room.

Attributed Confucius saying Found Not only in the series “The meeting place cannot be changed”, but also in its primary source - the novel by the Vainer brothers “Era of Mercy” (1975), however, without specifying the color of the cat and with the word “catch” instead of “find”. This version of the phrase probably became known after the publication in March 1973 in the journal Foreign Literature the translation of Roman Driss Schreibi "Donkey". Soon in the Ognok, individual chapters of the novel Sergey Sartakov "were published"And you are gruel, star ...", Where the author used the same formulation, and put the phrase in Lenin's mouth, who allegedly remembered the Aphorism of Confucius.

However, the canonical form of the phrase (with the search for a black cat) appeared in the Russian -speaking press long before that. The earliest case, found “verified”, dates back to 1947, when in a number of Soviet magazines They printed an article with criticism of the English philosopher of the first half of the 20th century Sirila Jude. He allegedly stated that his colleagues are often similar to "a blind man who is looking for a black cat in a dark room, who is not there." In this case, the ancient Chinese thinker has not yet been attributions.

This metaphor by the middle of the 20th century was already good Known In the UK, where it was attributed to many - in particular, naturalist Charles Darwin and poet Ralph Emerson (both lived in the century before). In the first case, however, it was no longer about the cat. The creator of the theory of evolution allegedly claimed: "A mathematician is a blind person who is looking for a black hat in the dark room, which is not there." It is in this form, apparently, that the statement was first attributed to Confucius. So, in 1894, British newspapers said that recently the deceased judge Lord Charles Bowen loved to tell a joke from the life of the Chinese sage as a metaphor of “greatest impossibility”. Note that the word “hat” in English differs from the word “cat” with just one letter (Hat and CAT, respectively), and this could cause the spread of two idioma variants.

In the oldest found examples of metaphor, a cat is also mentioned. In 1846, in the New York Literary magazine The KnickerBocker critic He wrotethat a certain author has less chance of success than a “blind black man who is looking for a black cat in a dark basement with a blended candle.” Three years later, newspapers with reference to the Penny Punch publication Printed A joke about how a boy in response to his father’s request to determine the concept of “darkness” says: “A blind Ethiopus in a dark basement at midnight is looking for a black cat.”

Thus, a more or less canonical version of the phrase about the black cat in the dark room appeared in the second half of the 19th century in the UK, and in the same place it began to pass off as the aphorism of Confucius. The prototype of the phrase was a statement about the search for a black cat in a dark basement, which went through print publications several decades earlier.

Photo on the cover: Rob Web / Flickr

Incorrect attribution of quote

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