What Is Well Built Cannot Be Uprooted
The Text
善建者不拔，善抱者不脱，子孙以祭祀不辍。修之于身，其德乃真；修之于家，其德乃余；修之于乡，其德乃长；修之于邦，其德乃丰；修之于天下，其德乃普。故以身观身，以家观家，以乡观乡，以邦观邦，以天下观天下。吾何以知天下然哉？以此。
What is well built cannot be uprooted; well held cannot be slipped away — it will be honoured, generation after generation. Cultivate it in the self and virtue is real; in the family, surplus; in the village, lasting; in the state, abundant; in the world, universal. So: observe a person by their person, a family by their family, a village by their village, a state by their state, the world by the world. How do I know the world is so? By this.
Reading it
The telescoping test: the same cultivation, audited at five scales. Nothing at the world scale is real unless it already exists at the self scale — the uprooted never got built in the first place. The final line is an epistemology: the whole is knowable by scaling the part you have actually done.
可伸缩的检验：同一种修养，在五个尺度上分别受审。世界尺度上不存在的东西，在自我尺度上必不存在——被拔掉的从来就没建过。末句是认识论：整体可以由你真正做过的那部分来外推。
Pick one virtue you claim. Verify it exists at the smallest scale — you — before citing it anywhere larger.
挑一个你宣称拥有的品质。先验证它在最小尺度——你自己——上存在，再谈更大的。