Do Not Demand Completeness from Others; Examine Yourself as If Falling Short

“Do not demand completeness from others; examine yourself as though you may fall short.” The line appears in the “Instructions of Yi” section of the Book of Documents. The received text places it in Yi Yin’s counsel to Tai Jia while describing the conduct of earlier rulers. “Completeness” means being without deficiency; “examining oneself” means scrutinising and restraining one’s own conduct.

The sentence deliberately pairs unequal demands: do not make perfection the condition for accepting another person, yet ask first what responsibility belongs to you. Today, this need not mean tolerating repeated harm or abandoning necessary standards. It offers an order of judgement: distinguish faults that genuinely damage shared work from mere fault-finding, then apply the same scrutiny to yourself.

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