From "Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio·Volume 1·Testing the City God". It was a question in a certain City God (official) examination. The selection of the City God of that term was to select a City God who would determine rewards and punishments based on his "mind".
Explanation: Doing good deeds deliberately and with purpose should not be promoted or rewarded even if good deeds are done. If you do bad things unintentionally, it is not your intention, and you should not be punished even if you do bad things.
Excerpt from the original text:
The Russian title paper flew down, and when you looked at it, the eight-character cloud read: "One person and two people, intentional or not." The two official documents were completed and presented to the hall. There is a saying in the official document: "If you have the intention to do good, you will not be rewarded even if it is good; if you have no intention of doing evil, you will not be punished even if you are evil." The gods praised him endlessly.
Translation:
Not long after, the test questions were handed out, and there were eight words on them: "One person and two people, intentional or not." After a while, the two people finished their essays. When finished, submit it to the palace. There is this sentence in Song Gong's article: "If you have the intention to do good, you will not be rewarded even if it is good; if you have no intention of doing evil, you will not be punished even if you are evil." All the gods passed it on and praised it after reading it.
Appreciation:
The work reflects Pu Songling's moral concepts and the associated principles of reward and punishment. The principle of reward and punishment must contain the moral outlook of the person who proposed this principle. This principle and related moral concepts in the article are expressed through the content of the answer sheet during the Song Dynasty Examination. The exam question was a bit strange: "One person and two people, intentional and unintentional."
But Song Gong wrote an exquisite article on this. The article did not include the full text, but only extracted four sentences: " If you do good with intention, you will not be rewarded even if you do good. "But Minglun added a comment here: "With intention but no intention, the way of using punishment is nothing more than this" to remind readers to pay attention. These four words are "intentional" and "unintentional".