Six Classic Books of the Chinese Empire () at the same press the next year, although his manuscripts show he had been working on them since at least 1700. The six classics were the Great Learning ( or ), the Doctrine of the Mean (), the Analects (), the collected works of Mencius (), the Classic of Filial Piety (), and the Lesser Learning (). Each of the first four are completely new translations prefaced by Zhu Xi's commentaries (t, s, Sìshū Jízhù). Each of the last three were the first European translations of the works. All were rather fairly freely translated from the editions established by Zhu Xi; his preface states the works are "not, so to speak, what the Chinese wrote but, I hope, what they really meant". For example, the first lines of the Doctrine of the Mean were rendered "The Law of Heaven is nature itself; the tendency of this nature is the way of acting correctly; the direction of this life is a right discipline of life, or the right precepts for living." At the same time, he published his Three Treatises on Chinese Philosophy (). Its three sections deal with "On Knowledge of the First Being or God among the Chinese" (), "On the Ceremonies of the Chinese for the Dead" (), and "On Chinese Ethics" (). Unlike earlier Jesuit works, it does not claim that the Neo-Confucianism of Zhu Xi and others was a Buddhist corruption of Confucianism; it treats it as an organic development although still cautioning that its vague terms should not be used in reference to the Christian God. Finally, in the same year, he also published Historical Notices of Chinese Rituals and Ceremonies in the Veneration of Deceased Parents and Benefactors. It expands on the topic of the second his Three Treatises, with many more citations from Chinese works. Combatively polemical in describing an understanding of Chinese ancestral veneration that is compatible with Catholicism, it claimed a papal imprimatur for its publishing but was almost immediately suppressed. He published his Little Poetic Works () at Frankfurt in 1717. Its four parts comprise a Life of Jesus Christ under the Name of Divine Love (); Marian Letters (); a Life of St Ignatius of Loyola, Founder of the Jesuits (); and several tragedies (), including Philotas, Herod (), Love (), Lucifer, Accianus, and Henry (). An appendix includes the comedy