嚴復
The word for law in classical Chinese was "fǎ" (法). The Chinese character for "fǎ" denotes a meaning of "fair", "straight" and "just", derived from its water radical (氵). It also carries the sense of "standard, measurement, and model". Derk Bodde and Clarence Morris held that the concept of "fǎ" had an association with "yì" (義: "social rightness"). Yan Fu, in his Chinese translation of Montesquieu's "De l'esprit des lois" published in 1913, warned his readers about the difference between the Chinese "fǎ" and Western law: "The word 'law' in Western languages has four different interpretations in Chinese as in "lǐ" (理: "order"), "lǐ" (禮: "rites", "decorum"), "fǎ" (法: "human laws") and "zhì" (制: "control").