VOLUME II, SEMESTER 1, CHAPTER 12, SECTION 2
Hard All the Way into the Cells, Xunzi's Wei
The last section said culture is handed down in a single line, one living generation dyeing the next by hand. And that raises a natural question. This hand-dyed culture, how deep does it dye into a person? Two thousand three hundred years ago, Xunzi answered in one word. It dyes down to the deepest layer there is. The word is wei. This section brings in Xunzi's wei, and how culture dyes all the way into the cells.
Xunzi has a word that gets badly misunderstood. Wei. In the Chinese of today, the character wei mostly turns up in words that mean false, or forged, a word with a bad smell to it. But in Xunzi the word means something wholly different, with nothing shameful in it at all. Look at how the character is built. It is a person, and the act of doing, set side by side. A person, doing. So Xunzi's wei means the thing that human doing makes, the part worked and wrought by human effort, and it stands as the opposite of what is merely born. Here is Xunzi's most famous line for it. Work upon the nature, and raise up the wrought. Plainly, through the deliberate work of human effort, take a person's inborn nature and work upon it, and raise up a new thing that human hands have made. And that new thing human hands have made is culture. So in Xunzi, wei is a lofty word. It means the whole result of humankind's work of civilizing itself. Language, ritual, morals, all the culture this whole volume has been about, are, in Xunzi, wei, the thing humankind worked out and dyed onto itself.
Follow the working of work upon the nature and raise up the wrought. The nature is the inborn part of a person. Hungry, he wants to eat. Cold, he wants warmth. He sees a gain and wants to grab it. These are the animal instincts. Xunzi held that these inborn instincts, left unworked, tend toward strife, and toward chaos. And the wrought, the deliberate work of human effort, culture and ritual and teaching, is exactly what works upon those raw instincts, and raises up a person who can live among others, who has ritual, who has restraint. Take a plain example. A newborn child, hungry, cries and grabs at food, and does not care whether anyone else is hungry. That is the nature, the inborn. Through the teaching of culture, the wrought, he slowly learns that he must wait for the elders to sit before he eats, that he must share, that he must think of others. That learned part is the wrought, the humanly worked. See how, from a little animal that knows only to grab, a person who knows ritual and knows consideration is raised, and that whole process is working upon the nature and raising the wrought, is culture working upon a person. And here is the deepest point. This working is not some shallow coat of paint. It works down into a person's deepest layer, and becomes a second nature. A well-cultured person, seeing an elder, gives way without thinking. He is not deliberately putting on a show of politeness. It is that the culture was worked so deep into him that it became a reaction like an instinct. That is the highest state of the wrought, the humanly made worked so deep it looks inborn. Recall the four layers of the fifth chapter. The working of the wrought runs from knowledge, to belief, to habit, and at last works down into the deepest layer, the body's own reaction, and becomes a second nature. So Xunzi's wei, culture, can dye all the way to the cells, deep enough to become second nature.
Now a most important misreading has to be broken. Some, hearing that culture works upon a person, feel that it binds a person, reins in human nature, and feel that a person unworked by culture is freer, is a truer self. That understanding is wrong. Xunzi's wei does not bind. It completes. Think about it. A person with no working of culture on him, keeping only the inborn instinct to grab and eat and grab, is he freer? No. He is only an animal driven by instinct, unable to live among others, unable to build a single thing. It is precisely the working of culture, the wrought, that lets a person rise above the animal instinct and become a real person, one who can live among others, and love, and create, and hold himself in check. So wei does not bind you. It completes you. It lets you become a fuller and a higher person. Put it as a picture. A tree grown wild, never pruned, may grow crooked, and turn into a useless tangle. The careful pruning of a gardener, the wrought, is not there to bind the tree. It is there to let the tree grow straighter and taller, and become real, usable timber. The working of culture upon a person is the same. It is not there to bind, but to complete. This corrects, at a depth, a common misreading of our own day, the notion that natural is best, that unrestrained is free. Two thousand three hundred years ago Xunzi saw it. What lets a person truly stand is precisely the deep working of culture. Without this layer of working, a person cannot stand up at all. The credit is Xunzi's.
So here is where this section leaves us. Xunzi's wei, and culture hard all the way into the cells. Wei is not false. It is the humanly done, the whole result of humankind's work of civilizing itself. Work upon the nature and raise up the wrought, taking the inborn nature and, through deliberate work, raising up a humanly made culture, works down to the deepest layer and becomes a second nature. And wei does not bind but completes, the way a gardener's pruning does not bind a tree but lets it grow straighter and taller, so that without this working a person cannot stand. That carries the twelfth stake deeper. Culture, the wrought, dyes all the way to the cells and becomes a second nature, and the wrought completes rather than binds. So this culture, worked so deep into the cells and turned into second nature, is it then fixed and unchanging? Of course not. It is deep the way a seed is deep, and it will grow a different look in each age, while its root never breaks. The next section takes up this bedrock as deep as a seed, threaded through by one thing, generating and generating without end, its look changing while its root holds unbroken. See you there.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
SECTION 3 The seed at the plant layer, threaded through by one