VOLUME II, SEMESTER 2, CHAPTER 20
The Ancestors' View of Tools, Three Stones
From this chapter, the second semester takes up tools. To see the new thing of today clearly, go back two thousand years and more, to the square the ancestors set for tools. This chapter brings in three of them, each laying one stone. The first is the Records of the Examination of Craftsmen, that the wise create the thing and the implement is always the object. The second is the Book of Changes, that what is above form is the Way and what is below is the implement, and the Way comes before the implement. The third is Mozi, that what benefits people is done and what does not is stopped. One stone for where the thing comes from, one for which layer, one for what it is for. The three together drive the twentieth stake.
The first section asks how a hoe came to be, and finds the one who thought and forged and used and handed it down all persons, and the hoe itself saying nothing. The Records of Craftsmen, twenty three centuries back, opens a whole book of measures and materials not with how to make but with the maker, the wise create the thing and the skilled hand it on, all persons, and the thing appearing once, after create, the object. And to the one who says a thing grown ten thousandfold cannot still be a tool, the plain answer is that capability growing is a matter of quantity while the square, unchanged, is a matter of quality, so a hoe and a hundred-mu machine and a press that flipped the world are one in their square. And the two kinds of talk that lift it out are taken apart, the frightening that it takes people's work, when the one who signs the paper takes it and not the tool, and the flattering that it has dignity, when the tape recorder speaks too and no one grants it thoughts, its output still the reassembled words of billions, the subject still those people.
The second section brings in the Book of Changes and its twelve characters, what is above form the Way and what is below the implement. Form is the visible and holdable, and this thing of today, with its code and machines and server rooms that run hot and can be switched off, is deletable and editable and so an implement, in the lower layer, however like a person it speaks. And the Way is with the person, in the second he lets a man off, in the keys set down soft, in the tired mother who rises anyway, a Way with no form that cannot be coded or downloaded but grows only on a body, and the implement having no body cannot catch it. The Way comes before the implement, not earlier in time but above governing below, the hoe not knowing soil from wall while the holder's heart decides, and once that order turns the person empties out. And three loud claims fall, the grown abilities a reassembly of swallowed books, the self-growth an ox fattening in a pen a person fenced, the reading of all sage-books a reciting and not a living, for to say is not to do.
The third section brings in Mozi, benefit people do it and do not benefit people stop, the hardest ruler and the plainest, measuring not the tech or the numbers or the money but one thing, whether the person who used it came out better, closer to others, steadier, more settled, or worse. And today many a thing was aimed from its first day not at benefiting people but at not letting you stop, at deceiving you, at taking your skill, all advanced and used and rich and, by Mozi's ruler, to be stopped, for a thing that does not benefit people harms the deeper the better it is made. And no cursing of the makers, only that at their hand there is no such ruler, the position doing the work, and this book lays that ruler on the table before them and before you. Three stones, for where from and which layer and what for, two thousand years and more and not one loose, because what they laid was never the concrete thing but the position.
That is the twentieth stake. The implement is the object, the Way comes before the implement, and what benefits people is done. The three stones laid, it goes now square by square down onto the people, and the first square is the ones who make it, tapping out characters that hundreds of millions will use, and what ought to be in their hearts Xunzi named twenty three centuries ago, in one word, which the next chapter brings out.
SECTION
SECTION 1 The wise create the thing, and the implement is always the object
SECTION 2 The Way comes before the implement
SECTION 3 Benefit people, do it; do not benefit people, stop
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
SECTION 1 The wise create the thing, and the implement is always the object