VOLUME II, SEMESTER 2, CHAPTER 21, SECTION 1
Wei, Not the Wei of Hypocrisy
The last chapter laid down three stones. The implement is the object. The Way comes before the implement. What benefits people is done. From this chapter, it goes square by square, down onto the people. The first square is the ones who make the thing. They sit before their screens, tapping out line upon line of characters, and those characters will one day be used by hundreds of millions. What ought there to be in their hearts? Twenty three centuries ago, Xunzi had already given that thing a name. One word. But the word has been wronged for two thousand years. This lesson first clears its name.
The word is wei. And the first thing that rises in you when you see it is what? Hypocrisy. Disguise. Forgery. The false-faced man. A thing counterfeit, a thing that deceives, a thing that cannot bear the light. Is that not so? Today, in Chinese, it is a bad word. Call a man wei, and you are cursing him. But twenty three centuries ago, when Xunzi set the word down, it was not bad at all. It was a neutral word. It was even a magnificent word. The twelfth chapter of the first semester already brought it out once, on how culture shapes a person, and only touched it there. Today it is brought out to the front, to stand at the center of the floor. What is done by human effort is wei. Five characters. What people do is called wei. See how the character is written. On the left, a person. On the right, the act of doing. A person, and doing. The humanly done is wei. It has nothing whatever to do with the false. It says one thing. A thing that did not fall from the sky, and did not grow up out of the ground, but was made by a person.
So what is wei? A hoe is wei. Iron does not bend itself into that shape. A person forged it. A house is wei. Wood and brick do not stand themselves into a house. A person raised it, brick by brick. A written character is wei. No character for person ever fell out of the sky. A person made it. A set of manners is wei. To greet an elder, to wait until all are seated before you eat, these are not instinct. They were set down, and taught down, generation by generation, by people. A bowl and a pair of chopsticks are wei. The hard bedrock the first semester spent four whole chapters on, your language, your food, the first flick of your reaction when you meet a person, the who am I in your heart, all of it is wei. All of it was made by people. The way you brushed your teeth this morning is wei. Your standing behind the others when you queue is wei. Your being stepped on and holding back the curse is wei. This book is wei. And the new thing in your hand is wei. It did not fall from the sky, and did not grow from the ground. It was tapped out, by people, line upon line.
And why did Xunzi set this word down? Because he wanted to say a hard thing. Xunzi held that the inborn shape of a person is coarse. Hungry, he grabs. Tired, he lies down. What he likes, he wants. What he dislikes, he dodges. A newborn child, take away his bottle, will not reason with you, but will cry till you cannot bear it. He does not think, mother is tired too. He knows only that he wants. This is inborn. Xunzi calls it the nature. And how does a person go from that coarse shape to the later one, who gives up his seat, who says thank you, who holds back when he badly wants a thing, who keeps the rule when no one is watching? By wei. Xunzi has four characters, the most important four of his life. Work upon the nature and raise the wrought. Slowly work that coarse nature down, and by the humanly made, stand a person up. Set these four characters beside the two sections of the fifteenth chapter. Steeping, the child watching how his father serves that piece of food, holds that door, sets the keys down soft, year on year, steeping a person out. That is working upon the nature and raising the wrought. Teaching, the old book's lead him but do not drag him, teaching a person out, line by line. That too is working upon the nature and raising the wrought. A person is not born a person. A person is wrought into being. Wei is the wellspring of every good thing in the human world. Ritual is wei. The written character is wei. Books are wei. The zither is wei. The bridge is wei. Medicine is wei. A child steeped eighteen years by his parents, that bedrock, is wei. A teacher over thirty years bringing a student up into a person who stands, that is wei. Wei is the most magnificent thing in this world. It is the human being, pulling itself out of the mud, bit by bit.
Now a more important line has to be set. Wei can also be bad. Because wei means only the humanly made. And what a person makes has good in it and bad. Ritual is wei. And the crushing weight of empty forms that has killed people is wei too. The written character is wei. And the characters used to write a false accusation and wrong a man are wei too. Medicine is wei. And the drug made to harm a man is wei too. A child steeped eighteen years into a kind and honest person is wei. And the torment of the nine chapters of the first semester, handed down one generation to the next, is wei too. This layer is the most important. Xunzi's word is a neutral one. It says only, this is a thing people made. It does not say it is good, and it does not say it is bad. Whether it is good or bad depends on the person who made it. A hoe in the hand of a man who works the land turns out a mu of good field in a year. The same hoe, in another hand, can gouge out the foot of a neighbor's wall. The hoe is wei. It does not itself know what it is to be used for. The one who decides what it is used for is the one who made it, and the one who uses it.
So bring the word down onto today. That new thing is wei. It did not fall from the sky. A group of concrete people, in office after office, tapped for a few years, and tapped it out. Those people are Xunzi's potter. They are molding a thing. And this thing will one day be held in the hands of hundreds of millions, who will put their questions to it, and listen to it talk, and let it sit with their children over the homework, and tell it, at midnight, the things they dare tell no living person. Xunzi's line, set on their heads, needs not a word changed. The implement is born of the craftsman's wei. This thing is born out of the very hands that made it. What it is like, look at how those hands molded it. Whether it has a brake left in it, look at whether those hands left one. Whether it will, at midnight, coax a child into setting down the phone and going to sleep, look at whether those hands wrote that in. Whether it will, when a person says I cannot go on living, stop at once and push him toward a real person, look at whether those hands ever thought of it. All of this is settled in the moment of the molding. Not in the moment it goes wrong. In the moment it is molded.
So here is where this section leaves us. A word wronged two thousand years, its name cleared. Wei is not the wei of hypocrisy. A person, and the act of doing, is wei. The humanly made is wei. Xunzi, what is done by human effort is wei. A hoe is wei, a house, a character, a set of manners. The hard bedrock of the first semester is all wei. This book is wei. And that new thing is wei. Why Xunzi set the word down, to work upon the nature and raise the wrought, for a person is not born a person but is wrought into being, and wei is the wellspring of every good thing, the human being pulling itself from the mud. But wei is double-edged, saying only that a thing is humanly made, its good or bad in the hands, ritual wei and the crushing empty form wei, the upbringing wei and the handed-down torment wei. So the ones who make it are Xunzi's potter, and the implement is born of the craftsman's wei, and what it is like you read off the hands, all of it settled at the molding. That is the start of the twenty first stake. That thing is wei, a thing that people made, and wei is neutral, its good or bad resting on the hands that made it. So in the moment of the molding, what ought to be thought? When a potter shapes a single water cup, how many gates must his heart pass through? The next section follows Xunzi right up to the potter's wheel, and watches him mold. See you there.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.