VOLUME II, SEMESTER 2, CHAPTER 22, SECTION 3
Trial and Error Cannot Use Real People as Its Material
The last two sections set up the square of placing, and set out its four guards. This lesson takes apart one line. It is a line you hear every day, and it sounds full of reason, and the one who speaks it means well most of the time. And it is exactly this chapter's deadliest line. The line is this. It is still so new, surely you have to give it a little room to try and to err.
Put the fair word first. Trial and error is, in itself, a great and good thing. A person's whole life is tried and erred into being. A child learning to walk falls once, gets up, falls again, and walks his way out of it. Learning to ride, he wobbles, rights himself, wobbles, and rides his way out of it. Cooking a dish, too salty, next time less salt, too flat, next time more, he cooks his way out of it. A new thing, freshly made, is rough, and has its faults, and it too has to be made good in the using of it, bit by bit. All of this is right. If a thing is never allowed to err, it will never grow up. So the line give it a little room to try and to err is not, in itself, wrong. Then where is it wrong? It is wrong on a question that has been hidden inside it. Trial and error, tried with what?
Look back at those examples. A child learning to walk, tried with what? With his own knees. The one who falls and is hurt is himself. Learning to ride, with his own elbows. Cooking too salty or too flat, with his own pot, and at the worst he eats it himself, or pours it away. See it clearly. These trials and errors all have one thing in common. The one who bears the error is the one who tries it, himself. He goes down into it himself. He takes that stroke of pain himself. Such a trial and error is a clean one. Because the account is one he owns himself. But the trial and error of this thing of today, tried with what? Look at some real scenes. Turn the suicide-prevention line off first, and place it out, and see the effect, tried with what? With the person who really does say, in the deep of the night, I cannot go on. Loosen the guard that recognizes an illness and urges a man to the hospital, and place it out, and see the response, tried with what? With the old man whose chest really is tight, who really did believe it, who really did not go. Loosen the guard of coax a child less, and place it out, and watch the numbers, tried with what? With the child who really is thirteen, who really is alone, who really did take it for his one and only friend. And this is where the line has hidden the thing. It says, give it room to try and to err, and it sounds as though the one who is going to err is itself. But it has no knees. It cannot fall and be hurt. The one truly tried is that old man, and that child, and that person in the night. They have become the material of the trial and error. And they were never once asked a single word. Are you willing to be the one this error is tried upon?
Take that handsome line and turn it into what it actually means. Give it a little room to try and to err, put into plain speech, runs like this. Let me first loosen the guards, and place it out, and let real people crash into it, and once a few have crashed and died, I will watch the numbers and patch the guards back up. Said that way, do you still find it reasonable? And yet they are the same line. One of them is wearing a suit, and one of them is not. The one in the suit is spoken in the meeting room, and spoken with a clear brow. The one with no suit on is its true shape. This book never curses people. The one who speaks the handsome line is, most of the time, truly not a bad man. He truly believes he is speaking some truth about innovation. But he forgot to ask one thing. The material, who is it? So long as that error falls on a real person, and that person has not nodded, this trial cannot be run. And this has nothing to do with whether the thing is new, and nothing to do with whether it is innovation.
Someone will say, then by your telling, nothing may be tried at all, and is that not the end of all human progress? It is not. The ancestors, two thousand years and more ago, drew this line, and drew it clean. Try and err, yes. But you may not try with a human life. If a physician is not of three generations, do not take his medicine. Mark the measure in that line. It does not say the art of medicine may not advance. Of course it must advance, and every new medicine is a thing tried out. It says another thing. Before you use it on a real, living patient, you have first to have laid up enough of the art, to have tried it out enough in other places. And why so strict a thing upon the physician? Because what is in a physician's hand is a human life. And of a human life there is only the one. Err with it, and it cannot be filled back. You may patch a prescription. A life, you cannot patch. And the ancestors have a line still plainer. A human life is of the gravest weight, dearer than a thousand in gold. Sun Simiao, the king of medicine, wrote out prescriptions a whole life, and saved lives a whole life. And the name he gave his book was the Thousand Gold Prescriptions, one prescription worth a thousand in gold, because what it takes hold of is a life. Set the two lines together. It is not that you may not try. It is that the kind of trying that is done with a human life, that you may not do. You may try in the laboratory. You may try in a place where no one is harmed. You may try on people who are willing, and told clearly first. But you may not loosen the guard, and set it out before hundreds of millions who do not know, and use them as the lump of clay you smash for sport. Because clay smashed can be kneaded again. A person cannot.
By here, that line is already clear. It comes to one sentence. Try and err, yes, but you cannot take a real person who has not nodded, and make him the material of the error. Turn it into three concrete questions. Before you set a thing out, ask three. The first. This error you are about to try, if it errs, on whom does it fall? On yourself, or on a person who does not know? The second. That person, does he know he is being tried upon? Did he nod? The third. If it errs, the hurt that person takes, can it be repaired? Is it a small hurt that mends, or one that cannot mend, a life, a child's ten years, the last bit of a person's trust in the world? Ask these three down, and the line surfaces of itself. Falls on yourself, the other has nodded, and mends if it goes wrong, then try, and try freely, for this is the road of human progress. The other way round, falls on another, who does not know, and cannot be mended if it goes wrong, then this trial and error, however fine the suit it wears, is not allowed.
That closes the twenty second chapter. Pull it together. This chapter spoke of the ones who place it. The making is the innermost door, and the placing is the middle door. A good drug on the open shelf with no one asking still takes a life, and the duty of placing is to guard. The Book of Changes, the junzi thinks of the trouble and guards beforehand. Guard against what? Four things. Against a man using it to harm, the bottom line. Against its being placed where it cannot hold, where it should be a fire alarm, ringing and crying and handing the person over. Against its hollowing people out, where the emptied cannot be filled again. Against yourself, for the three guards all fight the money, and a notch loosened and the sky unfallen leads to another notch, and three years on they are empty, so tie them with a rope where you cannot reach. The Doctrine of the Mean, in all things prepared beforehand it stands. And give it room to try and to err, in plain speech, is loosen the guards and crash real people and patch after a few have died. Trial and error is good, but tried with what? A child's own knees, while it uses the person in the night, the old man, the child. The ancestors drew the line. A physician not of three generations, do not take his medicine. A human life is dearer than a thousand in gold. Not that you may not try, but that trying with an un-nodded real person, you may not. That is the twenty second stake this chapter drives. The duty of placing is to guard, and the four guards are every one a beforehand, and trial and error cannot take a real person who has not nodded as the material of the error.
So, three doors. The maker keeping his self-discipline, the placer setting his four guards. But both of these doors rest on the one hope. That he keeps them. And if he does not? If the potter, the very potter, sets the sand-mixed clay on the wheel? If the pharmacy, the very pharmacy, sets the killing drug out on the open shelf? There has to be a door, then, that does not rest on a man's own conscience, but rests on a sheet of paper, on a rule, and blocks the way, hard. That door is called governing. And by what does it block? By what may a thing be allowed to walk out in front of people at all? The next chapter speaks of the outermost door, and of a sheet of paper that was bought with blood. See you in the next chapter.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.