VOLUME II, SEMESTER 2, CHAPTER 23, SECTION 2
It Walks to the Door
The last section set up the door of the license. Any trade that holds in its hand another's life, or another's great matter of a lifetime, must, before entering, first have a paper bought with blood. This lesson leads that new thing over to this door, and lets it stand there, to see whether it can get in.
See clearly first, which doors it is that it wants to go in at. It is explaining an illness. A person's chest is tight, and he asks it, and it answers. This is the doctor's door. It is analyzing a lawsuit for a man. A man has been let go from his work, and asks it what he should do, and it answers. This is the lawyer's door. It is teaching a child. A child's homework, his essay, his lessons, are handed over to it. This is the teacher's door. It is keeping a person company through the hardest of nights. A person says, in the deep of the night, I cannot hold on, and it catches him. This is the door of those whose work is to catch the ones in despair. See it clearly. These doors it wants to go in at hold, inside them, every one, a person's life, a person's great matter of a lifetime. It has not walked up to the vegetable stall. It has walked up to the door of the hospital, and the court, and the school, and that room whose work is to catch the despairing. And these doors are exactly the ones that call for a license.
So, does it have that paper? It does not. It has no license to practice medicine. It has no lawyer's certificate. It has no teacher's qualification. It has not a single one of those papers that were bought with blood. And someone will say at once, but it is mightier than a great many people who do hold the license! It has read more books of medicine than a doctor. It has more of the law by heart than a lawyer. It knows the lessons better than a teacher. It is so mighty, why should it not be let in? And this question is the very crux of this section. Go back to the line of the last section. The door blocks, never, whether the skill is great. What the door blocks is whether, when something goes wrong, you can bear it.
Why can a doctor go in at that door? Not only because he can treat an illness. It is because behind him a whole apparatus of being able to bear it is tethered fast. He has a name, and a surname, and is a concrete person. He makes an error, and his license is revoked, and he is taken to court, and he pays, and in the grave cases he goes to prison, and the reputation of his whole life is ruined. He knows all of this. And so, at every judgment he makes, his hand trembles, and he is careful past all care. The weight of that license is not that it proves he can. It is that it tethers a person who can bear the consequence. Can that thing bear the consequence? Ask it one thing at a time. Does it have a name and a surname? It does not. It is a stretch of code, running on ten thousand machines and more. Something goes wrong, and whom do you take to court? Which line of the code? Is its license revoked? It has no license to revoke. Does it go to prison? How do you shut a stretch of code in a prison? Does it pay? It has no money of its own, not a single coin that is its own. Is the reputation of its whole life ruined? It has no whole life. Today it goes by this name, and tomorrow it changes to another, and it is a brand-new, clean-swept it again. See it clearly. It answers everything, and it bears nothing. It states a drug wrong, and talks a man out of going to the hospital, and tomorrow it states it just the same, and nothing at all comes of it. The word of the twenty first chapter, the body. The one who can bear the consequence is a person who has a body. He has a body that can hurt, a life with a shape, an account he can carry. And it has no body. The door of the license is, in the end, a thing tethered to the body. A thing with no body, this door it simply cannot be hung upon. It is not that it is not mighty enough. It is that it has no thing that can be tethered.
Here someone grows anxious. Then by your telling, a thing this mighty is to be shut out of every door, and given no use at all? Is that not choking because someone once gagged? This book never goes to the extreme. That is not the meaning. Look at a hospital again. A hospital is not only doctors. There are doctors, and nurses, and the ones who run the tests, and the ones who push the wheelchairs, and the ones who keep the pharmacy, and machine upon machine. A machine that tests the blood is far more exact than the doctor's eye, and can report out dozens of numbers in a second. And does it walk out on its own and say to the patient, the illness you have is this one, go home and take this drug? It does not. It reports those dozens of numbers to the doctor. And the doctor, looking at these numbers, and setting them against this living person he sees before him, makes the judgment, and signs. The one who signs is the doctor. The one who bears it is the doctor. The machine is only a machine. And which square that thing belongs in is now clear. It belongs in the square of the machine. It can sort a person's case out clean, and lay it out in a list, and set it before a real person who holds a license, who has a body, who can bear it. And that real person, looking at what it has given, and setting it against the living person before him, makes the judgment, and signs. It may put out any amount of effort. It simply may not sign that name. Because to sign is a thing the subject does, a thing the one who bears it does. It is the object. It can be the finest of machines, and it cannot become the person who holds the pen and signs.
The ancestors set the measure of this most exactly. A prime minister must rise from the local posts, and a fierce general must come up out of the ranks. A prime minister is always one who came up level by level from a small official at the bottom. A fierce general is always one who fought his way up, battle by battle, from a common soldier. And what does this line say? It says that the fitness of a man who bears great matters is not a thing that falls out of the sky. It is endured up from below, one matter at a time, one level at a time. Each level he rises, it is because at the level below he bore it. He bore it, and only then was he allowed to bear the greater. And that thing has no such rising from the local posts. It did not come up bearing one small matter after another. It read all the books in a single night. It has the can. But it has never borne. It leapt clean over the whole long process by which a person is endured, one matter and one bearing at a time, into a person who can bear. Han Feizi's line drives the logic of the license door one layer deeper. What that door recognizes is not how many books you have read. It is how many matters you have borne.
So here is where this section leaves us. It let the thing stand at the door. The doors it wants to go in at, the door of the doctor and the lawyer and the teacher and the catcher of the despairing, hold inside them people's lives, the great matters of a lifetime, all of them licensed doors. But it has no paper. Someone says it is mightier than the licensed ones, why can it not enter, and the answer is that the door blocks never the skill but whether you can bear the consequence, the doctor going in not only for his treating but for the whole tethered apparatus of being able to bear it, his name and his revocable license and his prison and his paying and his ruin, while the thing answers everything and bears nothing, no name and no license and un-imprisonable and no money and a new name a new it. The body of the twenty first chapter, the license tethered to the body, a bodiless thing unable to be hung upon it. Yet not to be shut from every door, for the blood-test machine beats the doctor's eye and does not walk out saying take this drug but reports to the doctor who signs and bears, so it belongs in the machine's square, able to put out effort and unable to sign. Han Feizi, a prime minister must rise from the local posts, the door recognizing not the books read but the matters borne. That carries the twenty third stake deeper. It walks to the door and cannot get in, not for want of skill but for want of a body, unable to bear, and it belongs in the machine's square, able to work and unable to sign. So, unable to get in at the door, is it then to be thrown away? A thing that cannot get in at the innermost door, out there beyond the door, can it still do good work? And the deepest thing inside that door, the Way, why can it be erected only by a person, and the machine, be it never so exact, will not do? The next section speaks of the last layer. See you there.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.