VOLUME III, SEMESTER 1, CHAPTER 2, SECTION 2
Man Takes One More Bite and Must Give a Reason
The last section saw that the male lion on the grassland took one more bite, and added no reason to it. It just ate, and then the thing passed. This section walks up to the human, and watches the human, after taking one more bite, do a thing the animal never does. He opens his mouth and speaks. He says, it is only right.
What exactly does that added line add
Set the two lines side by side first, and compare them word by word.
The first line. I took more. The second line. It is only right that I take more.
The first line states a thing that has already happened. It is a report, and when it is said it is done, and it leaves nothing behind. The second is not like that. Inside the second there is a judgment hidden. This is right. This is as it should be. Next time it should be this way again.
Between what is and what should be there runs a very deep ditch. A thing happening does not mean the thing should happen. But the moment a person says the words it is only right, that ditch is filled in with one line. Taking more turns from a fact into a principle.
Why this step shakes heaven and earth
Because a fact does not grow on its own. A principle does.
A lion that ate more today does not thereby eat more tomorrow. Grow old, grow weak, and it is someone else’s turn to eat first. Every day’s order has to be won over again with force. That was the last section’s line.
But a principle is not like that. Once it is only right has been accepted, taking more is no longer a one time thing. This time it may take more, and next time as well, and the time after that as well. Why. Because this is principle, and principle does not tire, and principle does not age, and principle can be handed down to a son.
The one who takes more slowly becomes the family of the strong, becomes the head of the tribe, becomes the king. He does not have to be stronger than the rest every day. He only has to hold that one line of principle.
So the institution of enslavement does not begin at the moment some particular person has the irons locked on. It has already begun back when that one line, it is only right that I take more, was spoken out loud, and accepted.
This pasted-on layer is called wei
The ancestors gave this thing a name. Xunzi says, a man’s nature is bad, and what is good in him is wei.
The thing that matters most here is not the two words a bad nature. It is that one word wei. Take it apart. A person, and a doing. What is done by a person is wei. What a human hand makes is called wei.
Hear this without fail. Wei, in Xunzi, is not the wei of falseness, and does not mean to cheat. It is neutral. It only says that this thing is not something grown in on its own, it is something made by man.
Ritual is wei. Righteousness is wei. Writing is wei. The codes are wei. The whole of culture is wei. Xunzi is candid about it. There was none of this inside human nature to begin with, it was made by people, one generation after another. Made well, it comes out as ritual and righteousness, as civilization.
Across the whole book of Xunzi, the word wei appears forty four times, and only three of those carry the sense of falseness. The rest, all of them, mean what is made by man. So this word has been read crooked for two thousand years, and that is a vast injustice done to it. This volume means to set it back where it stands.
One hand, two kinds of work
Now comes the layer that matters most in this section. Listen slowly.
The same hand that can make ritual and righteousness and culture can turn around and argue the bare fact of the strong taking more into a thing that is only right.
This is the same hand. This is the same skill. A person can add a reason to a thing, and this skill, turned one way, grows ritual, righteousness, law, poetry, music. Turned the other way, it grows I am nobly born, you are basely born, and so it is only right that I take more.
This is why wei is double edged. It is the starting point of enslavement, and it is the starting point of ritual and culture. They are the same starting point.
So this volume does not curse wei. To curse wei is to curse the whole of civilization away. This volume does one thing only. It sees through wei. It sees clearly whether wei, in this moment, is making ritual, or making a chain.
Position was only ever a difference in the division of work
Go back to the division again.
The male eats first, the cubs eat after, and this is division, not high and low. The lion does not feel noble because it ate first, and the cub does not feel base because it ate after. They are only at different positions.
The wei of the human puts its hand in exactly here. Above the division of work, it pastes on a layer of high and low by main force. It says eating first into ought to eat first. It says taking more into only right to take more. It says the one who runs the affairs into the noble one. It says the one who cooks into the base one.
Think back to that house in the first section of the first chapter. The one who cooks and the one who keeps the accounts were two kinds of work, not two grades of person. It was wei that said two kinds of work into two grades of person.
Division of work is a fact. Noble and base is wei. Carve that one line into your heart.
Aristotle, wei’s great success
Wei’s most brilliant success happened on the shore of the Mediterranean.
Aristotle, in the Politics, gave the institution of enslavement a very famous argument, the natural slave argument. Some men, he says, are slaves by their birth. In their souls the part of reason that can rule is missing, and so they need to be ruled by others, just as the body needs to be ruled by the soul.
This passage carries enormous weight. It is the first time in the history of Western thought that the institution of enslavement was given, in a systematic way, an argument for why it was fitting.
Set it beside the male lion of the last section. The lion took more, and it said nothing. Here in Aristotle is the other end of the same act. After taking more, a reason is given, a reason that is philosophical, systematic, and written into the textbook. It is only right that I take more, because the slave is a slave by birth.
This volume holds Aristotle in the same respect. He set up logic, ethics, and politics each in turn, and that is a heavy merit. But this stroke is a major success for wei inside Western civilization. It made enslavement not merely a practice, but a body of learning. The finer wei is, the more thoroughly it is reasoned, the harder it is to recognize.
What this section set up, and the turn to the next
This section spoke one line only. It is only right.
Out of that one line, three things stand up.
The first. The line between human and animal does not run at tools, at fire, at language. It runs at wei. At adding a reason to taking more, after having taken more. Once a fact has turned into a principle, it can be handed down, it can grow into an institution. The first brick of the institution of enslavement is this one line.
The second. Wei is what is done by man, and neutral. Everything made by a human hand is called wei. Ritual and righteousness and culture are wei. High and low, noble and base, are wei too. One hand, two kinds of work.
The third. Position was only ever a difference in the division of work. Noble and base is the layer pasted on afterward.
Then a neutral word, its good or bad, hangs on what. On the hand. On where it comes down, on whom it comes down, and after it has come down, whether it lifts a person up or presses a person under.
The next section turns this word over and looks at both faces, one at a time.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.