VOLUME III, SEMESTER 1, CHAPTER 4, SECTION 2
The Scholar, That Exception, Has a Holding Under Him Too
The end of the last section already lifted one corner of Mencius’s exception. The scholar looks unbound by matter, but he has a holding laid under him too. This section lifts the whole corner. Because this exception is the one spot in the volume most easily taken up and used crooked, and the one spot wei most loves to hide in.
First, set out the pull of this exception
A man who can keep a steady heart with no steady holding, only the scholar can do that.
Put yourself in the reading of it, and feel how gratifying the line is.
A man of letters reads to here, and a dignity rises in him. I am not like them. They need a holding to have a heart. I do not. I am poor, and I hold. My heart is not tied to a rice sack.
That dignity has fed countless men for two thousand years. It grew into one word, pure. Pure and lofty, pure and poor, the pure stream. It became the brightest garment a man of letters wore.
Mark this. The garment itself is not bad. For a person to keep, in a hard place, the thing he should not drop, is a real and rare thing. This volume does not cheapen that honor. But under this garment there is something that has to be lifted and looked at.
He does not go without matter, he depends on another kind of matter
Why can the scholar keep off the ground.
Because someone else is on the ground for him. The rice he eats, a farmer grew. The clothes he wears, a weaver wove. In the years he sat over books, the family had fields drawing rent, or the clan put up the money, or the court gave a stipend, or the academy fed him. He holds no hoe in his hand, but behind him stands a whole apparatus of keep.
So the scholar’s feet are not off the ground. His feet stand on a board that others laid under him.
This board has one trait. It is not called a holding. It is called rank, called stipend, called the master’s line, called the family learning, called cultivation. Change the name, and the board goes invisible. And an invisible board is the easiest thing to mistake yourself as standing free of.
Set this layer against the master who could not cook, from the first chapter of this semester. That master had the free hours to go and talk philosophy in town because his granaries were full. The scholar has the free hours to keep his honor because his granaries, too, are full. Only these granaries are stored in someone else’s storehouse.
The histories have checked this thing already
This is not a spiteful line, it is a rule checked over and over. When a dynasty comes down, the stipend cut, the base seized, the men of letters drift and scatter with it. Selling brushwork, selling paintings, lodging under other roofs, throwing themselves on kin, changing which door they serve. The ones who can grit their teeth and keep their honor are always the few. Most of them, too, must first see to staying alive.
This is not to say the man of letters is less than others. It is to say that even the man of letters stands on the same ground of matter, and no one’s feet hang in the air.
A man declaring, while his board is still under him, that he needs no board, that declaration does not count. It counts only after the board is truly pulled out. And when the board is truly pulled out, most people’s answer is the same as the farmer’s.
This exception is the easiest thing to turn into wei
Now the layer that matters most in this section. Listen slowly.
Once that exception is read crooked, it becomes an exceedingly handy tool.
It can be used this way. Look, the scholar had no steady holding and held all the same. So the one who cannot hold his heart, it is his own character that will not do, and you cannot blame the lack of a holding.
That one line turns the whole arrow around. Mencius said the holding decides the heart. This line says the heart decides a person’s grade. Mencius asked the ruler to go look at the board. This line sends the ruler off to look at the person’s character.
And so poor turns from a matter of position into a matter of character. And so the farmer who robbed for grain is not a man whose ground went out from under him, he is a man base by birth. And so there is no need to mend that board any longer. There is only the need to teach, to admonish, to hold up a few martyrs who starved rather than rob, and carve their names on the arches.
Recognize this move. It is wei. It does the same old thing it always does. On a division of work, it pastes a layer of high and low. It says the scholar high-born by nature, says the common man low-born by nature, and then that board that was pulled out, no one raises it again.
Mencius himself never meant this. The moment he finishes the exception, he turns and demands the ruler provide the people a holding. He marks the exception to get the words exact, not to hand anyone a crown.
Restore the exception to a position
Then what is the right reading of this exception.
It does not say the scholar is a noble kind of person. It says this. How tightly a person is decided by matter differs, and the tightness turns on what position he stands in.
The scholar stands at a position a little further from hunger, with a stipend between, a clan between, a layer of cultural cushion between. The farmer stands at a position pressed right against hunger, with nothing between. So the one same drought, and the farmer reaches his end in three days while the scholar can hold out a while.
This is a difference of position, not a difference of character.
Carve this layer in, for it is the bone of the volume. To read a difference of position as a difference of character is wei’s most used move. It is still in use today. A man cannot repay his loan, and it is said he lacks discipline. A man works late into the night, and it is said he lacks drive. A child tests badly, and it is said he did not try. In every one of those lines, the board that was pulled out from under him, no one goes to look at.
But honor is still a thing worth having
Said to here, the other end has to be steadied, or it slides to the far side.
To point out that the scholar has a holding under him too is not to tear honor down. Just the reverse.
A man who knows full well that another’s board is laid under him, and still, in a hard place, is willing to hold the things he should not drop, this is the truly rare thing. His rareness is not that he floats in the air. It is that he knows he does not float, and stands anyway.
What Mencius speaks of later, the nourishing of a vast flowing spirit, that riches and honor cannot loosen a man, poverty and low station cannot shift him, force and might cannot bend him, that is exactly this kind of person. This volume holds them in respect.
Only put the order right. First own the board, then speak of holding. First see clearly what position you stand in, then speak of the backbone that position calls for. To not own the board and speak only of backbone, that is not backbone. That is wei.
What this section set up, and the turn to the next
This section turned Mencius’s exception upside down.
The first. The scholar does not go without matter, he depends on another kind of matter. His board has a different name, stipend, family learning, cultivation. Change the name and it goes invisible.
The second. Once this exception is read crooked, it becomes wei’s handiest tool. It turns the arrow around, turns poor from a matter of position into a matter of character, and then the board that was pulled out, no one mends it. This move is still in use today, several times a day.
The third. The position that matter comes first has, in truth, no exception. The scholar does not escape it either. He is only kept in a different way from the farmer at his plow.
Then where does Mencius mean this whole long passage to land in the end. On the ruler. He asks the ruler not to manage the people’s hearts but to guard the people’s holdings first. The prescription he writes runs down to the homestead of five mu, the field of a hundred mu, what to plant, how much tax to take.
The next section is about providing the people a holding.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
SECTION 3. Provide the People a Holding, Settle Matter First and Then Speak of Teaching