VOLUME III, SEMESTER 1, CHAPTER 5, SECTION 1
All the World Comes Crowding, and All of It for Gain
The last two chapters, Guanzi and Mencius, spoke of one thing. Settle people first. But once a person is settled, where does he go. Why does he run for the market before the sky is light, why does he want to earn a little more, why does he always want to climb one layer higher. This chapter brings Sima Qian on. With a pair of very cold eyes, he looked this thing all the way through.
First, see how he wrote his chapter
Sima Qian, in the Records of the Grand Historian, set aside a whole chapter of its own, called the Accounts of the Money-Makers. To make money, that is what the two words mean.
Mark first what he does not do. He does not put up an abstract theory, does not set a formula, does not hand down a definition good for all the world. He beds every observation inside one particular person, one particular deed, and lets the general rules float up on their own out of a mass of real cases. He does not tell the reader what the conclusion is. He lays the goods out and lets the reader see the trick of it for himself.
He writes Fan Li. A man of merit in the state of Yue, who helped Goujian succeed and then, with no love for power or place, turned and went into trade, built a fortune of a thousand gold three times over, and three times scattered it to the poor and to his distant kin, so that the world called him the Lord of Tao. He writes Zigong, one of the ablest of Confucius’s followers, who did his learning with one hand and his trade with the other, rich enough to stand as an equal before the lords of the states, and Sima Qian adds a line, that the name of Confucius could spread through the world in no small part because Zigong’s money cleared the road for it. He writes Bai Gui, who made a craft of trade, who held to the rule take what others throw away, give what others rush to grab, buying when the rest were dumping, selling when the rest were snatching.
Sima Qian pastes no label on these men, does not judge them noble or grasping. He only lays out one living story of money-making after another, and that rule of gain stands up on its own, out of the men themselves.
This is not laziness. It is his method, and it is his position. Lay out the facts, let the rule show itself, do not rush to hand down a verdict for the reader. This move runs with the very thing this book itself sets out to do.
The two lines that open it
The Accounts of the Money-Makers opens, and Sima Qian throws down two lines. All the world comes crowding, and all of it for gain. All the world goes streaming, and all of it for gain.
Crowding, the look of a swarming, jostling press. Streaming, the look of a churning, coming and going. The world comes in a hubbub, and it is for one word, gain. It goes in a hubbub, and that too is for the one word, gain.
Set those sixteen characters back into a concrete picture. The sky is not yet light, and already there are people setting up stalls in the market. Carriers with poles, drivers of carts, men with sacks on their backs, hagglers, one pressed against the next. Why do they rise so early, why do they crush in here. For gain.
Now pull the lens back. In the court, an official contends for a place. On the frontier, a general contends for a war record. In the academy, a student contends for a degree. For what. For gain too, only that gain has changed its name.
The fiercest thing about these two lines is this. They cut through every rank. From kings and lords and generals and ministers at the top, to peddlers and foot-servants at the bottom, no one can stand outside them.
Three things Sima Qian says in these two lines
Take the two lines apart, and three layers are stacked inside.
The first layer. Human activity has a rule that shows up over and over, and the core of that rule is one word, gain. The second layer. This rule cuts through every social rank, and no one escapes it. The third layer. This is not a hypothesis, not a proposition waiting to be argued.
The third layer matters most. Sima Qian is not putting this up for discussion with you. He takes it as ground. He first owns that people are simply this way, and then goes on to speak of how to treat people who are this way.
That order he sets in stone from the start. Hold on to it. First own what a person is, then speak of what to do. Not first lay down what a person ought to be, and then blame the person for not being that.
Where these eyes are cold
The most remarkable thing in this stroke of Sima Qian’s is that he does not curse people.
Think a moment. Speak of everyone chasing gain, and what is many a person’s first reaction. A shake of the head, a sigh, four words. The times are sinking. Hearts are not what they were. How did people all turn so greedy.
Sima Qian says not one line of this. He only sets the fact of people chasing gain down there, the way you set down a stone, the way you note a fall of rain.
Mark this cold. This cold is the same cold as Guanzi’s line, poor and the state is hard to govern. Where the ancestors show the most skill is always here. They do not urge you to be a good man. They first get a true fix on what a person actually is.
Because if you curse him first, you can no longer see him. After the cursing, all that is left is the one word greedy, and the living man is gone. You do not know why he is in such a hurry, do not know who at home is waiting to be fed, do not know what is pressing on him underneath.
Sima Qian does not curse, and so he can see.
Nineteen centuries later, a Scotsman said the same thing
This position of Sima Qian’s, that takes gain for a starting point, set forward almost nineteen centuries, runs into Adam Smith.
Smith, in the Wealth of Nations, has a proposal built in the very same shape. The meat and the ale and the bread on the supper table, he says, are there not because the butcher and the brewer and the baker are kind-hearted, but because each of them is minding his own gain.
Set the two together and read them. All the world comes crowding, and all of it for gain. The meat at supper comes from the butcher’s self-interest. Both men take self-interest for the starting point of understanding large-scale economic behavior.
The difference must be said clearly too. Sima Qian gives an observation drawn out of history. Smith builds a whole systematic theory of how a market coordinates itself. One is a historian’s eye, the other a scholar’s frame. That labor of wringing observation into a framework is the solid professional work of Smith’s trade, and it goes honestly onto his account.
One position, two men each feeling out a corner. This is a difference in the division of work, not a difference of higher and lower.
The root position this section is out to set
Now the layer that matters most in this chapter. Listen slowly.
This book has set down one line. Capital is not evil, it is instinct and it is duty. To seek gain is as right as heaven and earth, like water running downhill, like fire climbing up.
The ancestral source of that line is right here in Sima Qian.
To seek gain is not a falling. To seek gain is a common human feeling, an instinct that comes without learning. To curse the seeking of gain as greed, as evil, is a cap that later people clapped on top of it. In those cold eyes of Sima Qian’s there is no such cap at all.
Hear this next line clearly, for it is easily mistaken. To say that seeking gain is instinct is not to say that any way of seeking gain is right. Water running downhill is instinct, and water rising to drown a village still has to be managed. What is managed is the water, not a scolding of the water for running downhill.
Gain is the same. The seeking of gain is in itself neither right nor wrong, it is simply that kind of thing. What there is to look at is this. This time the gain was sought, and it came down on the person at the very bottom. Did it lift him up, or press him down.
The responsibility is in the hand that works it, not in the water.
What this section set up, and the turn to the next
This section brought Sima Qian out, and set up three things.
The first. All the world comes crowding, and all of it for gain. This rule cuts through every rank, and no one stands outside it. This is not a proposition, it is ground. First own what a person is, then speak of what to do.
The second. Those eyes are cold, and it is precisely because they are cold that they can see the person. Curse a man as greedy and the living man is gone.
The third, and it is a root of the volume. To seek gain is instinct, not evil. Capital is only a tool, the responsibility in the operator. The source of that law is in the Accounts of the Money-Makers, two thousand years ago.
Then why is it that a person simply wants to be rich. Does the thing need a reason. Sima Qian’s next line runs only a dozen or so characters, and it seals the question off. He says, this thing needs no learning, everyone wants it.
The next section is about, to be rich is human temperament.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
SECTION 2. To Be Rich Is Human Temperament, Wanted Without Learning