VOLUME III, SEMESTER 1, CHAPTER 7, SECTION 2

VOLUME III, SEMESTER 1, CHAPTER 7, SECTION 2

The Great Way in Its Walking, All Under Heaven Held in Common

The last section saw that mankind set out from a floor of sharing. Does the human remember this. He does. Confucius wrote the look of that age into a passage, a hundred-odd characters. This section reads it through, line by line. In this passage is buried the most important law of the whole volume.

First, set the passage out

In the Book of Rites there is a piece called the Turning of Ritual, and at its opening Confucius says this. When the great Way was in its walking, all under heaven was held in common. They chose the worthy and raised the able, they kept faith and cultivated concord. So people did not treat only their own parents as parents, did not treat only their own children as children. They saw to it that the old had their ending, the strong had their use, the young had their growing, and the widowed, the orphaned, the alone, the crippled and the sick all had their keep. Goods they hated to see thrown to waste on the ground, and did not need to hoard for themselves. Strength they hated not to put out from their own bodies, and did not need to spend for themselves. This is called the Great Togetherness.

Mark the first four words. The great Way in its walking. In its walking means it once went, once was a road that worked. Confucius uses the past voice. He is not painting a pie, he is chasing a memory. Now take the lines below apart, one at a time.

All under heaven held in common, this line weighs most

Common means the public, means every person under heaven. All under heaven held in common means the things of this world belong to no one particular person, and to no one family.

Mark how clean the word common is here. Later people swapped this common for the office, for the state, for some one house and one surname. That is a straying. Confucius’s common here is not a government office, not a court. It is every particular, living person under heaven.

This volume has a root law. What is not earned by labor belongs to the public. That public, its source is in this line. Not the government. The people, every particular living person.

Not only their own parents, not only their own children

These two lines say the object of care is not bound to one’s own blood. Not to love only one’s own kin, not to raise only one’s own children.

Set this back in the wolf den from the last section. A grown wolf will heave up its meal to feed any cub, not only the one born of it. The vampire bat feeds a starving companion back, even one it shares not a drop of kinship with. Confucius’s two lines are the human version of that scene.

Look at the next stretch. The old have their ending, the strong have their use, the young have their growing, the widowed and orphaned and alone and crippled and sick all have their keep. See that list clearly. The old, the young, the orphan, the widow, the sick, the crippled.

The people on this list have one thing in common. They cannot work. By distribution according to labor, they get not one share. But Confucius says they must all have their place. This is distribution by need. This one line, the very thing the third semester of this volume will speak of, was already written here, two thousand five hundred years ago.

The two lines that matter most, goods and strength

The deepest of this passage is its last two lines.

Goods they hated to see thrown to waste on the ground, and did not need to hoard for themselves. A thing lying wasted on the ground is hateful, and yet to lock it into one’s own chest is not needed either. Not wasted, and not swallowed alone. This is the most exact line ever drawn of distribution by need.

Strength they hated not to put out from their own bodies, and did not need to spend for themselves. To have strength and not put it out is hateful, and yet once put out, it need not be for oneself alone.

Hold this last line in mind a while. It answers a very old question. Why does a person labor. Confucius’s answer is, labor is itself the way of taking part in the keeping alive of the group. It does not first need to ask, what do I get from it.

Now, a thing that cannot be explained

Said to here, close the book a moment and turn a question over.

How did Yu the Great arrive at the notion of turning the channel.

His father Gun fought the flood by damming. Dammed it nine years, could not stop it, and lost his own life in it. By Yu the Great it changed. He did not dam, he led. He opened the channels and let the water go its own way.

Now ask, where did this notion come from. How many generations before him watched the water rise and knew only to dam. Why, exactly at him, did the mind turn a corner. Li Bing, at the Dujiangyan, set the fish-mouth that splits the water at exactly that spot. Why exactly that spot. Off by three yards and the whole work is ruined. By what did he know.

You cannot trace it out. He himself might not be able to say it clearly.

A person made a thing, and the person himself cannot explain where his own notion came from. Then a thing that cannot be explained, what does the person do. The person fits it a source. Handed down by heaven. Sent in a dream. The chart from the river, the writing from the Luo. In the legend of Yu taming the flood, a divine being hands him a scroll, the river god offers a chart.

Recognize it. This source, too, is wei. It is that layer made by man. It is the same hand, the same skill, as that line it is only right from the second chapter of this semester. A person gives a thing a reason. Only this time the person does not use the skill to paste on high and low. This time the person uses it to settle a merit he cannot carry.

Then whose is the harvest of Dujiangyan

Now bring this thing back to the economy. This step is the vital point of the section.

Dujiangyan watered the fields for two thousand three hundred years. In two thousand three hundred years, every grain that grew on the Chengdu plain passed once through the water below that weir.

Now ask, that harvest of two thousand three hundred years, whose earned-by-labor is it. Li Bing died long ago. He never tilled one mu of field. His sons and grandsons cannot take that weir and collect rent on it.

The fruit that notion bore belongs to no one person’s labor at all. It is what is not earned by labor. And so that law comes down to the ground. What is not earned by labor belongs to the public.

The ancestors gave that notion to heaven, gave it to the gods, and this is not superstition. It is that in their hearts they understood. This merit, no one person can carry, and no one person deserves to swallow alone. Given to the gods, put into plain speech, is given to the public. Is given to no private person. Dujiangyan is not for Li Bing’s descendants to collect rent on. It belongs to all under heaven.

All under heaven held in common, the hardest example of those four characters, sits on the Chengdu plain, and has sat there two thousand three hundred years.

What this section set up, and the turn to the next

This section read those hundred-odd characters of the Turning of Ritual through.

The first. All under heaven held in common. This common is the public, every particular living person. Not the office, not the state, not some one house and one surname. The volume’s law, what is not earned by labor belongs to the public, has its source here.

The second. The old have their ending, the young have their growing, the widowed and orphaned and alone and crippled and sick all have their keep. The people on this list cannot work. By labor they get not one share. Confucius says they must all have their place. This is distribution by need, written in the book two thousand five hundred years ago.

The third, and the deepest. That notion, the person cannot explain. Unable to explain it, the person gives it to heaven, gives it to the gods. This giving back is itself wei, but this time the wei does a very clean thing. It owns that there is a merit no one can carry and no one deserves to swallow alone.

So every page of this book, at its foot, does the same one thing. The share whose source cannot be told, give it out. The share a person did, own it. Credit to the ancestors. The mistakes, to the one who takes up the telling.

Then besides Confucius, who else remembers that age. Laozi remembers, Zhuangzi remembers, Mencius remembers too. Each left a picture. Four pictures set side by side is a thing that shakes a person.

The next section is about, a small state with few people, the age of the fullest virtue.

Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.

SECTION 3. A Small State With Few People, the Age of the Fullest Virtue, That Shared Memory