VOLUME III, SEMESTER 3, CHAPTER 35, SECTION 2
A street lamp, an emergency room, a public school
The last section counted from a bowl of rice, and set the main line: the by need grows from the nearest place, from tenderness, pushed ring by ring outward. This section pushes out the house door, out onto the street. It looks at whether that by need, out the door of your own house, in a place where a stranger too gets the good of it, is still there. It counts three things: a street lamp, an emergency room, a public school.
One, a street lamp
First look at that street lamp at your door. The sky darkens, and it lights.
Think a moment, this one lamp, is it distribution by need, or distribution by labor. It shines on every man who passes beneath it. The man who paid tax, put out force, it shines on. The man just come to this city, not a cent of tax yet paid in, it shines on too. The man cast onto the street, with nothing to put out, it shines on all the same. It asks not how much labor you put out, asks not whether you deserve, checks not your standing. Whoever walks beneath it gets that light. This is the by need: you need light, it gives you light, and reckons no account with you.
A street lamp, that looks the most ordinary, has a deep reasoning under it. It has made a thing into the shape that anyone can use, and that your using does not keep another from using. You walking in the light does not hinder the man beside you from also walking in the light. Such a thing best suits the by need, best suits being given for free. In a city there are many such things: the lamps lit, the roads laid, the clean air, the shot against plague. They ask not how much labor you put out, they divide by one thing only: are you a person here, do you need. This whole stretch of things is distribution by need, laid on the ground of a city, in its middle air, laid so that you walk over it every day, yet never once lift your head to look at it.
Two, an emergency room
Now walk into an emergency room. Here the by need is set more needful, more moving, than the street lamp.
A man is carried in at midnight, close to gone. The front half of the term looked at this bed, this chapter looks at it straight on. The hospital saves the man first, and at that moment asks not whether he has money, has cover, what his standing is. Why. Because his most needful need at this instant is to live, is one breath. Before this need, the account must be set behind. This is distribution by need, at the instant a life hangs, pushed to the very front. A man is dying, and you cannot say, wait till he pays enough money, puts out enough labor, and then save him. A life cannot wait on that account.
Set this emergency room beside that chair factory of the front half. In the chair factory, four million is divided by labor, divided clear and clean, not one cent off. In the emergency room, that one bed is given by need, given without one word asked. These two, live at once in one city, in one same society. A man by day earns money by labor in the chair factory, and by night is carried into the emergency room and saved by need. In one day, both rules are used on him. This says once more the thing we have spoken from head to tail this term: the by labor and the by need are never two countries, two institutions, they are two rules one society uses at once, each minding its own matter, neither able to do without the other.
Three, a public school
The third thing, walk into a public school. Here the by need minds a longer thing: a child’s days to come.
A public school that takes no fee, its door stands open to all the children of this stretch. The child of a house with money can enter, and the child of a poor house can enter too. That child of chapter thirty one, who could not meet his three meals yet was bright all the same, here has a desk, a teacher, books. Is this distribution by need. It is. It goes by this: every child needs to be taught, needs a road he can walk upward by skill. It goes not by how much labor this child’s house put out, how much money it paid.
Join this school to that dark lock of the chance in chapter thirty one. We said then, the flow of labor truly leans on the chance, and that poor child’s share of labor was blocked dead by a lock that cannot be smashed. So what is smashing that dark lock for him. It is exactly such a public school, open by need. It sends the desk, the teacher, the books by need to that poor child, and makes up the chance for him.
See it, the by need the back half of the term speaks of, and the by labor the front half spoke of, here take hands: it is exactly the chance made up by distribution by need that lets that poor child’s labor flow again. To make up the by need is to make up where the by labor cannot flow. The two rules, at the door of this school, join into one thing.
Four, these three go further than a bowl of rice
Having counted the street lamp, the emergency room, the public school, see clear that they go a great step further than that bowl of rice of the last section.
That bowl of rice a mother left for her own child, is the by need between blood kin, the reach in one house. But these three are not so. The street lamp shines on strangers. The emergency room saves men not known. The public school takes the children of others. These three have already pushed that by need from one’s own kin, onto strangers. This is exactly what Mencius’s line of the last section said: treat my old as old, and reach it to the old of others. Reach it to the old of others, to the young of others, landed on the ground, is this lamp shining on strangers, this bed saving strangers, this school taking others’ children.
Mark, to push the by need onto strangers leans no more on the love of blood kin. You do not know the man beneath the lamp, you have no mother and child feeling for him. So on what does it lean. On a whole set of rules all set up together: all put a part of their things into one place, used to light this lamp, to raise this emergency room, to open this school. This is exactly the third working of chapter thirty two, public keeping.
Public keeping is what distribution by need leans on when pushed to this layer of the stranger. It goes far further than the house, than blood kin, and can care for thousands upon thousands of men unknown to one another. But exactly because it has left that natural tenderness of blood kin, and leans on cold rules, it is the more apt to go wrong, the more apt to be wormed into. This hidden trouble, chapter thirty eight goes on purpose to look at. Here we first set it down.
Five, the sage is ever good at saving men, so no man is cast off
To speak of this by need pushed onto strangers, with not one left out, call a line of Laozi, to set this heart at its highest. Laozi says: the sage is ever good at saving men, so no man is cast off. So runs the line in the Daodejing.
Put it plain. The sage is ever good at saving men, the man of the highest is ever good at helping men, at bringing men through. So no man is cast off, so with him there is not one man cast away, thrown off as useless. Set this line on that street lamp, that emergency room, that school.
The street lamp casts no man off, the most fallen man walking beneath it has his share of its light too. The emergency room casts no man off, the poorest man carried in has his life saved first. The public school casts no man off, the poorest child too is given a desk. These three words, no man is cast off, are the look of the heart when distribution by need is pushed to this layer of the stranger: not, because you are poor, are weak, put out no labor, are a stranger no one knows, to throw you down. Whether a society can reach no man is cast off is not seen in how high it lifts its strongest, it is seen in whether, to that weakest, most useless, most easily cast off man, it still reaches out a hand. This line of Laozi is the highest, warmest place this rule of distribution by need can reach.
Six, what this section set, crossing to the next
Good. This section pushed out the house door, and counted three things.
A street lamp, shining on every man who passes beneath, asking not the standing, whoever needs gets the light. An emergency room, at the instant a life hangs, saving the man first and reckoning the account after, pushing the by need to the very front. A public school, opening its door to all children, making up the chance for that poor child, letting his share of labor flow again. These three go further than a bowl of rice, pushing the by need from blood kin onto strangers, leaning on the rules of public keeping set up by all together. Through Laozi, ever good at saving men, no man is cast off, it set that heart of leaving not one man out at its highest.
The position this section set is: distribution by need can be pushed out the house door, onto strangers, leaning on the rules of public keeping, and its highest place is no man is cast off.
So, these two sections spoke of places we ourselves know well, our own pot, the lamp at our own door. But change the place. Come to a wholly strange, another man’s society, is that by need still there. A man who moves to a strange land, in his first year, eyes wide open, what will he see. The next section follows such a man, into a strange society, to look at the by need there.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Section 3, A man who moves to a strange land, the things he sees in the first year