VOLUME III, SEMESTER 3, CHAPTER 35, SECTION 3
A man who moves to a strange land, the things he sees in the first year
The two sections before counted places we ourselves know well, our own pot, the lamp at our own door. This section changes the eyes. It follows a man who has just moved into a wholly strange society, and looks at what he sees, eyes wide open, in his first year. A man come to a strange place sees, on the contrary, the clearest. The things the natives have looked at till they no longer mark them, in his eyes, one by one, are all new.
One, the eyes of one newly arrived
A man born and grown in one place is used to the sight of all around him. Used to it, he no longer sees it. Like that street lamp of the last section, the native walks beneath it every day and never lifts his head. But a man just moved from elsewhere is not so. Everything is his first time to see it, his eyes are wide, are new. The things others are used to and let slip, in his eyes, every one is glaring, is fresh.
So to see clear the things hidden deepest in a society, sometimes a newcomer from another land sees clearer than a native who has lived there his whole life. This section borrows such newly arrived eyes, to look at the by need in a strange society. These things are all very ordinary, ordinary till the native holds them for nothing. But exactly because they are ordinary, they best show that distribution by need is no one society’s patent, it is laid in very many places of the human world, only we are used to the sight and know it not.
Two, the first thing he sees: a great room anyone may enter
The first thing this man from another land sees is a great room, full of books. Anyone may push the door and enter, sit down, read as he pleases, and it costs not a cent.
At first he dares not believe it. So many books, so good a place, to go in and read, costs no money. He had held that a good thing is always traded for money. But here it is not. This great room stands open to all: the moneyed, the moneyless, the native, the just arrived, the old, the child, anyone may enter, anyone may read. Only slowly did he come to see that such great rooms are everywhere in this city, raised by all putting money in together, kept for all to use for free. This is distribution by need. It goes by this: every man needs to read, needs to widen his sight, and asks not whether you can pay the fee. This man from another land, by just such a room that costs no money, read one book and another, and slowly stood his ground in a strange place.
Taste the heart of this man from another land. He comes from a place perhaps not rich, where a good thing was always to be traded for money. Yet here, someone spread so good a thing open for free, kept for one like him, just arrived, who had contributed nothing, a stranger, to take and use. That stir in his heart is exactly the thing we natives have long gone numb to, and can feel no more: that so solid a thing as distribution by need is truly laid in the days, laid for every man, a penniless man from another land among them.
Three, the second thing he sees: save the man first, speak of money after
The second thing this man from another land sees is one same thing with that emergency room of the last section. But this time, it is a thing he ran into with his own eyes.
A man beside him, also just arrived, took a sudden hard sickness at midnight, and was carried into the hospital. His heart pounded: we are just come, we have no money, no standing, what is to be done, will they push us out. But what he saw was, the hospital, without a second word, saved the man first. At that moment, no one asked money first, no one checked standing first. The life was held at the very front, all else set behind. This scene deepened by one layer the stir of the first thing he saw. So, at the instant a life hangs, this strange society too is first by need, and by account after.
Mark why this man from another land sees so clear, is so touched. Because he comes from outside, he has nothing as a matter of course. The native holds saving the man first as the way of heaven and earth, nothing to wonder at. But in his eyes, this is no matter of course, this is a marvelous thing, warm to the bone: a stranger with not half a tie to this place, who has contributed nothing, is dying, and here they will reach out and save him first. This is exactly that line of Laozi from the last section, no man is cast off, landed on one concrete man from another land.
Four, the thing he slowly came to understand
This man from another land, in his first year, so counted them down, one by one. The great room that costs no money, the emergency room that saves the man first, and the lamp that lit his road at night, the level roads under his feet, the school his children could attend for free. Looking to the end, in his heart he slowly came to understand a great thing.
He understood: those two words he had always held to be at fierce war, those two pictures glaring at each other, were not that way at all. When he came, his head too was packed with the two pictures of the last chapter, holding that this society was the pure, money only, by labor only kind. Yet what he saw with his own eyes in his first year was so many things that ask no money, go not by labor, are given for free by need, one by one, solid, laid under his feet.
Only then did he understand: this society he was to set his foot in was never the pure thing of one picture. Within it, the by labor and the by need, two rules, have all along been used together. By day he must earn his own rice money by labor, and by night, falling sick, could be saved by need. He owned nothing, yet could enter that great room that costs no money.
This is exactly the thing we have spoken from head to tail this term, borne out once, living, on a man from another land. There is no society that is pure by labor, and none that is pure by need. Every society worth the name uses the two rules at once. This man from another land, with his first year’s wide open eyes that see everything, saw this thing clear for us.
Five, within the four seas, all are brothers
To speak of this man from another land, caught in a strange place by so much by need that asks not the birth, call a line from the school of Confucius, to set this heart up. Within the four seas, all are brothers. So runs the line in the Analects.
Put it plain. Within the four seas, all are brothers, is to say the men of all under heaven can be as brothers. Set this line on that man from another land. That great room that costs no money, that bed that saved his companion first, on what ground willing so to treat a stranger not known. On this one thing: to take a stranger too as one of one’s own to reach a hand to, as a brother within the four seas.
This heart of all within the four seas being brothers is exactly the root by which distribution by need can be pushed to the furthest, to the stranger, to the man from another land. The last section, Mencius spoke of reaching it to the old of others, the young of others, pushing this heart from the near to the far. This line, all within the four seas are brothers, is the look of this heart pushed to the furthest, onto a stranger at the ends of the earth. Whether a society can reach out a hand even to a penniless man from another land, is seen in whether it has truly set this heart of all within the four seas being brothers up, truly laid it into the days. All that this man from another land saw in his first year, said to the bottom, is this one heart, turned, one by one, into solid things.
Six, what this section set, crossing to the next chapter
Good. This section borrowed the wide open eyes of a man who moved to a strange land in his first year, to look at the by need in a strange society.
Borrowing his newly arrived eyes that see everything, it counted several things the native has long grown used to and cannot see: a great room anyone may enter that costs no money, a bed that saves the man first and speaks of money after, and the lamp that lit his road, the roads under his feet, the free school. In his first year he so came to understand a great thing: those two pictures glaring at each other he brought in his head are not true, and the society he was to set his foot in has always used the two rules, by labor and by need, together. Through the line from the school of Confucius, all within the four seas are brothers, it set up this heart that can take a stranger too as one of one’s own.
The position this section set is: distribution by need is no one society’s patent, it is laid in very many places of the human world, and even a penniless man from another land can be caught by it, and we know it not only because we are used to the sight of our days.
This chapter counted the by need from a bowl of rice to a street lamp, to a strange land. But what we counted are still places one by one, things one by one. The next chapter changes the way of counting: not by place, but by relation. It counts from the relation of two men, to a house, to the neighbor, to an enterprise, to see how this by need grows up, layer by layer, in the relations between man and man.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.