VOLUME III, SEMESTER 3, CHAPTER 36
From two men, to the whole world
Start with a husband and wife on an ordinary day, each going out to earn, each carrying a share of the housework, each with a quiet scale in the heart of who does more. Then one of them falls sick. And the other does not say, you earned nothing this month, so I mind you the less. He takes the whole load over, keeps watch day and night, looks for not a cent back, and the scale that reckoned is put away, and on goes a rule that asks only whether you need. Hold that changing of the rule, because it is the smallest, tightest instance of the thing this chapter counts. The last chapter counted the by need by place, from a bowl of rice to a strange land. This chapter changes the way of counting, by relation, because the by need lives in the ties between man and man, and however large the tie, that large it can grow, from two men all the way to all under heaven.
Section one counts the two smallest rings, the couple and the house. A husband and wife wind the two rules together, the by labor in the ordinary and the by need at the moment one is most frail, and the guide joins back last term’s line that in one relation two men are slave and master to each other, to draw out the most needful point, that the healthy by need is two directioned and by turns, today I care for you because you need and another day you care for me because I need, and that once it becomes one end forever giving and one end forever taking with an easy heart the relation is sick and the by need has turned in taste, the first sprout of the trouble chapter thirty eight will look at. Then a house of three generations, where the things flow reverse to the by labor, from the middle generation that earns the most toward the old and small who earn least, leaning on the take from the too much and make up the not enough, that tenderness a house does willingly and never feels as sacrifice. The Book of Songs sets the fullness, make fit your house and home, gladden your wife and children, a house that leaves no one out because it uses the by need well, letting no one be shorted for a while being unable to put out labor.
Section two pushes out the house door, ring by ring. The neighbor, the first ring, a near neighbor beats a distant kin, the bowl handed over at a hard hour looking for no return, but thinner and more brittle than the house because it leans on the bond of living near and must be reared by the ordinary coming and going, so that a door shut on everyone finds the by need thin at the hard hour. The enterprise, a crowd of strangers gathered to do a thing, its trunk the by labor without which none does the work well, but on that trunk grow the leaves and boughs of the by need, the sum and the days off and the pooled share when an employee meets disaster, a good enterprise propping master and helper just right, a cold one chilling the heart and a by need only one collapsing. And the place, a countryside or town or city laying roads and raising bridges and opening schools and relieving hardship, leaning no longer on kin or acquaintance but on the public keeping rules the place’s men set up together, one water and soil rearing one kind of man, warm and rooting men where set up well and cold where not. Confucius sets the heart with his own stated aim, let the old be settled, the friend trust, the young be cherished, three rings of men each minded, still today the rule that weighs whether a society is warm. And the running thread of the section is that the further from blood kin, the more the by need must lean on man to set up rules and work it, for it will not grow there of itself.
Section three pushes to the largest rings. A state, running the take from the too much and make up the not enough among tens of millions who never met, your share making up an old man a thousand miles off and his some day making up onto you, marvelous and not easy because that heart does not grow of itself among strangers and holds wholly on carefully set rules, a safety net when upright and the most apt to break into disorder when wormed into, held for the next chapters. The globe, after a great disaster the hands of aid pouring in from every quarter across heavy seas from men with no tie at all, on the one ground that that too is a man in need, the by need at its furthest reach, all within the four seas are brothers in its most solid look. And charity, the giving that leans on not even a thread of relation or rule, a man giving his own things to one he will never know, looking for no return and not even letting the other know who gave, the purest and most naked degree of the by need with not even a shadow of you give me and I give you, the herald of the thing chapter thirty nine will name. Mencius closes the whole arc, treat my old as old and reach it to the old of others, and this time his next line too, all under heaven can be turned in the palm, the heart set out from a house’s smallest tenderness and pushed ring by ring until the whole world can be settled, which is exactly the road these two chapters walked.
Here is the method, and here is what you carry out. The method is to count a thing not by where it sits but by the relation that carries it, and to walk that relation outward ring by ring so the same rule is watched changing as the tie stretches. What you carry out is two things. First, a test for the health of any bond you are in, that the by need in it should run both ways by turns, and that a giving which only ever flows one way has already begun to sicken, a thing you can hold against a marriage, a friendship, a workplace, a welfare. Second, a true sense of the cost of distance, that the by need is warmest and surest among kin where it needs no rule, and that every ring further out, to the neighbor, the enterprise, the place, the state, the globe, buys more reach at the price of more fragility and more dependence on rules that men must set upright and keep from being wormed into. The chapter has pushed the by need from two men to the whole earth and shown it can reach that far, and the next chapter steps back to ask its other side, whether so warm a thing has a history of its own, and how it walked from the most ancient tribe to today.
SECTIONS
Section 1, Two in a marriage, and a house of three generations
Section 2, The neighbor, the enterprise, the place
Section 3, The state, the globe, and charity
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Section 1, Two in a marriage, and a house of three generations