VOLUME III, SEMESTER 3, CHAPTER 38, SECTION 3
Let the want not be exhausted by the things, the check and balance is a must
The last section looked at the four looks of the by need used badly. This section asks: since it is so easily gone bad, then that check and balance that bars it from going bad, what in the end is it, whence does it come. Is it a bond of restraint hard added from outside. Or a thing it ought by nature to have grown within it. This section calls Xunzi, and in one line he sets the root of this check and balance down to the deepest place.
One, that line of Xunzi, first call it up
Xunzi, in the Discourse on Rites, speaks of how the rites came to be. He speaks a most needful passage, call it up first, and put it plain one word at a time. Let the want not be exhausted by the things, let the things not be bent by the want, the two holding each other and growing. So runs the line in the Xunzi, the Discourse on Rites.
Put it plain. Let the want not be exhausted by the things, let the want of man not, for the things being not enough, be pent and left empty. Exhausted is used up, drained dry. Let the things not be bent by the want, let the things too not, by the bottomless want, be at one stroke used up, wrung dry. Bent is spent, gone into deficit. The two holding each other and growing, let the want and the things, these two ends, hold each other in check, prop each other, and together be nourished, together walk forward. These three lines of Xunzi speak a thing most fine: the want and the things, man’s wanting and the things there truly are, these two ends, must pull the other, and neither may press the other flat.
Two, this line is exactly the root of the two words check and balance
Set this line of Xunzi against the four misuses of the last section. You will find Xunzi, more than two thousand years ago, set the root of that check and balance down.
Those four bad ways of the last section, where do they go bad. They go bad in one end grown big alone, go bad in no pull. Need enlarged without bound is the want end grown big alone, using the things up, this is exactly what Xunzi calls the things bent by the want. The big shared pot is drawing out the by labor end, letting the getting without labor end grow big alone, also losing its pull. That line of Xunzi, the two holding each other and growing, speaks exactly the root of the check and balance: no one end may grow big alone, each must have the other pulling it. The want must have the things pulling it, the things must have the want pushing them. The by need must have the by labor pulling it, the by labor must have the by need holding it. Neither may let go the other and rush forward alone. Once one lets go, the end that rushes presses the other flat, and at the last both ends are hurt.
This lands the two words check and balance, from a hollow reasoning, onto the root. The check and balance is not someone outside hard managing you, barring you. The check and balance is an inner frame this thing by nature ought to have: it is of itself two ends pulling each other, and one end grown big alone, it of itself falls apart. Xunzi, with four words, the two holding each other and growing, saw this frame clean and clear. A good distribution, a good society, has never leaned on some one rule rushing to the end, it leans on two rules, two forces, pulling each other, holding each other in check, and only so can they hold each other and grow, walk forward together, walk long.
Three, this check and balance is a thing it itself must have to go on living
Here dig the deepest layer: this check and balance is not a shackle we add onto the by need from outside, it is a thing it itself, to go on living, cannot do without.
Think, a by need with no check and balance, what would come of it. The last section saw it: need enlarged without bound, the things used up. The big shared pot drawing out the spur, man lulled to waste. A by need with no check and balance, at the last cannot even itself live, it will eat down together that root of capacity that holds it up. It is like a vine grown wild, growing wild with not a bit of restraint, at the last winding dead, pressing down, the tree that holds it up, and the tree dead, the vine dies with it. So that check and balance, that rule of the by labor, that bound of the true need, is not to limit the by need, to work against the by need. It is exactly to guard the life of the by need. It bars the by need from bursting itself, from eating its root down, so that the by need can, long and long, go on living.
This layer is greatly needful. It turns this matter of the check and balance, from a thing of last resort, a thing that spoils the mood, into a thing of protection, of fulfilling. We set a bound for the by need, add a check and balance, not because we do not trust it, would guard against it, but exactly because we cherish it, would keep it. It is as when you love a child, you do not let him have whatever he wants and spoil him, you set him rules, because you would have him grow up well, long and long be well. To set a check and balance for the by need is this same heart. The check and balance is the deepest kind of care for the by need.
Four, back too to that order: the check and balance guards that cause
Set this check and balance once more on the ground floor of this term, and you will see, what it guards is exactly that order of chapter thirty four.
Chapter thirty four set up: from each what he is able is the cause, to each what he needs is the fruit, capacity first, distribution after. That check and balance guards what. It guards exactly that cause, from each what he is able, guards exactly that root, capacity. The rule of the by labor presses man to put out what he is able, to make capacity full, and this guards the cause. The bound of the true need bars man from using the things up, and this guards the root. With this check and balance, that cause is not drawn out, that root is not eaten down, and this fruit of distribution by need can, crop on crop, long and long, go on being borne.
So see, the check and balance, the order, the two rules, said to the last, are the several faces of one same matter. The order says the cause and fruit cannot be turned upside down, the two rules say the by labor and by need cannot lack one, the check and balance says the two ends must hold each other and grow. Put together, they speak one reasoning: distribution by need is the warmest thing in the human world, and exactly the warmer such a thing, the more it must be fitted a firm frame, so that it is not, for being too warm, too good, too moving, used badly by men, burst by men. This frame is the check and balance.
Five, what this chapter set, crossing to the next
Good. Chapter thirty eight walks to here, and this layer can be said firm.
This chapter spoke of the bound and check of the by need. Section one took apart that wei question of the wholly single communism, and saw clear it quietly supposes man has no private heart, but Xunzi says man is born liking gain, so of the two rules cannot lack one. Section two walked near the four looks of the by need used badly: the big shared pot with no spur, need enlarged without bound, privilege turned strange, the politicized painted cake, all of them spoiling that scale that ought to be level. Section three called Xunzi, let the want not be exhausted by the things, the two holding each other and growing, and set the root of the check and balance to the deepest: the check and balance is no shackle added from outside, it is a frame the by need itself, to go on living, cannot do without, the deepest kind of care for the by need, and what it guards is exactly that cause of capacity, that root.
What this chapter set firm is: the wholly single by need is a wei question, because man has a private heart, and the by need must have a check and balance, and this check is no restraint added from outside, it is an inner frame it itself, to go on living long, cannot do without, leaning on the two rules holding each other and growing.
This term, walked to here, its two halves front and back are both complete: the front half spoke the by labor, the back half spoke the by need, and set it a bound, fitted it a check. But there is still a last, and deepest, step. This term, we spoke of so many institutions, rules, workings, checks, all of them dead things. But at the close of the front half we set up one line: what makes labor come alive is the man. So what makes the by need truly come alive, in turn, is what. Is the basis of carrying all this out the workings, or something else. The next chapter is the last chapter of this term, and we go all the way, dig to that deepest, most root layer.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.