VOLUME III, SEMESTER 4, CHAPTER 40, SECTION 3
Four Rules Measure Four Different Things
Last section took the queue apart. The four do not walk in a line; they run at once. But once taken apart, a more solid question follows. What lets them all stay? Two thousand years, and not one has been thrown out, not one has been swallowed by another; there must be a reason. If it were really the later taking the place of the earlier, two thousand years down there should be only one left. Yet count today’s account and the four are all there, not one short.
The reason is what this section tells. The four rules measure four different things. All four things are real, no one can stand in for another, so no one of the four rules can be pulled out. As they are laid, hold one line: here only positions are set, seats are not ranked.
One, four rules, four things
Lay the four rules out one at a time and see what each measures. The first rule measures what is put in. How much done, how much got. He who does more gets more, he who does less gets less. It handles the spur, it makes a person willing to put out strength, and gives the strength put out a saying. A wage sheet, a piece-count list, a year-end bonus, all are it. Piece-count, said plain, is a number speaking for the man who put out the strength. He need not boast, he need not beg another to stand for him, the number on the book speaks for him.
The second rule measures need. It does not ask how much you did; it asks what you lack. It handles the floor under the feet, it lets those who can put out no strength this month live all the same. The infant, the old, the one in hospital, the one out of work, the one just delivered of a child, all fall in its range. A health cover, a sum of birth leave, a schoolroom that takes no fee, a bowl of gruel handed out, all are it. The range of this rule is just those stretches in a life when a person can put out no strength: one stretch coming in, one stretch going out, and in the middle the stretches of sickness and hurt. No one dodges these stretches, so everyone has use for this rule.
The third rule measures risk. He who stakes the money carries the share that may be wholly lost. It handles the making, it lets the shop get raised, the machine get bought back, and a thing with no shadow yet get someone willing to put money down to try. The stake goes down and may not come back. When it does not come back, no other man carries it for him. That man who could not sleep at night last section, this rule is what measures him.
The fourth rule measures the forced hand. What it handles is no good thing, yet it truly measures too. An order, a contract, a debt, fencing a person at one position and forbidding him to move. This one is laid out not because it is good, but because it is real. Take it off the picture and the picture is a lie. And a lying picture guards no one.
Four things: what is put in, what is needed, risk, the forced hand. Four rules, four positions. Now swap their positions about and see what comes.
Two, take the wrong rule, and what comes
Take the wage sheet to measure a three-month baby. How much did he put in this month? Zero. Do how much, get how much, and by that he should get zero this month: zero mouthfuls of milk, zero stitches of clothing, zero inches of cloth. A person who cannot yet turn over, by this rule, is the lowest yield in the house, and the one most to be cut. Absurd? Absurd. But the absurd thing is not that rule; that rule is fine in the shop, fair enough. The absurd thing is taking it to measure a thing it cannot measure.
Turn it round, take the rule of need to measure those who put out strength. More done and less done come to the same, present and absent come to the same, the one early and late and the one who sleeps till the sun is high take the same number at month end. As said in the last section, inside three months the stock coming off drops. This too is not that rule gone bad; it is fine in the birthing room, fine in the sickroom. It goes bad taken to measure what is not its to handle.
Now take the rule of risk to measure the seeing of a doctor. He who is sick carries it himself, treats it if he can bear the cost, lets it go if he cannot. But sickness is no trade, and a life is no stake. A trade lost can be run again. A life lost has no next run. Use the wrong rule, and the cost this once is at once a person.
The fourth rule out of its position is the ugliest. It should be only guarded against, yet it gets taken to do the real work. The stock comes off slow, and instead of squaring the wages clean, the next order forbids a man to leave. The thing will not sell, and instead of making the thing well, a wall is laid so no other house may make it. The person still stands there, his hands still move, but his heart is no longer in it. Force set to prop the other three things is the least effort in the short run, the deepest wound to the root in the long. The little strength saved was taken out of a person’s heart.
So the old line fits best here: not in that position, do not plan its business. A rule has its position too. Each rule in its own position is a good rule. Step out of that position, and it becomes a bad rule. This layer, chapters forty-five and forty-nine will speak of on their own again.
Three, all four things are real, so no one rule can be pulled out
That strength put out must have a saying, this is real. That those who cannot put out strength must live, this is real. That a shop must have someone willing to stake the money to raise it, this too is real. And that there are always people in this world who would fence another with an order, a contract, this is real the same. All four things real, so all four rules must stay.
Try pulling one out. Pull out the one measuring what is put in: more done and less done come to the same, no one is willing to do more, and the thing grows scarce, and once the thing is scarce the other three rules have nothing left to measure. Pull out the one measuring need: the infant, the old, the sick, and that forty-year-old weaver whose cloth no one buys of a sudden, no one catches any of them. Pull out the one measuring risk: no one raises the shop, no one buys the machine, the making stops in place, and the other two rules have not even a thing to measure.
The fourth is not the same. It is not a question of pulling out or not; it is a question of watching or not. The law forbade its open face, so it changed a skin. Do not keep watch on it, and it grows out of the cracks. So to the first three the word is, cannot be pulled out. To the fourth the word is, cannot go unwatched. Hold this measure firm; it will be used many times yet.
Put together, it is that line at the head of this semester: short one, and there is no world, no system, no order. This line chapter fifty-one will speak through face on. This section sets only its root here: short one and there is no world, because those four things are all real, not because any one is specially good.
Four, this is not blending the four into one pot
To here, the easiest thing to breed is a mistake. Since all four are wanted, is it not best to take a little of each and knead them into one pot? Take capital’s yield, take labor’s fairness, take need’s warmth, and throw the slavery one away, and blend a flawless recipe.
No. The four are not four seasonings poured into one pot and stirred smooth. They are four things each whole, each keeping its own position. On that account last section, the wage sheet is still the wage sheet, the health cover still the health cover, the stake still the stake, not one thinned to a half, not one turned into another. They lie side by side, each doing its own work, each in sight of the other, each with a hold on the other.
The ancestors, speaking of harmony, often took taste for a likeness. Two thousand five hundred years ago Yanzi spoke a passage to the Lord of Qi. Harmony, he said, is like blending a broth. Water and fire, the vinegar and the paste, the salt and the plum, every one goes in, and only then have the fish and the meat their taste. Take water to blend water, and who will drink it. The five flavors blend and only then make a broth, yet once the broth is made the sour is still sour, the salt still salt, the sharp still sharp, and no one has turned into another. Stir the five flavors into one flavor, and that is no harmony, that is no flavor, a thing that has every taste and yet is no taste at all, and no one will take a second mouthful. What Confucius spoke is that the gentleman harmonizes and does not merely agree, not agrees and is out of harmony. Harmony is not rubbing out the different; it is letting the different each keep its position and be at peace.
This line is the weightiest line of this whole picture, and chapter fifty-one will close on it. This section nails only one thing: on down, wherever spoken of how the four fit and look after each other, it is all growing together, not blending.
Five, and no ranking of seats
The second mistake is ranking seats. Among the four rules, which is highest? This asking is asked in the wrong direction. The rule measuring what is put in and the rule measuring need are like the door and the window in one room. The door is no higher than the window, the window no higher than the door. They do two things: one lets people in and out, one lets the light in.
You cannot say the door matters more, for the window cannot walk people. You cannot say the window matters more, for the door lets no light through. For the room to house people, both must be there. Short one, and that room is no longer a room; it is a box.
The thing most to guard against is quietly lifting the rule of need to the highest, the last, the best. The third semester said it plain: from each what he is able is the cause, to each what he needs is the fruit. What is truly wanted is never one way of sharing; it is that the making is enough. A way of sharing answers how to share; it cannot answer whether there is anything to share. No rice in the pot, and the fairest ladle scoops out no rice. Lift it to the peak, and the picture tilts at once.
The other way round the same. Capital may not be called a needed evil, and slavery may not be called a born wickedness. The second semester took apart that mirror clean: walk up close and look, look down into what is under it, and what is seen is a position, not good or evil. Four rules, four positions, each measuring its own thing, each keeping its own bound, no high and low, and no before and after.
Six, what this section sets
What this section sets is this. The four rules measure four different things, so no one can stand in for another. What is put in, what is needed, risk, the forced hand. The first three are three straight matters this world must have someone handle. The fourth is one real matter someone must keep watch on. Three to be handled well, one to be guarded; these are the four positions this chapter sets.
Each of the four things has its own rule. A rule out of its position breeds trouble. Pull one rule out and a corner of the world falls in. This is no rule laid down by anyone; it is that those four things are each unlike the rest to begin with. This chapter walks to here, and the first layer of the picture stands: the four run at once, each measures its own thing, no one can stand in for another, no one is higher than another.
The next chapter walks a step nearer. It moves the lens from that shop to one person, to see how these four rules, in one person’s day, from light to dark, take turns measuring him once round. And there a thing more worth finding will be seen: what these four rules measure is very likely one and the same person.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Chapter 41: Four Elements Living Simultaneously in a Single Day of an Individual