VOLUME III, SEMESTER 4, CHAPTER 42, SECTION 1
Infant and Old One: The Two Stretches That Do Not Ask What Is Put In
Last chapter looked at a day, from light to dark, four things hung at once on one person. This chapter draws the rule out longer. Not a day, a life. From the day he comes into the world to the day he goes. Drawn out long, a thing comes into view that a day cannot show: these four rules do not measure evenly from start to end; they keep the house by turns, a stretch at a time. Some decades fall to this one, some decades to that one, and there are a few gaps no one looked for, dropped in of a sudden, that other hands must catch. This section looks first at the two ends, at the first stretch of a life and the last.
One, the first three years, his yield is zero
An infant comes into the world, what did he do in the first three years? Said out, only a few things, and every one makes nothing. Eat, sleep, cry, soil himself, laugh, learn to turn over, to sit up, to walk two steps holding the table. By any rule that measures yield, what he made in these three years is zero, not one thing. He not only makes nothing; he takes up nearly all the time and mind of one or two grown people.
Yet what he consumes is not one bit short. The milk powder, the diapers, the clothing, the vaccines, the three midnight runs to the clinic, the three months the mother could not work, the leave the father took. Reckoned sum by sum, it is the heaviest outlay of this house across a few years, and the outlay with the least promise of return. By the way of a trade, this is a sum no one would put in.
Yet no one reckons this account with him. No mother, on the day the child walks, sets three years of bills before him. The one proof handed over is this: he needs, and he himself has not a way out. He has not even learned the skill of asking; he can only cry.
This is the rule of need, at the very head of a life, earlier than his first spoken word. The third semester said: the lower the layer, the purer the need. An infant and his parents are the world’s lowest, and purest, layer. The first time a person is measured in this life, the rule used is this one that does not ask what is put in. This is the same the world over, no country, no doctrine an exception.
Two, the dozen-odd years of school, he is still consuming
From three to eighteen, or on to twenty-two, these dozen and twenty years, he still makes nothing, and still spends year on year. He is learning his letters, his sums, learning to be a man, learning a trade to eat by later. In these years his hands have not turned out one thing that could be sold for money.
In this stretch it is not the family alone that keeps him. The schoolhouse is raised by the public purse, the teacher’s wage paid by the public purse, part of the books subsidized, the lunch free in some places, the sickness held by health cover. Which is to say, a society is willing, heart and mind, to lay out a great sum to keep a batch of people who make nothing at all, keep them a dozen years, and not once press them for it. This money writes no note of debt, charges no interest, and does not ask what trade he will follow.
The rule of labor is of no use at all in this stretch. Force it to use, and it means letting a six-year-old earn his own school fee, letting a twelve-year-old pay his own medicine. Say it aloud and it is absurd, and the absurd thing is not that rule; it is the rule taken to a place not its to handle. The last chapter set this line, and here is its first landing in a life. Go truly by that rule, and the child need not study, and twenty years on this society has no one to take over.
This money has a return, of course, a return twenty years on. But when it is given, no one first has him sign a note, no one reckons clear how much he must repay. At the moment of giving, the question asked is still that one: he needs. As for what he will do, how far he will walk, whether he comes back to repay or not, no one asks.
Three, the last stretch, he is back to not asking what is put in
Now look at the other end of a life. Sixty, seventy, eighty, the hands gone slow, the eyes gone dim, the strength gone small, two flights of stairs and he must rest, and he cannot do the work. The days of this stretch are much like the days of the first. Eating wants a hand, sickness wants a hand, going out wants an arm.
What holds him up is the pension, the health cover, the few greetings from son and daughter and the few runs to the hospital, the care-worker who comes once a week from the neighborhood. These few together fill his day. The morning’s medicine, the noon’s rice, the afternoon’s one check-up, the evening’s one call from the children. Not one is reckoned by how much he did this month.
There is a layer here that must be seen clear, a layer many never think through in a lifetime. The pension he draws is not the sum he saved up young and kept whole to draw himself. The money he paid in young was handed that same year to that year’s old. The money he draws today is being paid in right now by the batch at work today.
So this is not one person’s own account; this is a hand-to-hand between one generation and another. The generation before held up the one before that, this generation holds up the one before, and the next will hold up this one. The rule of need here steps across the generations, handed down one to the next. Handed down, and the heart is at ease. Broken, and whoever grows old grows afraid. Let this chain break in any one generation’s hand, and the first to fall is always the end with the least strength.
Four, the two ends together take half a life
Add up the years of the two ends. The front, twenty and more. The back, fifteen to twenty. Together, thirty-five to forty years. If a person lives to eighty, then nearly half his life is not under the rule of labor.
This number is worth stopping over; it has more force than many a saying. We commonly, speaking of need, take it for a supplement, an extra kindness, a thing done when there is strength to spare. But count the years and you know, it holds up half of a life.
And the most vital half. A person in the first stretch has the least power, in the last stretch the least strength, and just these two stretches with the least power to strike back are measured by that rule that does not ask what is put in. Pull this rule out, and what is pulled is not the layer of flowers on the brocade; it is the ground on a person’s coming road and his going one.
Chapter forty said the four rules, no one can be pulled out, and there it spoke on one account. This section lands it on one person. Pull this rule out, and a person’s first twenty years no one keeps, his last twenty no one tends. This is no saying; this is two stretches of road every person must walk himself.
Five, the ancestors set these three stretches together long ago
The ancestors saw this thing early, and saw it in good order. A passage in the Movement of the Rites, in the Book of Rites, tells just the three stretches of a life. Let the aged reach their end, the strong have their use, the young their growth, and the widowed, the orphaned, the alone, the disabled, all have their keeping. Old, strong, young, three words set in a row, one line and a life is divided, and which rule to divide it by is divided too. In this line there is not one word of doctrine, not one word of era. The strong stretch has its use, that is labor. The old stretch reaches its end, the young stretch has its growth, that is need. After it comes one more line, the widowed and orphaned and alone and disabled all have their keeping, which handles the ones fallen into the gap, and that is the business of the next section.
The people of two thousand years and more ago had no pension, no health cover, no relief for the out of work, yet which stretches of people to hold up, and by what means, they said clean and clear. Mencius said it plainer still: to nourish the living and bury the dead with no regret, that is the beginning of the kingly way. The living to be nourished, the dead to be seen off, these two matters settled, only then is there talk of the rest. And both of these land at the end that does not ask what is put in.
So this section tells of no new thing. Today’s birth leave, the child subsidy, the free schooling of the compulsory years, the health cover and the pension, are all those few lines in today’s shape, only the hands are more and the spread is wider and the name changed to some other words. The name changed, the scale grown, and the thing done is still the same one thing: the two ends of a life, not asking what is put in. Those few lines of two thousand years and more ago read today with not one gap.
These two ends have one more thing in common, worth holding in mind. In both these stretches a person cannot speak for himself. The infant cannot speak, the old one cannot speak, or speaks and no one hears. In this world, whoever cannot speak for himself is measured by the rule in another’s hand, and whether that rule does not ask what is put in hangs wholly on whether the one holding it has that layer in his heart. Dig this layer down, and you dig to character, to the soil of culture, and that is the business of chapter fifty.
Six, what this section sets
What this section sets is a line: a person’s first stretch and last stretch of life are both measured by that rule that does not ask what is put in. In the first stretch he has no power, in the last no strength, and the two together are near half a life. This rule is no good heart, no alms, no doctrine’s own patent. It is a thing this kind of creature, the human, must have to live on. A person is not like a foal, up on its feet and running half an hour from birth. The human child must be kept a dozen years; the human old must be seen off several years. These two stretches are this long, so this rule must be. This is no one man’s soft heart, nor any era’s special mercy; this is the plain way this kind of creature lives on.
The next section looks at the middle stretch, at which rule keeps the house in those decades, and at why the people of that stretch are the most worn.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Two, The Decades of Labor: The Rule of Labor Keeps the House