VOLUME III, SEMESTER 4, PART II
Four Things Among Themselves
The first book stood firm on two words: at once. Four things are all present, running at once on one account, hanging at once on one person, holding up at once one life. Yet to be present at once is only to stand on one piece of ground; things on the same ground can still have nothing to do with each other. These five chapters, fifteen sections, ask another thing: what in the end is the relation among them? The answer divides into four layers, plus one last layer of strength pushing back, joined into the thickest piece of this semester.
The first chapter tells of coexistence. First it sets down four verdicts: slavery was sentenced to death by the law, capital was cursed for over a hundred years, distribution by labor was called cold, distribution by need was laughed at for feeding the lazy. Four verdicts were handed down, yet not one of the four walked off. There is only one reason: each faces one real thing. The thought of saving effort sits in the heart of man, so someone always wants to lay that wall; risk must always be borne by someone, and pulling down the name pulls down the thing itself not at all; not doing if not required is human nature; two ends of a life plus the gaps in between, for near half his days a person cannot lean on himself. Then it answers the second question: can one thing be allowed to rule alone? First distinguish keeping the house from standing alone: keeping the house means this stretch is mine; standing alone means all stretches are mine. Then see four ways of standing alone and four ways of falling: forced labor alone, the man is there but his heart is not; capital alone, those who fall first are the very half of people who do not pay off; labor alone, those who cannot move become eaters of idle bread; need alone, the third year finds no rice in the pot. The four ways of falling have one thing in common: not one was broken by an opponent; all were pushed back by the very thing each could not measure, yet insisted on measuring. The first chapter pins down one line at last: coexistence is growing together, not mixing down; hunger needs food, a wound needs wrapping, and it cannot be split into half a bowl of rice and half a foot.
The second chapter tells of symbiosis. It uses the plainest and strongest way: pull out one thing at a time and see what becomes of the rest. Pull out labor, and in the third month the fastest pair of hands stops first, and the rice in the pot thins with it; at such an hour the most effort-saving way is to issue an order, and so the fourth thing is invited up to the stage. Remember this layer well: pulling out one rule is mostly not leaving a blank grid, but having the fourth rule step up to fill it. Pull out need, and a person dares not change trade, dares not fall sick, dares not have another child, no one buys things in the shop, and that weaver has no hand to catch him. Pull out risk, and strength finds no place to land. After four pullings, the pain is never in the thing pulled out; it is in the few that remain. Then look at them two by two: putting out strength and bearing risk each hold the missing half of the other, contending for the same loaf baked together, and whoever wins it all loses the whole plant. Labor and need run on opposite lines, yet each is the other’s way out: one supplies the grain, the other supplies the nerve. It closes on that line of Xunzi: let desire never be exhausted by things, let things never be bent by desire, let the two prop each other and grow. Prop is holding up, not stepping back.
The third chapter tells of dwelling together. Things that nourish each other are most likely to cross the line and make decisions for each other, so the boundary must be set. A boundary is not a wall; it is a line of division. Keeping the boundary is not keeping apart; it is not making decisions for the other. Clear the place of each of the four one by one: the place of the fourth rule is the narrowest, only at the few places where it must truly block, and someone must keep watch over it always. The most vital line in this chapter is: those who cross the line are mostly not bad people; they are mostly of good heart, so crossing the line out of good heart is harder to block than out of ill will. Losing the line comes in only two ways: managing too much and letting go too much. Each side has a line that sounds beyond fault to cover it: one says someone must manage, one says the less managed the better. Both lines are right, and both miss that half line: which rule handles this very matter? The way to join hands is three questions, and the third question goes deepest: why did that hand reach over? Crossing the line is often stepping in to fill a gap; filling a gap shows the original place is empty. When a hand reaches over, do not hurry to strike that hand; look first if that place stands empty. At last it closes on those six words of Confucius: the gentleman seeks harmony, not sameness.
The fourth chapter tells of sharing. Turn to the very bottom of the account and there is one grid with no owner: that road at the door, that wire, that bridge, that peace, the letters, numbers, measures, joints, and a houseful of workers who can read and reckon. Pull these out, and the same batch of people with the same machine cannot make one-tenth in a year. So that grid is no small change; it is the main share. The first semester asked the same question: why did Great Yu think of channeling instead of damming, why did Li Bing place the Fish Mouth at that exact spot? It cannot be traced, and he himself could not say clear; when a thing’s source cannot be named, men assign it a source. Dujiangyan has watered fields for two thousand three hundred years; to whom does that harvest belong by labor? This grid is called non-labor yield. Its going has only three paths: whoever grabs it first owns it, whoever blocks it owns it, or it belongs to the public. Returning to the public is no charity; it is returning the thing to its original owner, and the original owner is the generations of the public. What has an owner belongs to the owner, what has no owner belongs to the public; both lines must be said together.
The fifth chapter tells of check and balance, the most vital chapter of this book. The first chapter said standing alone cannot hold, yet waiting for it to fail takes time, and in a few decades many a person’s whole life passes by; this chapter supplies three paths to push back on the spot. The first path is that man can still speak: two thousand one hundred years ago, in that Debate on Salt and Iron, one side spoke of state funds and border defense, the other spoke of competing with the people for gain and corrupting customs. At the end of the debate, the monopoly on liquor was dropped and the iron officials inside the pass were removed; salt and iron largely remained, and neither side won it all. That debate left three things: the account placed in the open, a place for words to be said, and the words once said left behind. The second path is that man can still make another thing: that stone that held for over a hundred years was not cursed loose; someone pressed carbon into the same thing in a furnace. The wall still stands, but the road has gone around it. The third path is that man can still choose not to buy: that company that made film for a hundred years—no one issued an order to close it; it watched its own order sheets thin out day by day. None of the three paths requires a singularly brilliant man sitting on top; anything that can only turn by relying on a singularly good man does not last long.
PART TWO CONTENTS
Chapter Forty-Three, Coexistence: All Things Grow Together Without Harming One Another
Chapter Forty-Four, Symbiosis: The Two Prop Each Other and Grow
Chapter Forty-Five, Dwelling Together: The Gentleman Seeks Harmony, Not Sameness
Chapter Forty-Six, Sharing: Diminishing the Excess to Supply the Deficit
Chapter Forty-Seven, Check and Balance: Letting No Single Rule Stand Alone
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Chapter Forty-Three, Coexistence: All Things Grow Together Without Harming One Another