VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 3, SECTION 1

VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 3, SECTION 1

Two Kinds of Enfeoffment, Two Paradoxes

The last two chapters set out all six kinds of enfeoffment and said the word itself through. Starting here we ask a deeper question. Does enfeoffment have a lifespan? Open a book of world history and two pictures appear. One is dynasties. China's dynasties turn over on an average of two or three centuries, Rome ran its course in five hundred years, the Soviet Union collapsed in seventy. The enfeoffment of power seems to have its appointed limit. The other picture is faith and culture. Buddhism is still here after twenty-five hundred years, the words of Confucius are still read every day after two thousand. This kind seems able to last for millennia. Why does one enfeoffment collapse in a few centuries and another go on for thousands of years? This section first splits enfeoffment into two kinds, and sets up two paradoxes.

Look at the first picture. Xia, Shang, Zhou, Qin, Han, one dynasty after another, each with a founding and each with a collapse. The Han lasted four hundred years, the Tang nearly three hundred, the Song over three hundred, the Ming two hundred seventy-six, the Qing two hundred sixty-eight, an average of two or three centuries to a turn. The West is the same. Rome, Byzantium, the Ottomans, the British Empire, every political body that once looked beyond challenge was in the end replaced or broken apart. This is one kind of enfeoffment, and we call it the enfeoffment of power. The six kinds from the last two chapters, of land, of office, of the electorate, of the army, of the bloodline, of the party, all belong to it.

Now the second picture. Christianity after two thousand years, Islam after fourteen hundred, Buddhism after twenty-five hundred, are still held by hundreds of millions. Confucianism after twenty-five hundred years is still the ethical floor of East Asian society. Calligraphers still copy the Orchid Pavilion Preface, universities still read Plato. This is the other kind of enfeoffment, and we call it the enfeoffment of faith and culture. It runs for a thousand years, even several thousand, and is still accepted, continuously, today.

The root difference between the two comes down to one thing: whether the position needs a living person, day after day, to keep making concrete decisions. The enfeoffment of power must have a living person in the seat. How to set this year's taxes, where to move the army, which officials to raise and which to demote, how to relieve a year of disaster, a day left undone and the state stalls a day, a year left undone and the state may collapse. That settles two things at once. The person in the position cannot be changed too often, or governance falls into chaos, and yet cannot go unchanged, because a person ages, sickens, dies, and errs. So there must be a mechanism for changing the person, abdication, heredity, election, the forms different, the need the same. And every change is a test, smooth and it holds, failed and it turns to disorder, and failed past a point the whole system collapses, a dynasty ends, and the cycle begins again.

The enfeoffment of faith and culture is not like this. Its position does not need a living person making continuous decisions. A founder sets down a teaching that becomes a classic, and the believers who come after follow the classic. Jesus departed, and his words became the Gospels. Confucius died, and his words became the Analects. Laozi went out through the pass and left behind the Dao De Jing. The content itself becomes the thing enfeoffed, and it does not depend on any one living person. A classic does not age, does not grow greedy, does not err, cannot be replaced, it can only be neglected, rediscovered, and read anew. The Analects has been reread without a break for over two thousand years, the classic itself unchanged, each generation of readers bringing their own age to it, reading out the echo of their own time.

Here is the first paradox. Stop and think about it. The Han went, the Tang rose, the emperor changed, but did the institution of emperor change? It did not. The Tang went and the Song rose, the Ming went and the Qing rose, the concrete dynasty changed dozens of times, and yet the enfeoffment that is the office of emperor ran on from Xia to Qing for about four thousand years. The enfeoffment that is centralized authority ran from Qin to Qing for over twenty-two hundred years. The enfeoffment that is the examination ran from Sui to Qing for thirteen hundred. So the enfeoffment of power decays only when seen from the angle of a single dynasty. On a larger scale, the form of the enfeoffment itself goes on, and only the one who bears it changes. This is the first paradox: the concrete dynasty runs in a cycle, but the form of the enfeoffment endures. So the line the enfeoffment of power must decay needs a limiting word: a particular concrete dynasty must decay, but that form of enfeoffment, the dynasty, goes on generation after generation, until a larger form arrives to replace it.

Turn it around and the enfeoffment of faith and culture has its own paradox. What endures across millennia is the classic. And the living people who carry the classic? One pope follows another, each holding on average only seven or eight years. One abbot follows another, each holding only a few decades. The office of pope is two thousand years old and has passed through more than two hundred popes, yet each one held only a short term. So the enfeoffment of faith and culture, seen from outside, endures for thousands of years, and seen from inside, every bearer is a passer-through of a few decades. This is the second paradox: faith and culture endure for thousands of years as a tradition, and yet every individual who carries the tradition lasts only a few decades.

Put the two paradoxes together and it becomes clear. The enfeoffment of a dynasty seems to collapse every few centuries, yet the form of the enfeoffment endures. The enfeoffment of faith and culture seems to endure for thousands of years, yet every bearer is only a passer-through. Both kinds, on the large scale, endure, and on the scale of the individual, are only passing through. What we called must decay and can last is only a difference in the scale of the cycle, one turning every few centuries, one every few thousand years, and both are inside a cycle. No enfeoffment truly lasts ten thousand generations, and no enfeoffment truly vanishes in a second. Every enfeoffment is inside some cycle, only on a different scale.

One more important line. The split into two kinds is not an absolute division, and many real enfeoffments hold both at once. Dynastic enfeoffment passes the position through a bloodline, which is the enfeoffment of power, yet a family's house-rules and its ways carry the nature of the enfeoffment of faith and culture. Party enfeoffment sets the leader's position, which is the enfeoffment of power, yet the party's platform and tradition carry the nature of faith and culture. Military enfeoffment sets the commander, the enfeoffment of power, yet the army's traditions and discipline carry the nature of faith and culture. Which cycle a given enfeoffment runs depends on which side dominates. Where the enfeoffment of power dominates, the scale of the cycle is centuries. Where the enfeoffment of faith and culture dominates, the scale is thousands of years. In the dynasties power dominated, so the cycle was centuries. The Kong family of Qufu is different. What it carries is cultural transmission. The Kong family was never any great power, yet it bore the enfeoffment of faith and culture that is the direct line of Confucius, and every new dynasty honored it, so it has endured over twenty-five hundred years. Japan's Kongo Gumi, an old construction house, endured over fourteen hundred years on the generational transmission of a craft-culture. Oxford and Cambridge, eight or nine hundred years, are not only the continuation of an administrative body but of a scholarly tradition. Turn it the other way. The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was dominated by the enfeoffment of power, so it collapsed in seventy years. Some family businesses are dominated by the enfeoffment of power, so wealth does not pass three generations. The same principle: where power dominates, the cycle is centuries or even decades, where faith and culture dominate, the cycle is thousands of years. The two are not opposed, they can coexist and turn into each other, and they are not higher and lower, they differ in the scale of the cycle.

So here is the position this section lays down. We split enfeoffment into two kinds and set up two paradoxes. The enfeoffment of power needs a living person in the seat making decisions day after day, a cycle of centuries. The enfeoffment of faith and culture, its content coming loose from any living person, endures, with an inner cycle even across thousands of years. The first paradox: the dynasty runs in a cycle, the form of the enfeoffment endures. The second paradox: the tradition endures for thousands of years, its bearers are only passing through. The two kinds are not an absolute division, and which one governs depends on which side dominates.

Hold one thread. Every enfeoffment is inside some cycle, only on a different scale. The cycle of enfeoffment is not a tragedy, it is a law, the way a life-level group runs. What a person in a position can do is not to escape the cycle, but to make it turn more steadily, run longer, and cost the group less.

But this forces a sharper question. The enfeoffment of power, why exactly the band of two or three centuries? Why not fifty years, and why not a thousand? Behind it lie four problems that cannot be dodged. The next section turns them out one by one.

Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.

Section Two. Why the enfeoffment of power runs a cycle of centuries