VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 5, SECTION 2
The Will of the People, Enfeoffment Runs From Below
Last section covered the examination as a law running now, and left one line: the examination has not, in fact, fully settled who fills the position. This section says that line through. A person may test brilliantly, and that only nominates him to the position. To sit in it steadily takes one more thing, the will of the people. This layer is exactly the enfeoffment-runs-from-below of Part One, landed on the concrete process that comes after the examination.
Cut to the Tang. A young man of a poor house has ground through several days and nights in the examination hall at Chang'an and at last passed the palace exam. On the day the list is posted, he and the other new graduates feast by the Winding River, writing poems and trading verses, the most glorious hour of his life. But passing the exam is not the same as holding office. The new graduate must wait on the selection of the Ministry of Personnel, which decides, by his score, his origin, his connections, the impression he made in interview, and the openings of that year, where to send him. He might be sent to be a county magistrate near Chang'an, or to some remote post in the far south, or he might wait years and be sent nowhere. Graduates who passed and never got a post are not few in history. Even sent to a post, once there he faces the real test: whether the people of that place accept him. The clerks who have run the county office for years, will they cooperate in earnest, or obey on the surface and hollow him out underneath? The local gentry with land and money, will they accept this magistrate dropped in from outside, or join together to oppose him? The farming and laboring commoners, will they truly obey his decrees, or resist in secret? All these acceptances together are the process by which this new magistrate truly takes the seat. The examination completed only the nomination. To truly take the seat still takes this layer of acceptance, and this layer of acceptance is the will of the people.
Read this and you will remember the layer set in Part One, that enfeoffment runs from below, that the position is lifted up by the group. The will of the people is the concrete showing of that layer. Whether a person nominated by the examination can truly hold the seat is not settled by the one highest figure who enfeoffed him alone, it also takes the continuous acceptance of everyone below. This continuous acceptance is the will of the people. Move with it and the position is steady, move against it and the position shakes, and let it withdraw wholly and the position vanishes. Guanzi taught, in the chapter Shepherding the People, that a politics rises when it moves with the will of the people, and falls when it moves against it. The words the will of the people are exactly the group's acceptance this section is about, not the crowd's mood of a passing moment, but the acceptance the people give across a stretch of time, the obedience, the attitude that keeps the person in the position held up there. This line was quoted once in Part One, and is quoted again here, because the same words stand at two layers, in Part One the whole law of enfeoffment, here the concrete joint that comes after the examination. The will of the people lands the enfeoffment-runs-from-below onto the concrete process after the examination.
Speaking of the will of the people, many take it to mean the common people at the bottom, the farmers, the workers, the small traders. This is not accurate. The will of the people takes in all the acceptance from below the position, and it has six layers. The first is the acceptance of superiors. A magistrate's superiors are the prefect, the governor, the ministries at court, and whether they truly value him, whether they protect him when trouble comes, directly decides how long and how large he serves, and let their acceptance withdraw and the magistrate is at once moved or removed. The second is the acceptance of peers. Whether those who hold office alongside him truly deal with him, whether they speak up for him when he is attacked, also decides whether the position holds, and a joint squeezing-out by peers is hard to face alone. The third is the acceptance of subordinates. The clerks, the runners, and the private secretaries of the county office are the ones who actually do the work on the ground, and whether they follow orders, whether they act on his intent, directly decides whether a decree lands, and a collective refusal to cooperate leaves the magistrate an empty frame. The fourth is the acceptance of the local gentry, the families with money and land who are the real powers on the ground, and whether they acknowledge this new magistrate and cooperate with him decides whether he can find his footing. The fifth is the acceptance of the common people, whether the farmers and laborers at the very bottom obey the decrees, whether they see him off when he leaves, the deepest layer of the will of the people, and a complete disappointment among the people may bring a collective tax refusal or a rising, and the position shakes at once. The sixth is the acceptance of the verdict of history, how the local records write a man after he has left office or even died, how later ages speak of him, a longer layer of the will of the people, for those cursed in life and vindicated after death, praised in life and cursed after, the acceptance of history often differs from that of the present age. These six layers together are the complete will of the people, any one withdrawn and the position begins to shake, all six withdrawn and the position necessarily vanishes.
Set a real thing here: the person selected by the examination is often the one who most easily meets the problem of the will of the people. Why? A person who has come up through the examination is often of a poor house, changing his fate by study, with no roots for his family on the ground, no network, no backing of wealth. He is nominated to a wholly strange place, knowing none of its clerks, gentry, or people, unfamiliar even with the dialect, the customs, the terrain. A person who has come up through dynastic enfeoffment has at least the roots of a family, the local gentry having heard the family's name, the clerks knowing that offending him may bring consequences, so the will of the people is relatively easier to gain, because the family itself already supplies part of the acceptance. A person who has come up through voter enfeoffment has at least the support of the voters, having mobilized in the campaign a body of people to speak for him. But the poor-house scholar the examination selects has nothing at first, only a certificate. The certificate can seat him in the chair, but the certificate cannot steady the chair. So the person the examination selects often has to spend great effort to win the will of the people, and this is the true test the examination system leaves for the one it selects. Whether a person can govern is not measured by how high his exam score, but by whether he can get superiors, peers, subordinates, gentry, people, and history all to accept him.
History has positive samples. Fan Zhongyan of the Song, born to a poor house, came up through the examination, and when he went to serve on the ground he won the six-layer acceptance step by step by truly working for the people, by being upright and daring to speak, by not fearing the powerful, rising from a despised poor-house graduate to vice chancellor, and given after death the posthumous name Wenzheng, one of the highest for a Chinese official. His success was not given by the examination, it was given by the will of the people. Zhang Juzheng of the Ming also came up through the examination, and by political wisdom and by his use of people won step by step the trust of the emperor, the acceptance of his peers, the obedience of local officials, and only so could his reforms be carried through. There are opposite failures too. Not a few who passed as top graduate or second vanished from history after a few years in office, because they did not win the will of the people, the position never steady, nothing accomplished. So last section's line, the examination settles who fills the position, is in fact only half a sentence. The examination settles only the nomination to a position, and truly holding the seat still takes the will of the people, and this layer is not the credit of the examination, it is the credit of enfeoffment.
Cut the camera from the ancient to the present, and the will of the people still runs, only the form has changed. In a company, whether a new employee who entered through a written test and interview can truly get going depends on whether the boss values him, whether colleagues cooperate, whether subordinates follow him, whether clients accept him, and an employee with good test scores but poor team relations often does not last, the resume letting him in but the resume not letting him get going. In government, whether a person who came in through the civil-service exam can truly do things depends on whether the division head supports him, whether colleagues cooperate, whether the units below listen, whether the public accepts, and a civil servant with a high score but a poor base among the people often sits a lifetime in a small position. In academia, whether a young professor can find footing depends on whether the department head values him, whether colleagues cite his papers, whether students take his courses, whether journals accept his submissions. In the free professions, whether a person with a lawyer's or a doctor's qualification can get going depends on whether clients trust him, whether peers respect him, whether partners are willing to refer, and a lawyer fully licensed but with no clients coming is at bottom an empty frame. Every domain, the form different, the skeleton one. The examination is only the entry ticket, the will of the people is the real process of holding the seat. You might look back at yourself too. The position you hold today, how did you win the will of the people, or did you just take the seat by a test or a qualification and not yet truly win it?
So here is the position this section lays down. We set one layer firm: the examination sifts out the person nominated to a position, the will of the people lets that person truly hold the seat, and neither can be missing. The will of the people has six layers, the acceptance of superiors, peers, subordinates, gentry, the common people, and history, and only all six together are complete. The person the examination selects most often lacks the will of the people, because the poor-house scholar who comes up by test has no family roots and no network, so those who did great things through the examination all had to spend great effort at this step of winning the will of the people. This too is not an ancient matter, it is the real thing every person in a workplace, every person walking a professional road, faces every day. A test can seat you in the chair, but whether the chair is steady takes the will of the people.
But one joint is still unspoken. The will of the people is the enfeoffment-runs-from-below. Enfeoffment also has a from-above face: the one above who does the enfeoffing, can he recognize talent, can he use people? A person with ability and with the people behind him, if he never meets someone above who recognizes and is willing to use him, still cannot spread his wings. This from-above face is called the enlightened ruler. The next section is about that face.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Section Three. The enlightened ruler who knows talent, five things one can do