VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 5, SECTION 3

VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 5, SECTION 3

The Enlightened Ruler Who Knows Talent, Five Things One Can Do

Last section covered the will of the people, the from-below face of enfeoffment. But enfeoffment also has a from-above face. 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. This section takes the two words enlightened ruler and breaks them out of an abstract good virtue into five concrete things one can do.

Cut to the Zhenguan years of the Tang. A man named Ma Zhou, a little past thirty, came from Shandong to Chang'an to attach himself to a palace guard commander named Chang He. Ma Zhou was of humble birth, lost his father young, was poor in his youth and looked down on in his village, and did not come up through the examination, which was newly founded then and still leaned toward pedigree, but he had read much and held real insight within. In Chang'an, Chang He made him a private adviser. That year Emperor Taizong had every civil and military official write a memorial on the affairs of the day, and Chang He, a military man, could write none, so he had Ma Zhou write it for him. Ma Zhou wrote more than twenty proposals, every one striking to the heart of the matter. Taizong read it in astonishment and asked Chang He, did you write this, and Chang He answered honestly that it was written by his adviser Ma Zhou. Taizong summoned Ma Zhou at once, spoke with him a while, and appointed him on the spot a censor. Ma Zhou over his life rose from a poor adviser to one of the chancellors, running the affairs of the Tang for years, a major contributor to the good rule of Zhenguan. The turning point of all this was that Taizong saw his memorial and was willing to summon, use, and trust him at once. If the one reading memorials that year had been not Taizong but an emperor who saw a subordinate's ghostwriting and would not press to learn who wrote it, an emperor who saw a fine essay and envied the talent, an emperor who saw a poor-house talent and thought the origin would not do, Ma Zhou might have spent his life in a private household writing policy essays no one read, and died in obscurity. Ma Zhou's fate was not decided by the examination, not by the will of the people, it was decided by Taizong. This emperor who saw him, was willing to use him, dared to grant him authority, and protected him until he had done great things, is the enlightened ruler. The enlightened ruler is the from-above face of enfeoffment.

The enlightened ruler is not an abstract good virtue, it is a set of concrete abilities, five in all. The first is to recognize talent. To pick out from a crowd who has real ability, and this is not reading a resume, for a resume is dead and a person is alive, and the enlightened ruler must judge from a memorial, a few exchanges, the handling of one crisis, whether this person can carry great matters. Many who look impressive fail at the critical moment, and many unremarkable ones can lift a thousand-pound weight at the critical moment, and to recognize talent is a very hard thing. The second is to dare to use. To recognize talent is not the same as daring to use it. Many above see that someone has talent and do not dare to use him, fearing he will threaten them later, fearing his merit will overshadow theirs, fearing he has ideas of his own and will not obey. The true enlightened ruler overcomes this fear, and having recognized talent dares to use it, giving him position, authority, and resources enough to do things. The third is to protect. A person doing great things necessarily offends a body of people, his rectifications touching vested interests, his success drawing attack, and here the enlightened ruler must shield him, blocking the impeachments, the false charges, the whispers. Fan Zhongyan's new policies were attacked and brought down precisely because he lost that protection. Without this layer of protection, even the most able cannot hold on. The fourth is to tolerate. To employ a person of real ability means the person has his own judgment, temper, and way, and the enlightened ruler must tolerate his occasional blunt opposition, tolerate that his way of doing things differs from one's own. Many above can recognize talent and dare to use it but cannot tolerate, and the moment a subordinate contradicts them or raises what they do not like to hear, they turn their face, and such a one cannot keep real talent. The fifth is to cede the seat, the hardest of all. The true enlightened ruler not only yields the seat to a son, but at the fitting time hands the position to the truly fitting person, even if not his own kin. Those in Chinese history who truly ceded the seat are very few, Yao yielding to Shun and Shun to Yu the classic samples, while the dynasties after almost all changed it to succession by bloodline. These five, recognizing talent, daring to use, protecting, tolerating, and ceding the seat, done in full, and only then is the from-above face of enfeoffment complete. Any one not done, and the talent is missed, or held down, or attacked into ruin, or driven off in frustration, or pressed into a wrong position to waste a life.

Confucius taught, in the Analects, that to govern a group by virtue is like the north star, which stays in its place while the many stars turn around it. This line is deep. To govern by virtue is not to teach that the enlightened ruler must do many things, quite the opposite, it teaches that the enlightened ruler must stay in his place, resting steady in his own position, letting the ones who can truly do things turn around him and do them. The enlightened ruler does not snatch merit, does not race his subordinates to do the work, does not put his hand into everything, he only sits steady in that position, recognizing who can do what, placing the fitting people in the fitting positions, and then letting them do. The north star does not move, and only so do the many stars have order. The enlightened ruler is steady, and only so can the subordinates work with a free hand. If the enlightened ruler himself darts east and west, trusting this one one moment and doubting that one the next, everything below falls into disorder. This layer is the core of the enlightened ruler: not that he himself is very capable, but that he lets the capable turn around him and do. Many emperors praised as diligent in fact made one mistake, they did everything themselves, wearing themselves out and holding down their subordinates, so that the whole court instead accomplished nothing. Chongzhen is the type, diligent to the patch on his dragon robe, working ten hours and more a day, and yet he replaced more than fifty chief grand secretaries, tolerated no differing view, trusted no subordinate, and the whole Ming collapsed in his hands. Chongzhen was not an enlightened ruler, because he did not achieve staying in his place while the many stars turn around him, he himself ran about, and the many stars had nothing to follow.

The most complete sample of the enlightened ruler in Chinese history is Emperor Taizong of Tang. Taizong recognized talent: seeing poor-house talents like Ma Zhou and Cen Wenben, he promoted them at once, and from the old ministers of the former reign he made heavy use of Wei Zheng and Wang Gui, men who had served the crown prince Jiancheng and by rights should have been purged, whom Taizong instead raised to the level of chancellor. Taizong dared to use, and not only used people but gave real authority: Fang Xuanling and Du Ruhui, called in the histories Fang who plans and Du who decides, were consulted by Taizong on almost every major decision. Taizong tolerated, and this is his deepest face. Wei Zheng contradicted him to his face and embarrassed him in open court, and most of the time Taizong bore it. Once Taizong returned to the palace saying he would surely deal with that old man, and Empress Zhangsun instead put on formal dress to offer congratulations, saying that only when a ruler is enlightened do ministers dare to speak straight, and that Wei Zheng daring to speak so was exactly proof that his majesty was an enlightened ruler, and Taizong heard it and his anger left at once. After Wei Zheng died, Taizong said that with bronze for a mirror one can straighten one's dress and cap, and with a person for a mirror one can see one's gains and losses, and that with Wei Zheng dead he had lost a mirror. This tolerated environment let those under Taizong dare to speak true and do true. Taizong was not perfect in ceding the seat, passing the position to his son, but during his reign he had already built the whole governing system so completely that the good rule of Zhenguan held for decades. In his late years Taizong too began to love grandeur and campaigned far against Goguryeo, but across the more than twenty years of his height he is the most complete sample of the enlightened ruler among the emperors of Chinese history.

Here a thing must be admitted: enlightened rulers are very few in history. From Qin to Qing, over two thousand years, count the emperors who truly rate as enlightened rulers, Emperor Wen of Han, Emperor Jing, the early years of Emperor Wu, Emperor Taizong of Tang, the early years of Emperor Xuanzong, Emperor Renzong of Song, the Kangxi emperor of Qing, roughly these, fewer than ten in all. Fewer than ten enlightened rulers in over two thousand years is a startling rate of scarcity. Why so rare? First, to recognize talent, dare to use, protect, tolerate, and cede the seat, each takes an extremely high ability, and for an emperor to manage three is already good, while one who manages all five comes once in centuries. Second, power itself erodes a person, and an emperor may at his enthronement recognize talent, dare to use, and tolerate, and a few years on, his private wants magnified by power, everyone around flattering him, hearing only praise, slowly becomes one who cannot recognize talent, dares not use, cannot tolerate, so that many emperors were enlightened rulers in their early years and muddled rulers in their late. Third, dynastic enfeoffment makes the appearance of an enlightened ruler a matter of luck, the throne passing through a bloodline, and the last generation being an enlightened ruler no guarantee the next will be, so that with good luck several enlightened rulers appear in a row and a flourishing lasts a century, and with bad luck a muddled ruler appears after a few generations and the flourishing ends. The fate of a whole dynasty depends on a kind of enlightened-ruler luck, and this is the deepest fragility of dynastic enfeoffment. So the enlightened ruler is a scarce resource, the least stable link in the from-above face of enfeoffment. The person the examination selects has to meet an enlightened ruler to be truly used, but an enlightened ruler is not always met, and many able people wait a lifetime without meeting one, and can only waste a life in a low position. This is the deepest tragedy in the examination system, not the failure of the examination itself, but the from-above face of enfeoffment failing to keep up.

Cut the camera to the present, and the enlightened ruler appears in a new form. In a company the CEO or the boss is the enlightened ruler, and whether he can recognize an employee's real ability, whether he dares to use it, whether he protects him when he is attacked, whether he tolerates a differing view, whether he truly steps down when he should, directly decides whether talent can be spent. Many companies have employees of real ability buried, not for lack of an institution and not for lack of ability, but for not having met an enlightened-ruler boss. In government the superior is the enlightened ruler, and whether a subordinate can do things and carry responsibility depends largely on whether the direct superior is an enlightened ruler, an enlightened superior letting subordinates dare to act, a mediocre one letting them only grind out seniority. In academia the adviser and the department head are the enlightened ruler, an enlightened adviser not envying a student who surpasses him but actively recommending, lifting, protecting, a poor one treating the student as a tool, snatching the student's results, holding down his growth. In a family the parents too are the enlightened ruler, and their recognition of a child's gift, their tolerance of the child's different choices, their protection when the child errs, their letting the child stand independent at the fitting time, these five done, and only then can the child grow into a person with a life of their own. You might look back at yourself too. How many enlightened rulers have you met in your life, one among your parents, teachers, superiors? And if you hold a position today, to those below you, are you an enlightened ruler?

So here is the position this section lays down. We set one layer firm: enfeoffment has two faces, from below the will of the people, from above the enlightened ruler, and the two together let the person the examination selects truly hold the seat and spend his ability. The five abilities of the enlightened ruler, recognizing talent, daring to use, protecting, tolerating, and ceding the seat, are the complete content of the from-above face of enfeoffment, done in full a once-in-centuries enlightened ruler, three of them done a good emperor rare in his age, none of them done and the one on the throne is a muddled ruler, the whole court slowly withering in his hands. The rarity of the enlightened ruler is a law of history. Dynastic enfeoffment makes his appearance a matter of luck, and power magnifying private wants turns an early enlightened ruler into a late muddled one, so a flourishing is scarce because the enlightened ruler is scarce.

But one deeper claim is still unspoken. The examination, the will of the people, and the enlightened ruler, all three together are the complete picture of governing, all three present and only then a time of good rule, any one of the three missing and the flourishing ends. Why were times of good rule so few and so short in history? The next chapter is about that claim, the rarity of having all three together.

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

Chapter Six. Three together, and only then a time of good rule