VOLUME VI, CHAPTER 5, SECTION 1

VOLUME VI, CHAPTER 5, SECTION 1

The Intent of the Law Is to Protect the People

The chapters before told warm, wide great principles. Come to this chapter, the way of telling changes, it turns onto one precise line. This section nails down the first, most fundamental line of the whole chapter on law, the intent of the law is to protect the people. And it sets up the one yardstick that goes down through the whole chapter, to weigh any law, any ruling, any hand that holds the law, there is one thing to ask only, has it protected the people, or has it not.

Let me first say why, come to this chapter, the way of telling has to change. The chapters before, culture, the economy, politics, told stretch after stretch of warm, wide great principle, and those principles are like a light cast down, shining on a great breadth of the human heart, a great breadth of the world. But the law is not the same. The law is most particular about the line, about measure, about where exactly that bottom line is drawn, and a fingerbreadth off will not do. So come to this chapter, the telling turns from that warm, wide great principle onto one precise line. Do not feel the flavor has gone cold. Underneath this cold precision, the thing held is still the warmest of all, protecting people.

Now let me nail down this chapter's first, most fundamental line. The intent of the law is to protect the people. Let me break open for you where this line comes from.

Look back at the fourth chapter, at the true nature of the government set up there, an administrative machine the people hired to protect the people. The people are the boss, the government the hired hand. Then the law, what is it? The law is the set of rules this machine goes by in handling matters. Since the machine itself is there to protect the people, then the rules it goes by, the law, are of course also there to protect the people. This is the root of the law. It grows out of that one intent of protecting the people, and it has no second root.

Do not take the law for something high and mighty, born standing over the people's heads, that the people must fear and obey. Backwards. The law was set up, at the start, by the people, to protect themselves. A crowd of people living together fears a few things, fears being robbed, being cheated, being wounded, being bullied, being driven from their homes. So everyone agrees together on a set of lines, whoever robs another, whoever wounds another, whoever cheats another, that will not do, and this set of lines is the law. Its whole first purpose is to protect every person from being harmed. The law is a fence the people raised, together, to protect themselves. It is not a whip someone up high holds to drive the people.

Sort this root out, and the yardstick of the whole chapter stands of itself. To weigh any law, any ruling, any hand that holds the law, is this one yardstick, has it protected the people, or has it not. This yardstick, hold it firm, and it goes down through the whole chapter, and it is the one eye for seeing through all the crookedness later.

Let me tell you how to use this yardstick. A law comes before you, and you do not first ask whether it is written neat, whether the procedure it goes by is complete, whether it flies a great name. You ask it one thing, this law, in the end, has it protected the people. Protected the people, and it is a good law, however plainly it is written. Not protected the people, and turned instead to harm the people, and it is a bad law, however neat it is written, however complete the procedure, however grand the name. A ruling comes before you, the same, you ask it, this ruling, at the end of it, has it protected this person, or has it harmed this person. Protected, and it is just. Harmed, and however by the book it is, it is not just.

You see, this yardstick is fierce. It does not let anyone hide behind those words, it is written this way, the procedure was walked, it is by the book. It reaches straight past that skin and asks the thing at the bottom, has it, in the end, protected the people. This is exactly that eye set up in the fourth chapter, read the intent, not the letter. Come to this chapter, this eye is used the most, and used the hardest.

Let me use one plainest example to let you see the difference between the intent and the letter. Suppose there is a rule, that says, on this stretch of road, no stopping. The letter of it is four plain words, no stopping here. Now, a person driving along this road, in the car a passenger suddenly falls gravely ill, fahing to breathe, and must be got to a hospital at once, and just at the roadside there is a hospital door, and he pulls over, stops, and carries the person in to be saved. By the letter, he broke the rule, he stopped where there was no stopping, and it is a clean case, fine him. But ask by the intent. Why was that rule set up, no stopping here? Its intent was to protect people, to keep this stretch of road clear and safe, to keep cars from stopping willy-nilly and causing a crash, harming people. And this person stopped to save a life, and did not in the least go against that intent of protecting people, he was doing the very thing the intent most wanted, protecting a life. So by the intent, not only is he not at fault, he did right. The one who reads the letter fines him, no stopping means no stopping, broke it and you are fined. The one who reads the intent lets him go, and praises him, for the intent of the rule is to protect people, and he protected a life, and kept the intent exactly. This is the difference between the intent and the letter. The letter is dead, the intent is alive. Hold to the dead letter, and you can, by a rule that was meant to protect people, turn around and harm a good person who saved a life. Hold to the living intent, and you see through that dead letter to the protecting of people underneath.

This example is small, but the reasoning is the greatest reasoning of this whole chapter. The law is set up to protect people. But the law, once written down, becomes a string of dead letters. And a dead letter has one deadly thing about it, it can be read away from the intent. The one who reads it can fix his eyes on the dead letter and forget entirely the living intent underneath, protecting people. And once the intent is forgotten, that same law, that same string of letters, can be used backwards, turned around, and used to harm the very people it was meant to protect. The whole later half of this chapter, all the crookedness, all the harm, comes from this one place, holding the dead letter, forgetting the living intent, and using a law that was meant to protect people to harm people instead.

So this first section nails this line into your heart, deep. The intent of the law is to protect the people. The letters are the surface, the intent is the root. Read the intent, not the letter. To weigh any law, any ruling, any hand that holds the law, ask one thing only, has it, in the end, protected the people. Hold this yardstick firm, and going down through this chapter, however that crookedness dresses itself in the skin of legality, of the procedure walked, of by the book, you take this yardstick and reach straight past the skin, and ask it, has it protected the people. Not protected, and harmed instead, and however lawful the skin, underneath it is a betrayal of the law's intent, it is crooked.

With this root and this yardstick set up, the next section goes on to nail down a thing about the law that the world most easily gets wrong, what in the end the law is. It is not a coercive power there to be enforced, holding people down, fining people, forcing people. It is a living ruler that leads every person to keep himself in check. Sort out what the law is, in its true nature, and then you can see clearly that contrast that makes your scalp crawl, why the representatives of the law turn out, so many of them, to be the ones illiterate in the law.

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