VOLUME VI, CHAPTER 5, SECTION 2

VOLUME VI, CHAPTER 5, SECTION 2

The Law Is a Living Ruler That Leads People to Keep Themselves in Check, Not a Coercive Power to Be Enforced

The last section nailed down the root and the yardstick, the intent of the law is to protect the people. This section nails down a thing about the law that the world most easily gets wrong, what in the end the law is. The world takes the law for a coercive power, a whip held high to force people, hold people down, fine people. This book does not see it so. The law is a living ruler that leads every person to keep himself in check. Sort out this true nature, and the whole later half of this chapter has a foothold.

Ask you first, what, in your heart, is the law? Most likely it is a fierce thing, cold, hard, with teeth. It is bound up with the police, the court, the prison cell, with handcuffs and batons. It stands there, cold-faced, and the moment you cross a line it comes down on you, arrests you, fines you, shuts you up. In your heart, the law is a coercive power, held high over the people's heads, forcing you not to dare do this, not to dare do that. This is how the world, for thousands of years, has seen the law.

This book does not see it so. Let me nail down another line for you. The law is a living ruler that leads every person to keep himself in check, it is not a coercive power there to be enforced.

Break this line into two halves, and take them one at a time. The first half, the law is a living ruler that leads people to keep themselves in check. What is a ruler for? To measure, to give you a line, to tell you where the mark is. The law is exactly such a ruler. It sets, plain, out in the open, that people-protecting bottom line, and tells every person clear as day, here is the line, on this side of it you protect people, cross it and you harm people. Its use is to let every person, looking at this ruler, know where the line is, and then, of himself, keep to it, not cross it. This is called leading people to keep themselves in check. The strength of the ruler is in the leading, in the showing, in letting you see the line clear and keep to it yourself, it is not in holding you down, forcing you.

And why is it called a living ruler, not a dead one? Because it does not measure the dead letter, it measures the living intent. Look back at the last section's no-stopping example. A dead ruler measures only the letter, stopped where there was no stopping, over the line, fined. A living ruler measures the intent, you stopped to save a life, and kept exactly the intent of protecting people, and you are within the line, and did right. The same rule, the dead ruler measures a life-saving good man over the line, the living ruler measures him within it. So this ruler has to be alive, it has to measure by the living intent of protecting people, not by the dead letter. A ruler that measures the dead letter will, itself, turn into a tool for harming people.

The second half, it is not a coercive power there to be enforced. This half joins straight to the fourth chapter. The fourth chapter set up that in this world you could never think up a law-enforcement apparatus, that that set of coercion, arresting people, fining people, holding people down, ought not to exist, and is dissolved into the two things, administration and the raising of people. Come to here, the reasoning is the same. The law is not a coercive power there to be enforced. Its strength is not in a set of coercion behind it, arresting you, fining you, forcing you to obey. Its strength is in the leading, in every person, looking at this living ruler, knowing the line, and of himself keeping to it.

You will ask, then what of the ones who really do cross the line, harm people? With no coercion, are they just let be? Look back at the fourth chapter's answer. The one who crosses the line is not handed to a set of coercion to be forcibly held down and fined. He is handed to those two things. Administration, to settle him. The raising of people, like that prison guard whose true nature is a teacher, to lead him back to keeping himself in check, to patch his character. To a person who crossed the line, the thing done is to settle him, teach him, lead him back, not to hold him down, treat him as an enemy. So even facing the one who crossed the line, the law's strength is still the leading, leading him back to keeping himself in check, and not a coercion that holds him down.

Then the two halves put together, what is the law? It is a living ruler, that with the living intent of protecting people, sets plain that bottom line, and leads every person to see the line clear and, of himself, keep to it. It is not a cold, hard coercive power with teeth, held high to force people. This is the true nature of the law.

Let me take you one layer deeper, to the highest reach of the law. What is the highest reach of the law? It is that there is next to no need for it. The second chapter said it, the cure for torment is character education, and where everyone has character and torments no one, there is next to no need for so many laws. Follow that reasoning down to here. The law is a ruler that leads people to keep themselves in check, and if every person had that character, held that bottom line of protecting people in his own heart, and of himself kept to it, and never crossed the line, then this ruler would be stood there, and next to never used. Everyone keeps himself in check, and there is no one to be measured over the line, no one to be led back. The law stands there, a ruler that no one crosses, and this is its highest reach.

So you see, the law and character education are two things paired together. Character education, the second chapter's leg, grows that bottom line of protecting people inside a person's heart, into a conscience. The law, this chapter's ruler, sets that bottom line plain outside the person, into a clear line. One inside, one outside, paired together. Inside there is the conscience of character, outside there is the clear line of the law, and a person, looking up, sees the line, and looking in, has the conscience, and of himself he stays inside the line and does not harm people. This is what leading people to keep themselves in check truly rests on, character inside and law outside, the two propping each other. Rest on the law alone, on a cold ruler, on coercion, and you can hold a person's hand, but you cannot grow that bottom line in his heart. Only paired with character education can this ruler truly lead a person into keeping himself in check from the heart.

Sort out this true nature, and you have a foothold for the whole later half of this chapter. Because if the law is a living ruler that leads people to keep themselves in check, then the one who holds the law, whose hand holds this ruler, what ought he to be? He ought to be one who reads the living intent, who holds that intent of protecting people in his heart, and with this ruler leads people, protects people. He is like a good teacher holding a ruler, using it to guide the student, to show the student the line, not to beat the student.

But here is exactly where that contrast that makes your scalp crawl comes. The ones who in reality hold this ruler, so many of them, do not read the living intent at all. They read only the dead letter. They take this living ruler that was meant to lead people, protect people, and use it as a dead measure, a coercion, to hold people down, fine people, harm people. The ruler that was meant to protect people, in their hands, turns into a knife that harms people. And the ones who do this, by name, are the representatives of the law, the ones who should understand the law best, and in fact, they are the ones illiterate in the law. This contrast, the next section takes you to see it clearly.

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