VOLUME VII, CHAPTER 11, SECTION 1
The Purpose in One Line: to Serve the People with All One's Heart
The last chapter left one layer at its end still to be accounted for: this road of lawmaking, what is its root purpose? This section makes it plain. The whole book went all along the road saving people, growing the heart, laying institutions, guarding the five, going back to the human world, guarding paradise, and the one root purpose running beneath it from first to last is gathered into six characters: serve the people with all one's heart. These six characters are not a slogan. They are the starting point of this road of lawmaking, and also where it comes to rest. All lawmaking sets out from here, and all of it must come back here to be tested: does it, truly, with all its heart, act for the people?
One. These Six Characters Are the Starting Point
First, why these six characters are the starting point. Everything the whole book laid down along the road began, at its very first thought, from three characters: for the people.
Why save the ones pressed down at the bottom? For the people. Why grow that heart that guards others, lay that floor of living so none go hungry, turn back the common instrument that harms the people, make plain the law that harms people lawfully? For the people. Why guard the five, go back to the human world, guard this paradise? For the people. Every piece of this road of lawmaking, traced back to its very first thought, is one thing: for the people. Not for the one who lays out the teaching, not for any one family or any one name, not for the private gain of some small group, but for the particular, living people of this world, one by one. These six characters are the source of all this lawmaking: first there was the thought, for the people, and only then the saving, laying and guarding all along the road that followed. Take this thought away, and this road of lawmaking has no source, no starting point, and there is nothing left to speak of.
This layer gathers all the book's lawmaking, which seems to run in a thousand directions, into one very simple point of origin. The book's seven volumes speak of culture, of economy, of politics, of law, of the tool, of the real human, of paradise, the branches thick, the leaves dense, the threads many and tangled. Yet the thousands of branches and leaves, traced to the source, all sprouted from one seed: for the people. This is also why, reading the whole book, though its content feels vast, one feels throughout that it runs in one breath, not scattered, not tangled: though its branches and leaves are thousands, it has only one main vein, one point of origin. Grasp these six characters, serve the people with all one's heart, and you grasp the headrope of the whole book. Lift the headrope, and the thousands of branches and leaves all hang down in their natural order. So these six characters are not only the first thought. They are the one main rope that runs through the whole book and holds every law together. Lose it, and the book is a heap of loose sand. Have it, and the book becomes one whole, threaded through by one thing.
Two. These Six Characters Are Also Where It Comes to Rest, and the Test
These six characters are not only the starting point. They are also where it comes to rest, the ruler by which all lawmaking is tested.
Whether a law is laid right, laid well, what do you measure it with? Measure it with these six characters: does it, truly, with all its heart, act for the people? If a law is grand and dignified in name, but underneath it serves the private gain of some small group, the self-turning of some machine, the name and power of some "I", then it has turned its back on these six characters. However handsome the coat it wears, it is bad, and must be turned back. The other way round, if a law in fact acts for the people, for those living people, one by one, to live well, then it accords with these six characters. However plain and unadorned, it is right, and may be laid. Why could the whole book go all along its road threaded by one thing, leaning neither way? Precisely because it had these six characters as its ruler, measuring and correcting at every turn: with every law laid, look back and ask, is this with all one's heart for the people? This one question is where it comes to rest, and is the test. All lawmaking sets out from here, and must in the end come back here to submit to this one question.
This ruler matters because lawmaking, of all things, most easily goes out of shape and turns bad partway. A law may at first be truly laid for the people. Run long enough, people slowly drill holes in it, slip their private goods into it, and it sinks into a tool for some group to profit by, or warps into a gear in some machine's self-turning, and that first heart, for the people, is hollowed out and swapped without anyone noticing. Harming people lawfully, laid out in the last volume, is the living example of this going out of shape: the form of the law still there, the soul of the law already gone. With the ruler of serve the people with all one's heart, there is a ground for correcting at any moment. However long a law has run, however splendid the coat it wears, measure it with this ruler, and if it measures out as no longer for the people, only for private gain or for the machine, you know it has turned bad, and should be turned back. This ruler is the guard that keeps lawmaking from going out of shape. Only by measuring with it at every turn does that first heart, for the people, escape being quietly swapped out over the long years.
Three. The Four Characters "With All One's Heart" Weigh the Most
Of these six characters, serve the people speaks of direction, while the four characters, with all one's heart, speak of weight: the heaviest, the hardest, and where the truth shows most.
To serve the people is easy to say. The hard part is those four characters, with all one's heart. With all one's heart is the whole heart and the whole strength, nothing held back, nothing faked, no private heart slipped in. It is not three parts for the people and seven parts for oneself. It is not for the people on the lips and for oneself in the heart. It is not for the people when it is handy and for oneself where it counts. It is handing the whole heart, the whole strength, entirely over to the one thing, for the people, with no discount and no room kept back. These four characters are the hardest because the "I" in a person's heart always wants a share of the soup, always wants a back road kept open, always wants to slip in a little private goods under the banner of for the people. Only by setting that "I" down very light, very faint, Originally, not a single thing, can those four characters, with all one's heart, be done. So these six characters and the ground color of the whole book, Originally, not a single thing, are one: only with no self can there be all one's heart; only with all one's heart is for the people real.
This also shows up the line, very fine yet very important, between with all one's heart and with half a heart. The world has no shortage of people who say they are for the people. They do some things for the people too, but in their hearts there is always a piece kept for themselves: three parts for the people, seven for themselves; for the people in front of others, for themselves behind; for the people in small matters, for themselves before great gain. Such for the people is half-hearted, mixed with falsehood. It cannot stand the light of the four characters, with all one's heart. Under that light, the piece kept for oneself has nowhere to hide. With all one's heart is hard, and hard precisely in this, not keeping a piece for oneself. For a person to set that "I" down completely and hand over the whole heart, holding nothing back, how could it be easy? Yet precisely because it is hard, these four characters have become a touchstone: truly for the people, or falsely for the people, try it with these four characters, and it shows at once. Half a heart still hides an "I" in the end. Only with all one's heart does that "I" truly give up its seat, and let the word people sit at the very center of the heart.
Four. These Six Characters Carry On the Vein of the Ancestors
These six characters are not a new teaching made out of nothing. They carry on that vein of the ancestors, today's echo of the sages' line of thought, the people are the ground of the state, all under heaven is shared.
The ancestors long had: The people are the ground of the state, and when the ground is firm the state is at peace. The people are the root of the country, and only when the root is firm is the country at peace. They long had: All under heaven is shared. This world is the world of all the people in it, not the private holding of one family or one name. They long had: Rejoice in the people's joy, grieve at the people's grief. Take the common people's joy as one's own joy, the common people's grief as one's own grief. This vein of thought lays down one and the same heart: the people as the root, for all, for the people. These six characters, serve the people with all one's heart, are this very vein, distilled and carried on today. They gather the sages' heart of the people are the ground of the state, all under heaven is shared, into six plain, clear characters, and lay them down as the root purpose of this road of lawmaking. So in form these six characters are new, but that heart, the people as the root, is the old ground handed down in the ancestors' vein. Carrying on this vein is where these six characters come from; and precisely because they carry on this vein, they are laid deep and laid firm.
It is worth saying that this heart of the people as the root, with the sages, was mostly a warning to those in high seats: a warning to kings, a warning to those who govern, that they should take the people as the root, should rejoice in the people's joy. Today, what these six characters point to is no longer only those in high seats. They point to everyone who holds a real human's place, to every ordinary person who, at his own post and in his own days, can do something for others. Those who govern should of course serve the people with all their hearts. But a teacher, a doctor, someone who holds a post, an ordinary neighbor, should they not too, each in their own corner, treat others with all their hearts? The sages' heart, the people are the ground of the state, was at root a warning from above to below. These six characters turn it into a charge everyone can carry and everyone should carry. This turning is carrying on, and also pushing outward: the heart with which the sages warned kings is pushed out into a heart that looks after every person under heaven, and that every person can practice. This is where these six characters both carry on the vein of the ancestors and lay down a meaning the sages did not reach.
Five. The Layer This Section Makes Plain
This section makes plain that the root purpose of this road of lawmaking is to serve the people with all one's heart.
These six characters are the starting point: the saving, laying and guarding of the whole book along the road all began from the very first thought, for the people. They are also where it comes to rest, and the test: every law, look back and measure it with these six characters, to see whether it acts with all its heart for the people. Of the six, the four characters, with all one's heart, weigh the most and are the hardest. That "I" must be set down very light, very faint, Originally, not a single thing, before it can be done; so these six characters and the book's ground color of no self are, at root, one. And these six characters carry on the ancestors' vein, the people are the ground of the state, all under heaven is shared; they are the sages' heart carried on today. With the root purpose made plain, the next section goes one step further along it: this heart, which vein of the ancestors does it carry on, exactly? This road of lawmaking, in that long passing-down of the sages, what position does it stand in?
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Section Two. Carrying On the Ancestors' Vein: the Root of This Road of Lawmaking.