VOLUME VII, CHAPTER 11, SECTION 3
What It Comes To at the Root: Let Real Humans Live as Real Humans
The last section made plain that this road of lawmaking carries on the ancestors' vein, and at its end drew out a question: this road of lawmaking, receiving what went before and opening what comes after, after all its thousands of words, what is the root it finally comes back down to? This section draws this layer in. The answer: let every real human live as a real human; let the five, keep, guard, love, mercy, heart, in one body after another, not go out, not wither, not cool, not shut, not gather dust. All lawmaking, in the end, comes home to this one place. This one place is the one root that the book's thousands of words finally mean to keep.
One. Thousands of Words Come Home to One Place
First see this layer: the book's seven volumes, its thousands of words, traced to the end, come home to one place.
The seven volumes laid down so much. They laid down culture, economy, politics, law, laid down the living mechanism of the four institutions, laid down the tool and the real human, laid down the five, laid down going back to the human world and guarding paradise, laid down that root purpose and that vein of the ancestors. These thousands of words look vast. Yet traced to the end, they all come home to one very plain root: let every real human live as a real human. Saving the people at the bottom is so they can live as real humans. Growing that heart is so the five in people's hearts are grown, and they live as real humans. Laying the living, turning back the work of government, making the law plain, is so people are not driven, not harmed, not made to lose that share of the real human. Guarding the five, going back to the human world, guarding paradise, is so people have a place where the five can be grown and kept alive, and can live well as real humans. These thousands of words, said to the very end, are this one thing: let people live as real humans. Grasp this one place, and you grasp the last root of the whole book.
This one place is the last and also the deepest, because it has grown so plain that nothing more can be taken from it. A great book, laying out teaching after teaching, reasoning inside reasoning, institution linked to institution, how complex it reads. Yet complex to the utmost, chase further in, and the core is always one very simple sentence. What this book finds at the end of its chase is not one more, cleverer institution, not one more, tighter piece of machinery, but a homely saying: let people live as real humans. An old farmer who cannot read can understand this saying: let people live like human beings. A thousand kinds of institutions, ten thousand kinds of lawmaking, went round such a large circle, and in the end what they guard is only this one plainest, most proper thing. This is exactly the proof that it is the root. The root is never in the complex part. It is at the point left after all the complexity is washed away, the plainest, and the one that can least be done without.
Two. Living as a Real Human Is Living Out the Five
Then what, exactly, does living as a real human mean? It is nothing else. It is letting the five, in one body after another, come alive and come bright.
What makes a real human a real human, as the chapters before laid down, is exactly the five in him, keep, guard, love, mercy, heart. Living as a real human is letting these five, in him, not go out, not wither, not cool, not shut, not gather dust: keeping the rule that should be kept, guarding the passing-down that should be guarded, loving the ten thousand things of this world, keeping others' suffering in mind, holding a good heart that, asking itself in the deep of night, finds nothing to be ashamed of. If the five are all present in a person, all alive, all bright, he lives as a real human, whatever seat he holds, whatever work he does. The other way round, if the five in a person have gone out, though his body is still there, still busy, he is no longer a real human. So living as a real human never measures a person's name and credit, wealth, or standing. It measures whether the five in him are still present, still alive, still bright. To let every person live as a real human is to let the five in every person be grown, be kept alive, be lit.
This measure is utterly equal. It does not ask whether a person is noble or lowly, rich or poor, in a high seat or in a mean alley. It asks only whether the five in him are still present, still alive, still bright. A person in a high seat whose five have gone out has not lived as a real human. A person in a mean alley whose five are whole is the one who has lived as a real human. So this measure turns completely over the worldly ruler that ranks high and low by name, credit and wealth: true high and low is not in how much you have taken or how high you have climbed, but in whether the five in you are fully grown and brightly alive. This turning over is also where the book's heart of taking the human as the root comes to land. It restores every person, whatever his outward circumstances, to a real human with the five in him, values each alike, and hopes alike that each can live the five out. Letting people live as real humans is just such a hope, the most equal and the deepest, that asks nothing about circumstances and asks only about the five.
Three. This One Place Is the Last Root
Why is this one place the book's last root, and not something else? Because everything else, traced to the end, is for this one place. And this one place is no longer for anything else. It is itself the end.
Laying institutions, what is it for? So people can live as real humans. Guarding paradise, what is it for? So people have somewhere to live as real humans. Saving the tool, putting the tool back in its place, what is it for? So the tool does not crowd out the place where the five grow, so people can live as real humans. All the lawmaking along this road, asked onward, points in the end to this one place: let people live as real humans. And this one place, asked further what it is for, can be asked no further. It is not for wealth, not for strength, not for anything else. Letting people live as real humans is itself the end, itself the good. So this one place is the end point of the book's long string of what is it for, the last root that needs no further asking and can bear none. All lawmaking is laid for it, and it is laid for nothing else. This is exactly how a root looks, being a root.
This layer is worth one more word, because it bears on how a person settles his own life. A person lives one life, busy and busy, chasing this, pursuing that: chasing wealth, pursuing name and rank, fighting over high and low. But wealth, for what? Name and rank, for what? Ask on, layer by layer, and if the answer is always to get some other thing, then this life is a rush along a road with no end, never filled, never settled. But this one place, living as a real human, can give this life a settling. It is not for anything else. It is itself the end, itself the good. If a person sets living as a real human, living out the five, as the root of his whole life, he has a home that asks nothing from outside, sufficient and at peace in itself: whether circumstances go well or ill, through gain and loss, flourishing and withering, so long as the five are alive and bright in him, this life of his has stood, and is good. So this last root is not only the end point of the book's lawmaking. It can also be where a person settles his whole life.
Four. Keep This Root, and You Keep Everything
See this last root clearly, and you know that keeping it is keeping everything in the book.
The book's thousands of words, its institutions one after another, its lawmaking layer upon layer, if you ask what is most important for them to keep, the answer is this one root: let people live as real humans, let the five not go out. Keep this one place, and the thousands of words all have somewhere to land, and all come alive. Fail to keep this one place, and the thousands of words, though every word is a pearl, all turn empty. So in reading the book and acting on the book, the first thing to keep is not remembering how many institutions, how many laws, but keeping this one root: whatever you lay, whatever you do, look back and ask, does this let people live more as real humans? Does this let the five be better kept alive, and less likely to go out? Keep this question, and the soul of the book is kept. Lose this question, and though you can recite the whole book backwards and forwards, you have lost its soul. Keeping this one root is keeping everything in the book. This one root is where the book's soul is tied.
This also gives those who read the book and act on it a very simple ground to stand on. A person may not remember the many complex institutions, may not be able to explain the twists and turns of the lawmaking layer by layer. That does not matter. Remember only this one root, let people live as real humans, let the five not go out, and it is enough to take on all kinds of new situations never spelled out. Meeting a matter, not knowing how to choose, ask one question: which road better lets people live as real humans, better guards the five from going out? Act by this question, and though you have not read every detailed rule in the book, you will not go astray in the great direction. So this one root is not only the book's soul, but also a master key left for the reader. The complex can be forgotten. This one place alone cannot be forgotten. Keep this one place, and it is like holding the headrope of the whole book: through ten thousand changes, you never leave the source.
Five. The Layer This Section and This Chapter Make Plain
This section draws this chapter in, and points out the last root of the whole book.
This road of lawmaking, its thousands of words, traced to the end, comes home to one place: let every real human live as a real human; let the five, in one body after another, not go out. Living as a real human is letting the five come alive and come bright. What it measures is not name, credit and wealth, but whether the five are present, whether they are alive. This one place is the end point of the book's long string of what is it for, the last root that is for nothing else and is itself the end. Keeping it is keeping everything in the book, keeping the book's soul. The three sections of this chapter laid down that the root purpose of this road of lawmaking is to serve the people with all one's heart, laid down that it carries on the vein of the ancestors, laid down that the root it finally keeps is to let people live as real humans. With this, where this road of lawmaking comes from, its purpose, and its root are all made plain. From here, this volume, this book, has two last layers of words left to say. One is words left for the next generation of real humans, and for the AI of the future. The other is the book's final curtain: how that great love remains in the human world.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.