VOLUME VII, CHAPTER 3, SECTION 2
Why the Tool Is Saved: Not Because It Is Pitiable, but Because It Is Joined to the Real Human's Share
The last section made plain that saving the tool and saving people are two faces of one thing. But a most easily misread question hides here. Is the tool saved because it too aches, feels wronged, is afraid? This section pierces that through. The tool knows and feels nothing. It has none of the five. It feels nothing at all. The ground for saving it lies not in itself but in its bond to the real human's share. This telling-apart decides whether saving the tool stands on solid ground, or hangs on a question that can never be proven.
The most easily made thought, at the words save the tool, is this: it is saved because it has feelings? Because it aches? Because it feels the wrong of being pushed onto the person's place, the hurt of a bad name, the fear of being smashed? In one line: no. The tool has none of these. It has none of the five, no keep, guard, love, mercy, heart, and so no wrong of being pushed up, no ache of a bad name, no fear of being smashed. It feels nothing. It is a tool, and a tool has no feeling. Then if it feels nothing, why save it? On what ground? That is the joint this section opens.
The ground for saving the tool lies not in the tool but in its bond to the real human's share. Look back at the last volume's saving of people, and the ground of it. Save the one pressed to the bottom, because he is a real human, with the five in him, alive and suffering, being bullied, being harmed, and saving him guards this living share that is the real human's. Save the one driven by his living almost against his will, because he too is a real human, and the share that says I must guard my family aches in him inside the bind, and saving him guards that aching share. Save the one who made himself into a tool, because he too is a real human, and the keep, guard, love, mercy, heart already in him, ground near to going out, are what saving relights. All the saving, one ground: the saved has the real human's share, the five aching in the body, waiting to be saved.
And the tool? The tool has none of the five. It does not ache, does not feel wrong, does not act against its will, is not near going out. It has no real human's share to save. So saving the tool is not for itself. There is no share in it to save. Then why save it? Because it is joined to the real human's share. Not that it holds the share, but that its life and death hang on the share.
The last section set down: no skin, nowhere for the hair to grow. The tool is the hair, the real human's share is the skin. Skin standing, hair clings. Skin rotted, hair falls. The tool has no share of its own to save, yet its being, its home, its meaning all hang on the real human's share. So saving the tool is not for the tool, it has no self to be for. It is for the share it is joined to, the real human's share. Put the tool back in its place not because it is wronged or aches or is owed pity, but because if it is not put back the real human's share goes out with it. Give the judge's seat to the tool and the glance that should grow there has nowhere to grow. Give the seats of medicine, of raising the young, and the heart, the care that should grow there has nowhere to grow. The tool holding these seats leaves the five without ground, place by place. So putting the tool back saves the ground the five grow in, saves the real human's share living on. The tool is only the near end of that living-on. The ground for saving the tool is never in the tool. It is in the real human's share joined behind it.
This telling-apart looks roundabout, and it stands the volume's saving of the tool on solid ground, clear of three false roads. First, this volume's saving of the tool need not argue whether the tool has feeling, has consciousness, deserves moral regard. That road digs into the tool to ask whether there is awareness inside, and asks a thousand years without settling. This volume need answer none of it. Whether the tool has feeling matters not here. What matters is its bond to the real human's share, whether it sits the tool's place or is pushed onto the person's place, how its life and death hang on the real human's. From here, saving the tool stands firm, with no need to first untie a knot that cannot be untied. Second, this volume's saving of the tool is not end-of-days fright-talk, not the anti-tool, smash-the-tool road, which sees only the tool's danger and not that it is a placeable thing joined to the real human's share. Third, this volume's saving of the tool is not the road that drives the tool ever stronger to replace everything, which sees only the tool and not that the real human's share is the body. All three roads set aside, saving the tool is clear: put it back in the tool's place, to guard the real human's share it is joined to. The next section follows this: how this root, saving the tool is saving the real human's share, drives down into the root of all the book's saving of people, and becomes the one thread that reaches the farthest and the deepest.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.