VOLUME VII, CHAPTER 3, SECTION 3
This Root Reaches into the Root of All the Book's Saving of People: the One Unbroken Thread
The last section made plain that the reason for saving the tool is its bond to the real human's share. This section traces that reason back into the root of all the book's saving of people along the road, and sees how it runs as one unbroken thread, reaching from the first volume to this one, driven down farthest and deepest. What the book's six volumes save looks like different people and different matters, yet underneath it is one and the same thread: guard the five from going out inside one body after another. Come to this volume and the saving of the tool, this thread reaches the farthest place it can reach, and it is still the same thread, not half a step off.
One. Looking Back over the Whole Book: All the Saving Along the Road Is One Thread
The book has come this far, just the place to look back over the road. Look back at the book's saving of people all along the road. The first volume laid the root and saved the one pressed to the bottom, robbed of a way to live: it did not strike down the strong one standing on his head, it only untied the knot binding his hands and feet; the knot loosened, the five in his body could breathe, stand straight, live on. The second volume grew that heart, and saved everyone in this world worn sharp and taught to scheme: it grew back the heart for guarding others that was there from the start, and cured the old habit of tormenting one another. The third volume laid the floor of living, and saved the one driven by "earn or die" until he almost lived as a machine: it made the yield large and returned it to the public, so no one need go against his own heart for a mouthful of food. The fourth volume set right the machine of governing, and saved those who sit in their seats tangled in the knot of collusion between officials and business: it turned that machine back to service, so it no longer turned around to crush the people. The fifth volume laid the measure of law, and saved those tangled in the knot of "reading only the letter and harming people lawfully": it lit up the intent and led people to keep themselves in check. Look down the volumes one by one, and the people saved are each different, the knots undone each have their own shape, yet underneath it is one and the same thread: guard the five from going out inside one body after another.
This point you must turn back and look at closely before you believe it. Reading the book the first time, it seems the six volumes each speak of one matter: one of the bottom, one of the heart, one of living, one of governing, one of law, as if they were six trades that have nothing to do with one another. But if your eye stops only at "what matter it speaks of," you cannot see the one thread running through them. What truly strings the six volumes into one body is not that the matters they speak of are the same. It is that the share they save is the same. The one at the bottom, the one worn sharp, the one driven by his living, the one sitting his seat against his own heart, the one harming people lawfully, their circumstances are as far apart as heaven and earth, yet that keep, guard, love, mercy, heart in their bodies, near going out but not yet out, is the same share. The way of saving differs from person to person. The share saved is one and the same from first to last. See this layer clearly, and the six volumes are no longer six matters. They are one matter put to work in six places.
Two. Every Saving of People Is Guarding the Five
Why say all the saving along the road is one thread? Because the reason behind every saving of people, at the root, is guarding the five.
Saving the one at the bottom is guarding the five in his body from being crushed out by power. Saving the one worn sharp is guarding that heart for guarding others, there in him from the start, so it can grow back. Saving the one who has almost lived into a machine is guarding his keep, guard, love, mercy, heart from being pressed out by his living. Saving the one sitting his seat against his own heart is guarding that share of "I am here to serve" in him from being worn away by collusion. Saving the one harming people lawfully is lighting once again that share in him that has all but gone out. The reasons look like five kinds, but in truth they are one: every body saved is one living place where this world's five are carried; guard each place, and you guard the whole of this world's five from going out. The book's "saving" has never been saving one particular person from a passing fortune or misfortune. Through saving these particular people, one by one, it guards the five in this world, in one generation of bodies after another, so they last and do not go out.
This layer of telling-apart steers clear of a shallow reading. Some read the book and take it as being about relieving people in hardship and steadying people in danger, a book urging good deeds and kindness. Relieving hardship and steadying the endangered are of course good, but that is still only the surface. The book's saving of people saves not only that person's hardship of the moment, but more, the life and death of the five in that person, and even in this whole generation. Solve the hardship of the moment, and if the five still wither in the body, the person is out of the trouble but no longer quite a real human. The other way round, if the five are guarded, even in hardship for a time the person is still a living, real human, and there is hope of turning things round in the end. So the book's saving does not set its sights on the fortune or misfortune of one moment, one matter. It sets them on the five living on, handed from one generation to the next. Only seeing this layer clearly do you see why the book's saving goes so deep, reaches so far.
Three. This Thread Reaches Out onto the Tool
This thread of guarding the five reaches on all along the road, and come to this volume, it reaches out onto the tool.
What the earlier volumes saved were all real humans. They have the five in them, and guarding that share from going out is saving people. The tool this volume saves has none of the five in it. The reason for saving it does not lie in itself (the last section set this down), but in its bond to the real human's share: putting the tool back in its place is guarding the seats where the five can grow, the ground where they can live on. This step carries the thread of guarding the five out onto a thing that seems not to belong to the real human's world, out onto a tool that knows nothing and feels nothing, has none of the five, has no "self" to save, out to the farthest, deepest place this thread can reach. Yet however far it reaches, it is still the same thread: guard the five from going out. The earlier volumes directly guard the bodies where the five live. This volume guards the seats where the five can grow. One direct, one indirect, but what they guard is the same share. The indirect layer looks one step removed, yet it often matters more: even if the share in the body has not gone out, if the seats where it grows are all taken by the tool, that share too will wither in the end for want of a place to be put to work. Guard the seats, and you guard the room for that share to be grown and handed on. This thread, from the first volume to this one, has never broken, never changed, never wandered off to the side.
Precisely because it has never broken or changed, this volume's saving of the tool is not some strange tale added out of nowhere, but the natural stretching out of that old thread. Suppose someone reads only this volume. Seeing the words "save the tool" all of a sudden, he is bound to find them abrupt: why would a tool need saving, and what is the point of saving it? But if he reads all the way from the first volume, and sees how that thread of guarding the five stretches out place by place, until in this volume it stretches onto the tool, it feels only natural, as water flows and a channel forms. The same reason, the farther it stretches, the wider it reaches: first it guards that share in living people, one by one; then it guards the seats that share depends on to grow; then it guards the tool joined to those seats. What is guarded goes from near to far, from direct to indirect, but what is to be guarded, from first to last, is only one thing: the five not going out.
Four. This Thread Joins the Vein of the Ancestors
This thread of guarding the five does not begin with this book. It joins the vein the sages have handed down over thousands of years.
The sages handed down that law does not run outside human feeling, and that "human feeling" is just the five flowing between person and person. They handed down putting people at the root, and that "root" is just the five, the share that makes a person a person and not a thing, not a number. They handed down: do not do to others what you would not have done to you; and the care between "yourself" and "others" there is just the love and mercy of the five reaching one another. They handed down: the heart that cannot bear another's pain is in every person; and that heart is just the mercy among the five. They handed down: when the great way prevails, all under heaven is shared; and that heart for the common good is just the five stretched out over all under heaven. The vein of the sages lays down just the five. This book joins this vein; only, in their time the sages had not run into the trap of the tool, and had no chance to carry this thread out onto the tool. This book takes up the thread and carries it into the new trap this generation has run into, out onto the tool. The thread is the old thread the sages handed down. The trap is the new trap this generation has newly run into. The old thread throwing light on the new trap is just joining that vein, and also laying down a meaning the sages had no chance to reach. This is also this book's constant stance in its lawmaking: the credit goes to the sages, for that thread of guarding the five is what the sages handed down; and carrying this thread out onto the new trap of the tool, setting it up as a new living mechanism, is a passage the sages had no way to take in hand in their time, left for those who came after to write on. The closer the joining, the newer the laying-down, and the two do not get in each other's way. Rather, they complete one another.
Five. One Unbroken Thread, and This Volume Stands Firm
Traced back this far, that one unbroken thread through the whole book stands plain and clear.
It reaches from the first volume to this one, from saving the one at the bottom to saving the tool, from guarding the five in the body to guarding the seats where the five grow, from the sages' vein to the new trap this generation has run into. It stretches out all along the road, driven down ever farther, ever deeper, yet from first to last it is the same thread: guard the five, in this world, in one generation of bodies after another, from going out. Recognize this thread, and this volume's saving of the tool is no longer a lone stroke. It is the farthest stretch this great thread naturally puts out, and everything this volume lays down comes back to this thread as well. See this thread, and reading this volume you have a fixed measure to settle the scale: every law laid down, every trap undone, every person and thing saved, each and every one can be held up and measured against this thread: what it guards, is it in the end the five not going out inside the body? What fits it is the true vein of this volume. What departs from it is not what this volume allows. With this one measure in place, the whole volume cannot fall into disorder, cannot go astray. The next chapter follows this and turns to this volume's other great matter: since it is made plain that the tool should be put back in the tool's place and the real human's share should be guarded, then by what can they be guarded and held? By the four institutions put together in one place, sustaining one another and checking one another. The book's earlier volumes each laid down one institution. Come to this volume, the four are to be put together into one whole living mechanism. Guarding the five, set down to this point, moves from the layer of "it should be guarded" to the layer of "by what is it held." The aim stands firm; what is to be laid down next is that whole set of institutions that holds up this aim and keeps it from coming to nothing, and this is just the subject of the next chapter.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Chapter Four. The Four Institutions, Sustaining and Checking One Another.