VOLUME VII, CHAPTER 4
The Four Institutions, Sustaining and Checking One Another, the Bone of the Living Mechanism
The last chapter laid saving the tool, which is saving people, as one thread running all the way through, made plain the aim of guarding the five, and pointed to the next layer: by what is it held? By four kinds of institutions joined in one place. Of the earlier volumes, one laid culture, one laid economy, one laid politics, one laid law, each given wholly to one face, raised up one kind at a time. Laying them apart was something there was no way around, and it was bound to be so. But lay them long apart and an error creeps in easily: as if these four faces were truly four unrelated trades. What this chapter sets out to break is exactly that error. This chapter's three sections raise the high point of the whole volume: the four institutions joined into one living mechanism. First it lays the whole: culture, economy, politics, law are four faces of this world as one whole, and short of any one, it is not a whole. Then it lays sustaining one another: no face can stand alone, they must hold one another up and grow one another. Last it lays checking one another: beyond helping, there must also be restraint, so that no face swells large.
Section One begins by looking back at the earlier volumes. One volume laid culture, growing that heart and raising a person's character. One volume laid economy, making the yield large and returning it to the public. One volume laid politics, turning government to service. One volume laid law, setting a living measure that leads a person to keep himself in check. These four kinds are not four objects set out separately. They are one and the same whole, showing four faces toward four directions, as a thing has four sides, a body four limbs. Why exactly four faces, not one more, not one less? This section divides them by following the plain facts of this world: a person lives, and first has a heart, must eat and be clothed, gathers into a group, and living alongside others needs a bound. Heart, food, group, bound: these are heart, living, the common instrument, and the bound that culture, economy, politics, and law each tend. Then it tries taking one face away: culture alone without economy, and that heart in the end goes against itself for a mouthful of food. Culture, economy, and politics without law, and harming one another still rises up again. As for which is heavier and which lighter, this section answers plainly: the four faces have no heavier and lighter, no first and last. To hold one as the root and see three as the branches is only another face of the same sickness, short three of the four.
Section Two first sees why laying one face alone cannot hold. People ordering the world often fall into one common sickness: seize one face, and think they have found the cure for the whole world. Lay culture alone, with the belly empty, and the grown heart cannot be kept. Lay law alone, with the heart ungrown, and the people are not willing to keep it, with the living not secured, and the people are not able to keep it, and with the handle of enforcing the law in the hands of those who harm the people, the finer the law, the deeper the harm. Then it looks pair by pair: culture holds up economy, economy holds up culture, politics holds up economy and culture, law holds up the other three, and those three in turn hold up law. Each face is held up by the other three, and also holds up the other three, weaving a net in which stirring one face makes all four answer. So the joining of the four faces is multiplying, is giving life to one another, not adding. This section takes a plain image: the joining of the four faces is close to the four walls of a house, interlocked, and pull one wall out, and the three left all lose their support at once. At the end it lands on the five of a real human: Keep the rules, Guard what is handed down, Love all living things, Mercy for the suffering, A good heart are held up by exactly the four faces together. The four faces not whole, the five not whole.
Section Three begins from the other danger in helping. One face, helped by the other three, if there is no restraint, may, on the strength of that growth, turn around and press down the rest. The face of politics falls into this most easily: once the common instrument swells large, it kneads culture into a tool to whitewash itself, clutches economy as a purse to take from and give out at will, twists law into a coercive power that seizes people. So each of the four faces must, by the force it has of its own, restrain the others: culture rests on that steelyard in people's hearts, economy on the people standing on their own, politics on the common instrument's own plain duty of guarding the people, law on that bottom line all people keep together. Sustaining one another and checking one another are two faces of one body: helping lets the four faces stand firm, checking keeps growing strong from turning into swelling large. Then it sets this against the Western separation of powers: that divides three powers, the legislative, the executive, the judicial, within the one face of politics. The West divides powers, this book divides faces. In form, it carries on that vein of the ancestors, "mutual generation and mutual overcoming": the five phases generating and overcoming one another is exactly an old way of seeing helping and checking joined in one body.
What this chapter makes stand firm is the bone of this living mechanism: the four faces joined into one whole, growing one another and reining one another, no face able to grow large alone, no face left weak alone. Set against the Western separation of powers, this set of institutions set apart, four faces checking one another, has no forerunner. With the bone standing firm, the next chapter goes on from here and asks what, truly, is the charge of this living mechanism, turning from the bone of the institutions to their spirit.
Chapter contents:
Section One. The Four Institutions as One: This World, the Whole, Has Only Four Faces.
Section Two. The Four Faces Sustain One Another: No Face Stands Alone, All Four Hold Each Other Up.
Section Three. The Four Faces Check One Another: Beyond Holding Up, They Must Rein Each Other In.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Section One. The Four Institutions as One: This World, the Whole, Has Only Four Faces.