VOLUME VII, CHAPTER 4, SECTION 1
The Four Institutions as One: This World, the Whole, Has Only Four Faces
The last chapter made plain the aim of guarding the five, and pointed to the next layer: by what is it held? By four institutions in one place, sustaining and checking one another. This chapter is the high point of the volume, and lays that living mechanism down. This section lays the whole of it first. Culture, economy, politics, law are not four separate, unrelated things. They are the four faces of this world as one whole, whole only together, and short of any one, no longer whole. See this, and you see why the earlier volumes laid them one at a time, and why here they must be seen as one.
Look back. Volume by volume, four institutions were laid. One laid culture: grow the heart, cure the habit of tormenting one another, raise a person's character. One laid economy: make the yield large, return it to the public, so each has a floor and none goes hungry. One laid politics: turn government to service, dissolve the power that seizes people, let it tend the people's affairs and stand over no one. One laid law: light the intent of the measure, set a living rule that draws a person toward governing himself, not a force that seizes. Four volumes, four institutions, laid one by one.
Laying them one at a time was needful. Each face has its own reasoning, its own knot, to be seen and undone one at a time. Speak all four at once and each blurs, and none stands. But lay them long apart and an error creeps in, that these four are truly four unrelated trades, each minding its own, no well disturbing another. This section breaks that error. These four are not four separate things standing side by side. They are the four faces of this world as one whole, as a thing has four sides, a body four limbs, whole only together, and apart no whole thing at all. Not four laid in a row, but one whole showing four directions.
Why exactly four, not three, not five? Because this world has just these four roots that must be tended apart. The face of culture tends the matter inside a person's heart: the heart that guards others, the turn toward being good to people or tormenting them, the character, the sense that you and I are alike real humans. The face of economy tends the matter of the hand and the belly: whether there is enough, whether one eats, whether one has a settled home, whether one is spared going against himself to harm another for a living. The face of politics tends this world's common instrument: what government does and does not do, for whom it is set, whether it holds the power that seizes people, whether it turns to serving the people. The face of law tends this world's line: what may not be done, which bound may not be crossed, where the living measure stands, how a person keeps himself, how people spare one another harm. Heart, living, instrument, line, four faces this world as one whole must have. Miss one, and there is a place no one tends, and it is no whole thing.
These four are not drawn from the air but follow the plain facts of this world. A person lives, and first has a heart, and the turn of that heart decides whether he treats others with kindness or cuts them. This the face of culture tends. A person lives, and must eat and clothe himself, and the fullness or want of his living decides whether he can hold that heart in peace. This the face of economy tends. People gather into a group and need a common instrument to tend the affairs of the many, and its turn decides whether it guards or harms the people. This the face of politics tends. People live together and need a line, and its clearness or blur decides whether the living is settled or in disorder. This the face of law tends. Heart, food, group, line, the four roots that make the human world a human world. So one who tends the world tends these four faces, not one more, not one less. Cut finer if you like, and every finer cut falls within these four. They are the coarsest, fullest, least combinable layer of division, and so those who lay institutions lay by these four. Raise the cord and the mesh opens.
Miss any one face and the whole cannot stand. Take one away and see. Culture without economy: grow the heart well, but with too little to eat, in cold and hunger, the heart cannot hold, and one goes against himself for a mouthful. Economy without culture: enough to eat, but the greed, the reckoning, the will to harm in the heart never tended, and with surplus one goes and harms. Culture and economy without politics: heart grown, living full, but the common instrument still crushing the people, taxing to the bone, and that little heart and little surplus cannot be kept. Culture, economy, politics without law: heart grown, living full, instrument set right, but no clear line, no living measure, and the bound between people blurs, and mutual harm rises again. Take any one face away, and the other three stand crooked. For this world to stand, four faces, none short.
This answers why so many good laws and fine intents have come to nothing. Some tended the heart alone, taught virtue, spread learning, and worked hard at it, but did not tend the living, and with the people in cold and hunger the teaching was water on sand. Some enriched the state alone, raised trades, gathered wealth, to real effect, but did not tend the heart, and wealth full with virtue thin, the surplus became fuel for mutual harm. Some set the instrument in order alone, and the discipline slid easily into a tool for seizing people. Some laid the law fine alone, clause on clause, but with the heart untended and the living unmet, the people would not and could not keep it, and however fine, it was dead letters. None of these failed because that one face was laid poorly. They failed because only one face was laid, the other three left short. See that no one face can be missing, and you see the way of ordering the world was never to push one face to the extreme, but to raise all four together, each holding the others up.
This also answers a common question: among the four, which is heavier, which comes first? There is no heavier and lighter, no first and last. Short any one and the whole does not stand, as with a thing's four sides, a body's four limbs, none more needed, none to be spared. Some prize culture, thinking a heart set right settles all. Some prize economy, thinking full granaries teach the rites. Some prize politics, thinking a clean instrument steadies all under heaven. Some prize law, thinking a clear measure makes wrongdoers withdraw. Each holds one end and makes it the root and the other three the branches. But there are no roots and branches here. Four directions of one whole, none to be missed. To make one the root and three the branches is only another face of the sickness of laying one and dropping three. The next section carries it further: how one face laid alone cannot stand, and how the four sustain one another.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.