VOLUME VII, CHAPTER 4, SECTION 2
The Four Faces Sustain One Another: No Face Stands Alone, All Four Hold Each Other Up
The last section made plain that the four institutions are four faces of one whole, and short of any one, no longer a whole. This section goes a layer further. These four faces are not only four pieces set side by side. They hold one another up and complete one another. Lay one face alone, however well it is laid, and it cannot hold. Only with the four faces holding one another up can each stand firm. The words "sustain one another" say exactly this layer: one face lays the floor for another, the other guards the back of the first, the four faces lean on one another, and together they make one whole that holds.
One. Why One Face Laid Alone Never Holds
First see why one face laid alone cannot hold. This question matters, because people ordering the world often fall into one common sickness: seize one face, and think they have found the cure for the whole world, pouring all their strength into one face and dropping the rest. The earlier volumes each laid one face. If you pulled some one face out on its own and counted on it to get the thing done by its own strength alone, what would happen?
Lay the face of culture alone: set the whole mind on growing the heart and spreading teaching, but leave the living untended, the common instrument not put in order, the law not laid. Even if the heart is grown for a while, the belly is empty, and that heart cannot be kept. The common instrument is still harming the people, and the grown heart cannot even guard itself. There is no bottom line, people harm one another, and teaching cannot stop it. This face of growing the heart, standing there all alone, with nothing to lean on on any side, cannot in the end hold up the whole world. Lay the face of economy alone: set the whole mind on making the yield large, but leave the heart ungrown, the common instrument not put in order, the law not laid. There is enough, but the greed and reckoning in the heart have never been cured, and with surplus wealth one goes and harms others instead. The common instrument is still bleeding the people, and the yield made large is seized. There is no bottom line, and cunning grabbing and plunder run free. This face of making the yield large, standing there all alone, cannot hold either. The two faces of politics and law, laid alone, are the same. Any face at all, pulled out on its own to get the thing done by its own strength, cannot hold. Each of the four faces has its use, and each has what it cannot carry alone.
Lay the face of politics alone: set the whole mind on putting the common instrument in order, setting discipline, making reward and punishment clear, but leave the heart ungrown, the living not met, the bottom line that guards the people not laid. Even if the common instrument is clean for a while, those who sit in its seats have hearts never grown, and with power in hand, greed is easily born. The people's living is wasted, and however strict the discipline, it cannot press down a starving people. With no bottom line that guards the people, that discipline slides easily into a tool for seizing people instead, and the stricter it is, the more it harms. Lay the face of law alone: set the whole mind on laying the law close and fine, the clauses dense and severe, but leave the heart ungrown, the living not met, the common instrument not put in order. The heart ungrown, the people are not willing to keep the law, and only slip through the gaps where no one is watching. The living not secured, the people are not able to keep the law, and under hunger and cold they cannot spare a thought for it. The common instrument not put in order, the handle of enforcing the law falls into the hands of those who harm the people, and the finer the law, the deeper the harm. So of the four faces, whichever one you pull out to lay alone, it cannot stand, for want of the other three. Each face's steadiness rests on the other three laying its floor and guarding its back. This drives out the next layer: the four faces must be joined in one place, holding one another up.
Two. How the Four Faces Hold One Another Up
Then the four faces joined in one place, how do they hold one another up? Look at them pair by pair, and you see the substance of their holding one another up.
Culture holds up economy: once the heart that guards others is grown in people, doing business need not be all deceit and scheming, and the yield, made large, will willingly be returned to the public, not swallowed alone. Economy holds up culture: once the floor of a living is full, a person need not go against his heart for a mouthful of food, and that heart that guards others can be kept grown and held firm. Politics holds up economy and culture: the common instrument turned to service, no longer bleeding the people, no longer taxing them savagely, and only then can the yield be kept and the heart grow in peace. Economy and culture in turn hold up politics: the heart grown, the living full, and those who sit in the seats of the common instrument are not so easily driven or lured into harming the people, and only then can that common instrument stay in its place. Law holds up the other three: with a bottom line laid clear, the heart has something to keep to, the living has something guarding it, the common instrument has something reining it. Those three in turn hold up law: hearts willing to keep it, and only then is the law not a dead letter. A living able to keep it, and only then can the law be kept. The common instrument back in its place, and only then does the law not sink into a tool for seizing people. The four faces, two by two, hold one another up, each laying the other's floor and guarding the other's back.
This layer of two by two holding up can also be said another way: each face is held up by the other three, and also holds up the other three. Culture, held up by economy, politics, and law, can grow the heart, and culture also holds up those three, for once the heart is set right, there is less cheating in business, less greed in the common instrument, and more people willing to keep the law. Economy, held up by culture, politics, and law, can be made large and kept, and economy also holds up those three, for once the living is full, the heart is easily at ease, those in the seats of the common instrument are less driven and lured, and the law is easily followed. Politics and law are the same, each held up by three and holding up three. This holding and being held, going round and helping one another, weaves a net in which all are tied together: stir one face and all four answer, steady one face and all four are at peace. This world being one whole rests exactly on this net. If the four faces were truly four pieces each standing on its own, with nothing to do with one another, this world would fall apart into four heaps, and could not stand as one whole.
Three. Sustaining One Another, Not Adding Together
The four faces holding one another up make not the sum of four pieces added together, but one living whole that soaks through itself, where short one, all the rest grow weak.
Four added to make four is four pieces set side by side, each standing on its own: take one away, and the three left are still three, no more and no less. The four faces sustaining one another are not like this. They lean on one another: take one face away, and the three left are not still three steady faces, but loosen along with it, and fail to stand along with it. Take economy away, and the heart cannot be kept, the common instrument is easily driven, the law is hard to keep, and the three left all shake at once. Take law away, and the heart has no bound to rely on, the living no guard, the common instrument no rein, and the three left all lose their footing at once. So the joining of the four faces is multiplying, is giving life to one another, not adding: one face steady helps the other three be steady, one face falling drags the other three down. Sustaining one another is exactly this layer of helping one another and leaning on one another. It goes one step deeper than "not one of the four faces may be missing": that one says short one face, the whole is not whole. Sustaining one another says the four faces, from the start, grow one another and are each other's root.
Take a plain image: the joining of the four faces is close to the four walls of a house. Four walls are not four boards each standing up on its own. They are one body, interlocked and holding one another up: this wall is braced by that one, that one is held up by this one, and only interlocked do the four make one house. Pull one wall out, and it is not that the three left stand steady with one wall less. The three left all lose their support at once and topple along with it. The four faces sustaining one another are just like this: not four boards side by side, but four walls interlocked. Understand this, and you know that one who orders the world must never only pile one wall higher and thicker and leave the other three empty. One wall high on its own and three not raised, and that one wall too will fall in the end.
Four. The Five of a Real Human as the Example
This sustaining one another shows most clearly when it lands on the five of a real human.
In a real human, the five, keep, guard, love, mercy, heart, are held up by exactly these four faces together. The share of Keep the rules leans on the face of law to lay the bottom line clear, and also on the face of culture to grow the heart that keeps itself. The shares of Guard what is handed down, Love all living things, Mercy for the suffering lean on the face of culture to grow them, and also on the face of economy to give people the strength to spare to guard, to love, to feel mercy, on the face of politics to keep the common instrument from trampling these shares, on the face of law to guard these shares from being seized. The share of A good heart, short any one of the four faces, is hard to keep whole: when the living presses hard, goodness is hard to keep. When the common instrument harms the people, goodness has nowhere to be put to use. When the bottom line is unclear, goodness has nothing to lean on. That the five can be kept grown and come alive in a real human is exactly the fruit of the four faces sustaining one another and holding them up together. Turn it around: short one of the four faces, and one or more of the five cannot stand. Why can the aim of guarding the five only be met with all four faces there and sustaining one another? The answer lies right here: the five are grown, from the start, by the four faces together. The four faces not whole, the five not whole.
This example also throws light back on the one thread running through the earlier volumes and this one. The earlier volumes laid culture, economy, politics, law face by face, seeming each to speak of one matter, but underneath, each was laying a patch of ground for the five: culture lays the ground for growing the heart, economy lays the ground for a settled life, politics lays the ground of being spared the trampling of the common instrument, law lays the ground of being spared harm from one another. With the four patches all laid, the five have a whole place to grow. This volume sees the four faces together, and what it sees is exactly how these four patches join into one whole field, how one missing corner leaves a gap, and the five wither away through that gap. So the four faces sustaining one another is not some idea hanging in the air. It is the real, solid footing of whether the five can be grown whole. Guard the five without laying the four faces, and the five have no ground to grow on. Lay the four faces without knowing they sustain one another, and the four faces each go their own way, and cannot hold up that one whole field.
Five. The Layer This Section Makes Plain
This section makes plain the layer of the four faces sustaining one another.
Lay one face alone, and it has nothing to lean on on any side, and however well it is laid, it cannot hold. The four faces joined in one place, holding one another up two by two, leaning on one another, and only then can each stand firm. This sustaining one another is not four pieces added together. It is one living whole, growing one another and each the other's root. Landed on the five of a real human, it shows just how the four faces together hold up that share. But if the four faces only hold one another up, only ever help one another, might another danger be born: some one face growing large on its own, on the strength of the other three holding it up, then turning around to press down the three and swell into a disaster? Beyond sustaining one another, must there be one more layer of reining one another in, of checking one another? If the force of helping has no check to restrain it, one face, helped by three, swells large and turns into a force pressing down the three, and then sustaining one another has walked into its own opposite. So beyond helping there must be checking, and only with these two layers together is the full face of this living mechanism seen. The next section lays this layer straight on, and it is the most important place in this living mechanism, the place where its deepest meaning shows.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Section Three. The Four Faces Check One Another: Beyond Holding Up, They Must Rein Each Other In.