VOLUME VII, CHAPTER 4, SECTION 3
The Four Faces Check One Another: Beyond Holding Up, They Must Rein Each Other In
The last section made plain that the four faces sustain one another and hold one another up, and at the end it buried a question: if helping has no restraint, and one face, helped by the other three, swells large and turns into a force pressing down the three, what then? This section lays this layer straight on, and it is the most important place in this living mechanism of the four institutions as one, the place where its deepest meaning shows: beyond sustaining one another, the four faces must also check one another. Helping lets each of the four faces stand firm. Checking keeps any one of the four from swelling large. Only with the two layers together is this living mechanism whole. Along the way this section also sets it against the Western separation of powers, to see where the depth lies, and where the newness lies, in this lawmaking that sets the institutions apart.
One. Helping Alone Is Not Enough
First see what happens with helping alone. The four faces holding one another up and completing one another is good. But if there is only helping, with no layer of restraint, a new danger is born.
One face, helped by the other three, stands firm and grows strong. If there is no layer of restraint, it may, on the strength of that growth, turn around and press down, swallow, and drive the other three. The face of politics falls into this most easily. The common instrument stands firm to begin with because culture, economy, and law help it. But once it swells large, it may turn around and knead culture into a tool to whitewash itself, clutch economy as a purse to take from and give out at will, twist law into a coercive power that seizes people. By then the four faces are no longer a whole holding one another up, but a pattern of one face grown alone and three bowing their heads. The force of helping has turned instead into the feed for that one face's swelling. So helping alone is not enough. Beyond helping there must be a layer of reining one another in, of checking one another, so that no face can swell large enough to press down the rest.
This danger is not imagined out of nothing. It is the old story played out again and again through the order and disorder, the rise and fall, of the ages. How many worlds, at first, had four faces still able to help one another, and little by little that common instrument, with the help of everyone's strength, swelled larger by the day: first it took teaching in as its own mouthpiece, then clutched goods and wealth as its own private purse, and in the end turned the law into its own blade and pen. Of the four faces, three were all put to the service of one, and that world sank from a whole into the private property of a lone tyrant. There is also the reverse: the face of goods and wealth swells large, buys off the common instrument, keeps the scholars, works the law, and the four faces are again swallowed by one. Whichever face swells large, the end is the same: the four faces lose their balance, the whole breaks apart, and the five, along with it, have nowhere to rest. So helping is a double-edged blade: used in the right way, it lets the four faces hold one another up. With no check to restrain it, that force of helping turns instead into the stuff of swelling large. So whoever lays this living mechanism must never lay helping and not lay checking.
Two. How the Four Faces Check One Another
Then how do the four faces check one another? Each, by the force it has of its own, restrains the others, so they do not cross the bound.
Culture checks the other three: the goodness in the heart that guards others, that power to tell right from wrong, is an unseen measure. When economy would harm people, when politics would turn tyrannical, when law would sink into a coercive power, that judgment in the heart, "this is wrong," is the first resistance. Economy checks the other three: the people's living standing on its own, the household with wealth to spare, a person need not live by another's leave, and when the common instrument would drive them, when coercive power would press them, the people have the ground under them to refuse. Politics checks the other three: that common instrument turned to service has, as its own plain duty, guarding the people, and when culture is twisted, when economy is plundered, when the weak are wronged, the common instrument should come forth to guard them and set it right. Law checks the other three: that bottom line laid clear, that living measure, is the bound all four faces keep together. Culture may not teach people to do evil, economy may not grab by cunning and plunder by force, politics may not cross the bound to harm the people, and all have the law as their limit. Each of the four faces, by its own force, restrains the other three. And each of the four faces is restrained by the other three. In this way, no face can swell so large that nothing can rein it.
This layer of checking must land on solid ground, or it is only empty talk. Culture checking the other faces rests on that steelyard in people's hearts: when the common instrument turns tyrannical, when goods and wealth harm people, that judgment in the heart, "this is wrong," gathers into talk, into a common mood, into the backbone that will not go along, and that is a barrier unseen but real. Economy checking the other faces rests on the people standing on their own: when each household has a floor so it does not go hungry, no one need bow at the waist for five pecks of rice, and the driving of the common instrument, the threats of coercive power, lose most of their force before a people who stand on their own. Politics checking the other faces rests on the common instrument's own plain duty of guarding the people: when culture is twisted by someone to mislead the many, when goods and wealth are cornered by someone to harm the people, when the weak are bullied, the common instrument back in its place should step forward, block it, set it right, guard them. Law checking the other faces rests on that bottom line all people keep together: whether culture, economy, or politics, all must stop before that line, and whoever crosses it is cast off by all. Each of the four faces has one thing it relies on to check the other faces, and each is restrained under what the other faces rely on. Ring locked into ring, face clamping face, and no face can break free and swell into a disaster.
Three. Sustaining One Another and Checking One Another Are Two Faces of One Body
Sustaining one another and checking one another seem to be one a help and one a guard, running in opposite directions. In truth they are two faces of one body, and neither may be missing.
Only sustaining one another, with no checking one another, and the more the four faces help one another, the more likely they are to feed one face into swelling large, until at last a lone tyrant presses down the rest. Only checking one another, with no sustaining one another, and the four faces are on guard against one another, pulling at one another's elbows, none can stand firm, and at last it is a tray of loose sand. Helping lets the four faces grow strong and stand firm. Checking keeps growing strong from turning into swelling large. The two are one body: within helping, checking is held. Within checking, helping is held. Culture helps economy, and also restrains economy. Law guards politics, and also reins politics. The same tie, seen from the side of "letting it stand firm," is helping, and seen from the side of "keeping it from crossing the bound," is checking. The joining of the four faces is exactly one living whole where helping and checking are woven together: growing one another and reining one another, no face able to grow large alone, no face left weak alone. This is the true deep meaning of this living mechanism.
Understand this, and you know why this mechanism is living and not dead. A dead procedure is a set of frames nailed down line by line: it can hold for a time, but not through flow and change. A living mechanism is that net of helping and checking among the four faces, balancing as it moves. When one face shows the first sign of growing too strong, the force of the other three comes of itself to clamp it. When one face shows itself weak, the force of the other three comes of itself to prop it up. It does not rely on some once-and-for-all nailing down at any one place. It relies on that never-resting helping and clamping among the four faces, adjusting itself, bringing itself back to balance. This is exactly where it lasts longer and is more whole than any single face grown alone, or any iron law on a sheet of paper: it is a living body that finds its own balance again, not a dead frame that in the end will loosen and in the end be drilled through.
Four. Set Against the Western Separation of Powers
Speaking of checking one another, it is easy to think of the Western separation of powers. The two look alike, but in truth one is shallow and one is deep, and they must be told apart clearly.
The Western separation of powers divides three powers within one political institution: the legislative, the executive, the judicial, three powers each set apart, checking one another. That is dividing and checking within the one face of politics, splitting one government into three parts so that it reins itself from within. This design has its own fine points. But what it divides, in the end, is only three pieces within the one face of politics. The three faces of culture, economy, and law are not taken into this whole of checking one another. What this book lays is one layer deeper than that: what it divides is not three pieces within one face, but these four faces that differ at the root, culture, economy, politics, law, and it sets these four faces to check one another. The face of politics, in this book, is checked from outside by the three faces of culture, economy, and law. It does not rely on splitting itself into three pieces inside to rein itself. It relies on three other faces that differ at the root to restrain it. This lawmaking that sets the institutions apart, four faces checking one another, has never been laid by anyone before. The West divides powers, this book divides faces. The West seeks checking within one face, this book seeks checking among the four faces. The difference between shallow and deep lies exactly here.
Look one layer further: this difference between shallow and deep comes from the difference in the ills each guards against. What the Western separation of powers guards against is mainly the overreach of political power itself: fearing that one person or one office would grasp all the power of making law, carrying it out, and judging by it, it splits them apart, so that the three powers hold one another back. This guarding guards against dictatorship within the regime. What this book's four faces checking one another guards against is wider: not only the overreach of the regime, but also goods and wealth cornered to harm the people, culture and teaching twisted to mislead the many, the law sunk into a tool of coercive power. In a word, the West guards against one part growing large alone within the one face of politics. This book guards against any one of the four faces growing large alone. What it guards against being wider, what it divides runs deeper: not dividing one face into three, but dividing the whole into four. So the same words, "divide and check," fall in the West within one face, and in this book among the four faces. One is a finely made thing within a system of government. The other is a rebuilding of the frame of the whole world. Know this layer, and you will not take this book's four faces checking one another lightly, as an Eastern copy of the separation of powers.
Five. This Set Has No Forerunner
This living mechanism of four faces sustaining one another and checking one another carries on that vein of the ancestors, yet lays a meaning those before never reached.
The ancestors long ago had the wisdom of the vein of "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. This book lays the four faces sustaining one another and checking one another, and in form it carries on exactly this vein. It is not made up out of nothing. But the ancestors, in their day, never laid culture, economy, politics, law, these four faces, plainly down as one whole of institutions, four that each stand on their own, and sustain one another, and check one another. This book takes up that way of seeing of the "mutual generation and mutual overcoming" vein, lands it on these four faces, and lays it into one living mechanism of four faces set apart and checking one another. This set, in form, carries on the ancestors' vein. In its intent, it has no forerunner. It is unlike the West's separation of powers within one face, and it is not found in the ancestors either, who never got as far as laying down the division into four faces plainly. This section makes this layer plain, and the bone of this group, the four institutions as one, stands firm. The next chapter carries it on from here: this living mechanism, what truly is its charge?
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Chapter Five. The Living Mechanism, Its Charge and Its Homecoming, Back to the Human World.