VOLUME VII, CHAPTER 6, SECTION 1
Those Who Hold the Real Human's Place: the Five Great Kinds
The last chapter made plain that the real humans come back to the human world are kind to one another, help one another, respect one another, and at its close it drew out a question: the human world always has some seats, some matters, that must be borne by those who hold the real human's place, so who are they? This section lays it plain. Back in the human world, by far the greater part of the matters of yield is given to the tool, but there are some seats that nothing but a real human can hold, because to sit these seats and do these things, without the five, they cannot be done right. These people who hold the real human's place fall, coarsely, into five great kinds: those who serve the public, teachers, high-skill people, the various licensed practitioners, and the soldier and the officer of the peace. This section makes plain, kind by kind, why each of them must be a real human.
One. What Is the Real Human's Place
First, what is the real human's place. The sections before laid it down: the seats of this world fall, coarsely, into two kinds. One kind is the seat of yield, which puts out force, is about efficiency, can be counted, and is given to the tool to do. The other kind is the real human's place, which cannot be done right without the five, and must be held by a real human.
The real human's place has one shape in common: to sit this seat and do this thing, without that keep, guard, love, mercy, heart, it is not done right, not done well, and may even be done to harm people. What it asks for is not speed, not thrift, not high yield. It is that heart that lifts its eyes and sees the living person, that self-keeping that holds the bottom line, that charge that guards people and guards what is handed down, that mercy that cannot bear another's pain, that good heart that asks itself in the deep of the night. Every seat of this nature is a real human's place, and none of them can the tool replace. The five great kinds below are each one kind of the real human's place, and each, by its nature, must be a real human.
It must be said first: these five great kinds are not meant to list every real human's place under heaven. They name the great ones, the plain ones, so the shape of the real human's place can be seen. Real human's places are scattered all through the human world, far more than these five kinds. Wherever a thing is done right or done wrong according to whether the five are present in a person's heart or not, that is a real human's place. These five great kinds are, among them, the most vital, the ones least to be given over to the tool: some hold the common instrument, some hand on the human heart, some keep the tool's bound, some decide over lives and affairs, some hold the force that guards people and land. Naming these five kinds is to let people see clearly: which seats, however strong the tool grows, must never, never be handed over. See these five kinds clearly, and you have a measure to take to the other seats: whatever is like these five kinds in nature should be kept in real human hands.
Two. The First Kind: Those Who Serve the Public
The first kind, those who serve the public, are the ones who hold that common instrument.
The common instrument is turned to service, as the earlier volumes laid down. But the common instrument is dead, and the one who holds it is a living person. One who serves the public sits in the seat of that common instrument, and every decision he makes falls on living people: whether to grant this household's request, whether to approve that case of relief, how to treat a citizen come to get a thing done. These things cannot be done right without the five. Without the heart that guards the people, he takes the citizen for a nuisance, for a number. Without mercy, he looks at suffering and does not see it. Without the self-keeping that keeps the rules, he uses the power for private gain. The common instrument can take the tool's help: looking up files, reckoning, retrieving, let the tool do them. But that last thought of decision, the judgment "is it right to treat this citizen this way," nothing but a real human can make. Hand this thought to the tool, and the seat of the common instrument is given over to a reckoning power with none of the five, and the common instrument may sink into a machine that coldly crushes the people. So the one who holds the common instrument must be a real human.
This kind is set first because the common instrument reaches widest and bears heaviest. One thought gone astray in one who serves the public often bears not on one person or one household only, but on a whole stretch of land, a whole crowd of the people. The common instrument in hand, used rightly, is the blessing of ten thousand people. Used wrongly, it is the bane of ten thousand people. Just because this force is so heavy, the one who holds it needs the five beneath him all the more. The tool can sort his case files clean and clear for him, reckon his figures without a hair's error, and this is the tool's good, use it freely. But the weighing of "when this one approval comes down, is it joy or grief for a household," the asking oneself "the way I act, can I answer for it to the people, can I answer for it to my conscience," the tool can never, however it tries, do in his place. In the seat of one who serves the public, using the tool without letting go of that thought is the shape it ought to have.
Three. The Second Kind: Teachers
The second kind, teachers, are the ones who hand the five down, one generation after another.
The root of teaching is not in pouring knowledge into the student's head. That layer the tool can do, and do fast and wide. The root of teaching is in handing the five, keep, guard, love, mercy, heart, down one generation after another, raising whole real humans one by one. This nothing but a real human can do. A teacher facing a student hands on not only words and reasons but that share in himself: how he treats people, the student watches. How he keeps to what is right, the student learns. His care for this student's whole life, the student feels. This teaching by word and by living example, this person raising person, the tool cannot do. The tool can give lessons, answer questions, give marks, but it does not have the five, so it cannot hand on the five. Facing a student, it does not have that care, "what kind of person will this child grow into." Give the seat of raising people to the tool, and what is raised is a crop of empty shells that can answer questions and have none of the five. So the one who holds the seat of raising people must be a real human.
This kind must be taken with special gravity, because what it bears on is not one moment, one matter, but the next generation of real humans. One who serves the public with the five gone out harms the citizens of today. A teacher with the five gone out harms a whole generation to come. Teaching is the lifeline that hands the five down one generation after another, and once this lifeline breaks in the hands of some generation of teachers, the next generation has nowhere left to raise the five from. So the seat of raising people is the pivot on which the five are handed down the generations, and must never, never be given to a tool with none of the five. The tool coming into the classroom, that is fine. Letting it help to teach and clear up questions, mark and drill, that is how it is useful. But that seat of handing down the way, that seat of person raising person, that seat where "the teacher standing here is himself the shape of a real human shown to the student," must forever be stood by a real human. A student can learn knowledge from the tool, but only from a real human can he learn how to be a real human.
Four. The Third and Fourth Kinds: High-Skill People and the Various Licensed Practitioners
The third kind, high-skill people. The fourth kind, the various licensed practitioners. These two kinds both hold a special skill and bear straight on lives and affairs.
High-skill people are the ones who make the tool, use the tool, steer the tool. The tool is made by them, tuned by them, set loose by them. That bound of "where the tool must stop, which seats may not be given to the tool" is held right in their hands. This bound cannot be kept without the five. Without the heart that guards people, they push the tool onto the person's place for name and gain. With it, they keep that bound again and again, letting the tool put out its force in the tool's place and not cross the bound to harm people. The various licensed practitioners are the doctor, the lawyer, the engineer, the accountant and their like, who hold a special skill and decide straight over lives and affairs. A doctor decides a patient's life and death. A lawyer carries a client's person and household. One stroke of an engineer bears on a bridge, on the lives of the thousands in a building. These seats cannot be held without the five: that heart that sees who this person is, that care of one standing at the edge of a chasm, that good heart that asks itself in the deep of the night, not one can be missing. Give these seats to the tool, and lives and affairs are handed to a reckoning power with none of the five, that cannot bear the charge. So the one who holds these two kinds of seats must be a real human.
Seen together, these two kinds carry a deeper layer: high-skill people keep the bound of the tool, the various licensed practitioners keep the measure of lives and affairs. The one sees to where the tool must stop, the other sees to how a special skill should be used on living people. These two places are just where the tool and the person meet most closely, and also where things go wrong most easily. High-skill people, if they lose the five, push the tool across that bound with their own hands. The various licensed practitioners, if they lose the five, turn the skill in their hands into a knife that harms people. These two kinds of people, one holding the gate at the tool's end, one keeping the measure at the end of human affairs, are both where the five are put to their most vital use. The tool can be a great help in these two places: trial-reckoning for high-skill people, checking for the various licensed practitioners. But that thought that holds the gate, that thought that keeps the measure, that last weighing that bears on the lives and fortunes of thousands, is forever the real human's own part.
Five. The Fifth Kind: The Soldier and the Officer of the Peace
The fifth kind, the soldier and the officer of the peace, are the ones who hold that force that guards people and land.
What the soldier and the officer of the peace hold is the force this world uses to guard people and land. This force, used rightly, is the shield and wall that guards the people and steadies the country. Used awry, it is the weapon that wounds people and brings ruin on the country. How this force is used, when it is used, on whom it is used, that thought of decision cannot be made right without the five. A soldier, an officer of the peace, facing a particular person, a particular situation, the judgment of "should this force be moved, and how far," hangs on the heart that guards people in him, the mercy, the self-keeping that keeps the rules. This thought must never be handed to the tool. The sections before spoke of the so-called autonomous weapon: letting the tool, on its own, pick out, judge, and decide the life or death of a living person. That is exactly giving this real human's place, the soldier's and the officer's, to a reckoning power with none of the five, the most dangerous kind of giving way this world knows. The force that guards people and land, that last thought, must be held in real human hands. So the one who holds this force must be a real human. These five great kinds, those who serve the public, teachers, high-skill people, the various licensed practitioners, the soldier and the officer of the peace, each because its seat cannot be done right without the five, must be held by a real human. The next section follows on and asks again: since there are these seats that must be kept, then the other way round, which seats, which trades, will vanish of themselves as the tool comes into its place?
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Section Two. Some Seats, Some Trades, Will Vanish of Themselves.