Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age

by Robert N. Bellah

  The ignorant are permitted to instruct the wise; the unworthy are permitted to oversee the worthy. The life provided the people is impoverished and oppressive. Their obligatory service is toilsome and bitter. It is for this reason that the Hundred Clans [the people] consider their rulers as base as a witch and hate him as they do ghosts. Each day they hope to detect any opportunity to band together to overthrow him and ultimately to drive him into exile.198

  It is the ruler’s “insatiable and ravenous appetite constantly to desire the possessions of others” that results in oppressive taxation of the people, their impressment to build his lavish palaces and gardens, and their conscription to fight in his wars, and the consequent endangerment of his state.‘99 For one who desires safety, “the best thing for him to do is to govern fairly and love the people.” It is these considerations that lead Xunzi to quote an “old text,” which says, “The ruler is the boat and the common people are the water. It is the water that bears the boat up, and it is the water that capsizes

  Xunzi, no more than any other early Chinese thinker, concludes from the idea that the people are basic and the ruler is legitimate only if he cares for them, that what is needed is a new institutional order in which the people would have a say in their own government. The Daoists toy with the idea of no government at all, but the only practical way of following that prescription would be to withdraw from society and become a hermit. Xunzi and other Confucians thought that the idea of the people governing themselves could only be a prescription for anarchy. For Xunzi the idea that human nature (xing) is evil-perhaps better translated as human nature is bad, because the idea of radical evil was absent in ancient China-arises from his sense that our nature consists primarily of numerous and insatiable desires, and that without government, something like the Hobbesian war of all against all would result as each attempted to satisfy his desires at the expense of others. Perhaps in the harsh conditions of the third century, Mencius’s modest idea that human nature contained, along with numerous desires, at least the beginnings of moral impulses, seemed too optimistic to Xunzi. For him, external discipline was the secret to the development of morality, but for him, too, something internal must understand and want such discipline.

  It was Xunzi’s rejection of Mencius’s idea that “human nature is good” that probably did more harm to his long-term reputation than anything else, and a vast literature has grown up around this issue, both in China and among Western scholars. Here I can only seek to understand Xunzi’s position without entering the full complexity of the controversy.201 The fundamental problem in understanding Xunzi’s position is how, if our nature is “bad,” anyone ever became virtuous in the first place. In his own terms, Mencius has the same problem, because if the moral impulses, left untended, will quickly wither away, who, then, will be motivated to tend them? The answer, in both cases, is the heart or heart/mind (xin), but this answer raises new questions. For Mencius the heart seems to be the source of moral intuitions that have the power to nurture the moral impulses of human nature until they produce, through self-cultivation, a genuinely moral person, a junzi or gentleman, who in turn can instruct others. We saw that he drew, perhaps, from the proto-Daoist Neiye for this idea.

  A. C. Graham argues that Xunzi’s idea of the heart is indebted to Zhuangzi, except that in its depth it has a moral intuition that Zhuangzi did not observe. He quotes from book 21 of the Xunzi:

  How does man know the Way? By the heart. How does the heart know? By being empty, unified and still. The heart never ceases to store, yet something in it is to be called empty; to be multiple, yet something in it is to be called unified; to move, yet something in it is to be called still. From birth man has knowledge, and in knowledge there is memory; “memory” is storing, yet something in it is to be called emptynot letting the already stored interfere with the about-to-be-received is called being empty. From birth the heart has knowledge, and in knowledge there is difference; of the “different” it knows each at the same time, and it knows each at the same time is multiple, yet something in it is to be called unified-not letting one of them interfere with another is called being unified. The heart when sleeping dreams, when idling takes its own course, when employed makes plans, so never ceases to move, yet something in it is to be called still-not letting dream and play disorder knowledge is called being still.202

  This passage could be seen as an attempt to understand the wonderful capacity of the mind, and Nivison suggests that xin in Xunzi “is mind now, not mind-heart,“203 yet Graham still translates xin here as heart-maybe we can never be sure that xin means only one end of the heart-mind continuum.

  The mind, in another metaphor with a long history, is, for Xunzi, like still water: it can reflect reality perfectly and can lead us to morality. But water is easily disturbed, so the mind is not an infallible instrument-only the properly trained mind will lead us in the right direction.204 Xunzi exalts the Sage Kings, Yao, Shun and Yu, but particularly the “later kings,” the founders of the Zhou dynasty, because we know most about them, as the ones who got things right and whose example remains true for all time. We might think, then, that the sages were some kind of extraordinary beings, different, somehow, from ordinary humans, yet Xunzi is at pains to disabuse us of that idea:

  The man in the street can become a Yu … If the man in the street applies himself to training and study, concentrates his mind and will, and considers and examines things carefully, continuing his efforts over a long period of time and accumulating good acts without stop, then he can achieve a godlike understanding and form a triad with Heaven and Earth. The sage is a man who has arrived where he has through the accumulation of good acts.201

  It would seem that anyone who uses his mind properly, and doesn’t rely on his inborn feelings, his nature (zing), as Mencius thought, would, with sufficient long-term effort, become a sage, a moral exemplar. And yet how do “godlike understanding” and “forming a triad with Heaven and Earth” suddenly get into it?

  Just as there is a problem with translating xin as “heart” or “mind,” there is a problem of translating Tian as “Heaven” or “Nature.” In his “Discourse on Nature”206 (book 17), Xunzi is at pains to differentiate what we would call natural events from human moral norms. That is, evil rulers do not necessarily cause earthquakes and other natural disasters; indeed, Xunzi insists that “human portents”-such as evil government that leads to untended fields and people dying by the roadside-that are the real portents of the fall of states. Here we see a rejection of what Max Weber would call magic, but not necessarily the emergence of a “secular” view of nature. The triad of Heaven, Earth, and man suggests a cosmological resonance, so that when human affairs are in order, this is in accordance with Heaven:

  When the work of Heaven has been established and its accomplishments brought to completion, when the form of man is whole and his spirit is born, then love and hate, delight and anger, sorrow and joy find lodging in him. These are called his heavenly emotions. Ears, eyes, nose, mouth, and body all have that which they perceive, but they cannot substitute for one another. They are called the heavenly faculties. the heart [xin] dwells in the center and governs the five faculties, and hence it is called the heavenly lord.107

  It would seem that just as Heaven is Lord of the cosmos and the king is lord of the state, so the heart/mind is the (heavenly) lord of the bodily faculties. Here we have a resonance that is not magical but, in the Chinese context, is surely religious.

  There are moments when Xunzi seems to think of the xin as calculating, weighing, and seeing that disorder is harmful to human beings and order beneficial; so that establishing the moral order is a way of overcoming anarchy and violence, and thus a utilitarian good. But at a deeper level Xunzi rather clearly assumes that morality is a good in itself, is the very essence of our humanity:

  Fire and water possess energy [qi] but are without life [sheng]. Grass and trees have life but no consciousness [zhi]. Birds and beasts have consciousness but no sen
se of duty [yi]. Man possesses energy, life, consciousness, and in addition a sense of duty. Therefore he is the noblest being on earth.208

  For the gentleman, the moral man, there is no calculation of self-interest, only a deep commitment to doing what is right (yi):

  When justice [yi] is at stake, not to bow one’s head before power and look after one’s own benefit, and not to change one’s convictions even if the whole empire is offered to one, to uphold justice and not to bend oneself, though taking death seriously-this is the courageousness of the scholar and the gentleman [shi and junzi].209

  Even without the beginnings of virtue in one’s nature, one’s heart has the capacity and the independence to make autonomous judgments, as securely as a Kantian:

  The heart [xin] is the ruler of the body and the master of its godlike intelligence. It gives commands, but it does not receive any from anywhere. It prohibits and permits by itself, it decides and chooses by itself, it becomes active and stops by itself. Thus the mouth can be forced to be silent or to speak, and the body can be forced to bend or stretch itself, but the heart cannot be forced to alter its opinion. If it regards something as right, then it accepts it, and if it regards something as wrong, then it rejects it. Therefore I say: The heart is free and unobstructed in its choices. It sees all things for itself. And although its objects are complex and manifold, in its innermost essence it is undivided itself.210

  Nonetheless, the heart when properly cultivated will not be capricious or arbitrary: what it will discern is the true Way, and the rituals (li) that embody it-it will not stray from the examples of the Sage Kings: “Ritual is the ridgepole of the Way of Humanity.“211

  I have not emphasized the more authoritarian side of Xunzi, his willingness to use punishments in an age when government by ritual alone seemed unrealistic, his willingness even to compromise with less than noble rulers if they will be better than the worst at the time. We cannot forget that two of the greatest Legalists, Han Fei and Li Si, were his students, however much they betrayed both the letter and the spirit of his teaching. And the idea that for Xunzi morality does not arise from within but can only be imposed from without, a half-truth as we have seen, is generally considered “conservative.”

  Nonetheless Xunzi uttered or affirmed some of the most radical ideas to be found anywhere in early Chinese thought; above all: “Follow the Dao and not the ruler, follow justice and not the father.“212 Given the heavy emphasis on obedience to rulers and fathers in imperial Confucianism, with the requirement that one remonstrate but never disobey when one differs from such superiors, this short sentence seems almost Another hierarchical relation of central importance in the Confucian tradition is that of teacher and student. But Xunzi subjects even this relationship, and himself in it, to this firm ethical standard:

  He who criticizes me and is right is my teacher. And he who agrees with me and is right is my friend. But he who flatters me is my enemyu4

  As we saw in connection with “the man in the street,” one attains such high ethical standards neither easily nor “naturally.” One has to work hard to become a moral person, and, in Xunzi’s view, emphasizing a point more central in the Analects than in the Mencius, through study, through the Classics, and with the help of a worthy teacher who can spur one on and show one the way. One of Xunzi’s achievements was to underline the centrality of the Classics and the necessity of constant study, something that became embedded in the tradition even when Xunzi was relatively forgotten. And among those things that had to be studied, nothing was more important than ritual (li) and music (yue). Treatises on these subjects are among the most important in the Xunzi.

  Xunzi’s book 19 is devoted to ritual (li) and, as we might expect, has a great deal of detail about proper ritual, especially the sacrifices carried out by rulers at various levels and funeral rituals for rulers and others. Ritual in this sense is a continuation of the early idea of ritual contained in the “great services” discussed in the Zuo zhuan and referred to early in this chapter. But book 19 also contains more general discussions of the place of ritual in human life, something even close to a theory of ritual, and so it is one of the richest sources for the understanding of early Chinese thought about ritual.211

  Xunzi begins the chapter with a discussion of human desires, which, as we have noted, are extensive and insatiable and, if not ordered, will be the source of chaos and violence. The Sage Kings, however, established ritual not in order to suppress desires but to regulate them, so that they can be fulfilled in the right way. Xunzi makes the point with the clear statement: “The meaning of ritual is to Naturally, Xunzi insists that each rank of society has its own appropriate rituals, so that the ritual order reinforces the social hierarchy that all early Chinese thinkers except the Daoists took as natural.

  In his description of how ritual works, Xunzi reaches an intensity that gives rise to a rhymed verse that seems to be something like a cosmological hymn to the effects of ritual:

  All rites begin with coarseness, are brought to fulfillment with form, and end with pleasure and beauty. Rites reach their highest perfection when both emotion and form are fully realized …

  As Paul Goldin indicates, “There is only one Way. The Sage Kings apprehended it, and their rituals embody it. There is no other Way, and no other constellation of rituals that conforms to the Way. It is through the Way, moreover, that Heaven plays a role in our lives.“218 Goldin compares Xunzi’s idea of the Way ordained by Heaven that embodies the rituals with the Western idea of natural law ordained by God.219

  Ritual, according to Xunzi, is not logical and so cannot be refuted by shallow theories.220 The understanding of ritual requires an advanced stage of self-cultivation, and so only the sage fully understands it: “The sage clearly understands ritual, the scholar and gentleman find comfort in carrying it out, officials of government have as their task preserving it, and the Hundred Clans incorporate it into their customs.“221 But good customs are moral customs, and Xunzi is clear that rule by punishment makes the common people devious in the attempt to obey only the letter of the law, whereas rule by ritual will make them desire to be moral.

  Book 20 is devoted to music and, as it is often paired with ritual, partakes of many of the same characteristics. It, too, is based on emotion and involves the forming of emotion. With music, however, the central emotion is joy: “Music is joy,” the chapter begins.222 It should be noted that the same graph could be read “music” or “joy” leading to occasional, perhaps sometimes intentional, ambiguities as to which word is meant. Early in the chapter Xunzi writes, “Men cannot live without music,” which might also be read “Men cannot live without joy.” In any case, music is essential to a fulfilled human life, and Xunzi scoffs at the Mohists for thinking otherwise. Because ritual almost always involves both music and dance, the overlap between the two is considerable, so that Xunzi’s theory of ritual also applies largely to music.

  With both ritual and music, learning is required to avoid the extremes of overindulgence or (particularly in the case of funerals) self-flagellation resulting in bodily injury. It is the mean that is required, and it is knowledge that helps us find the mean. For Xunzi, morality in every sphere is not “natural,” but comes only with hard and unremitting learning and an understanding of the great exemplars of the past.223 Philip Ivanhoe ends his discussion of moral self-cultivation in Xunzi with a passage from book 1:

  I once spent a whole day in si “reflection,” but I found it of less value than a moment of xue “learning.” I once tried standing on tiptoe and gazing into the distance, but I found I could see much farther by climbing to a high place.

  Ivanhoe points out that the high place was “the edifice of culture,” the climb to it took one on “the steep and rugged path of learning,” but that the result “afforded a vast and incomparable view.“224

  This chapter has covered a great deal of ground, but I feel, before closing, the necessity of a cautionary note. In Chapters 6 and 7, concerned with ancient I
srael and ancient Greece, we seemed to be on relatively firm ground. Educated Westerners are assumed to have some background in both these cultures. Many educated Westerners read classical Greek or Hebrew. Relatively few Westerners read classical Chinese. Even among educated East Asians, only a few read classical Chinese. A. C. Graham, one of the greatest twentiethcentury scholars of early Chinese thought, in answer to the charge that classical Chinese is a “vague” language, wrote in 1961, “Most Western sinologists (including myself) read literary Chinese without being able to write it … None of us yet knows classical Chinese.“225 John Knoblock, in the preface to the third and final volume of his complete translation of the Xunzi, wrote in 1994, commenting on the fragmentary state of preservation of early Chinese texts, “The disorder of the preserved Chinese philosophy is evident to any serious student.“226 If people who have devoted their lives to the study of early Chinese thought are so uncertain, how can one as dependent on them as I be sure that I am saying anything of value?

  When we try to understand the axial age, and even more what came before it, we are dealing with worlds long ago and far away. It is hard to emphasize enough how different these societies were from our own, and how tempting it is to find in them what we want to find. I have kept up with the more widely read studies in the fields of ancient Israel and ancient Greece since undergraduate days. I have the simplest knowledge of Greek, enough to allow me to see in a bilingual text what Greek term lies behind the translation, and that makes me only slightly less dependent on the translator. I have no such knowledge of Hebrew. But it is probably an illusion to think we understand Israel and Greece better than ancient China; their very familiarity may betray us, has betrayed many great scholars, to find what at the moment our culture wants to find.

  Actually I am a little better prepared for the study of ancient China than I am in the other three axial cases.227 But this is cold comfort if one thinks of the problems that Graham and Knoblock raised. More than in many fields, consensus in the study of ancient thought is fragile, central issues are contested. Those on whom I depend, and I myself, raise questions that we cannot definitively answer. I have done my best to give a coherent account, but it should be treated as an extended hypothesis, one possible interpretation, not something that anyone can be certain of.