When the functions of ruler and teacher separated and it consequently became impossible to keep government and doctrine united, this was the result of Heavenly decreed destiny.46 The Duke of Zhou “summed up the orchestra” of the tradition of government, while Kongzi displayed the highest excellence in regard to true teaching. The achievement of each was determined by the nature of things and in neither do we have (a case of a sage [intentionally] differing from those who preceded him.) < ... a case of a sage intentionally acting in a certain way in order to be different from those who preceded him.> This was the result of the Way and proper models deriving from Heaven. Hence, prior to the Song dynasty, in schools [throughout China], equal reverence was paid to the Duke of Zhou and to Kongzi. The Duke of Zhou was regarded as the foremost sage and Kongzi as the foremost teacher, presumably on the grounds that the fashioning of institutions is something characteristic of sages, while the establishing of teachings is something characteristic of teachers. This is why Mengzi says that the dao of the Duke of Zhou and Kongzi is one and the same.47
However, if the Duke of Zhou and Kongzi were able to establish the epitome of government and teaching because of their times and circumstances, is it the case that sages in fact are dependent upon time and circumstance? Zaiwo held that Kongzi was more worthy than Yao or Shun. Zigong maintained that since humankind first arose there had never been anyone like Kongzi. Youruo, in comparing Kongzi to the sages of antiquity, said that he stood out above all others.48 (These three philosophers all ignored the Duke of Zhou and paid honor only to Kongzi. This is explained by Zhu Xi’s remark that “sages differ in respect to actions and achievements. ”49 Nevertheless, in government there is a display of actual deeds, whereas teachings only pass along empty words (kongyan ).50 Persons of later times accepted the remarks of the three philosophers and vigorously extolled Kongzi as superior to Yao and Shun and on this basis placed great value on “nature” and “fate” while slighting action and achievement. From that point on, the political achievements of all the sages came to seem inferior to the academic discussions of Confucian scholars.
Cheng Yi, in discussing Yu, Houji, and Yan Hui, said that Yu and Houji were crude in comparison to Yan Hui, and Zhu Xi closely compared the good and bad points of the Cheng brothers with those of Mengzi and Yan Hui. It seems that:
[Even] a worthy cannot eschew, [Presenting] a partisan point of view.51
Now there is no better way to honor Kongzi than to pay close attention to his character as a man. If people do not understand the reality of Kongzi and merely make it their business to revere and worship him, they will talk more and more vaguely and mysteriously about him until the term “sage” becomes simply an expression interchangeable with “divinity” and “Heaven.” How will this add to our present understanding?
Therefore, we should not compare the relative merits of Kongzi and the Duke of Zhou. Speaking metaphorically, Zhuangzi said [of the “spirit-like man”] that “from his dust and chaff one could mold a Yao or Shun!”52 Surely Confucian scholars ought not to copy his ideas! Therefore, those who wish to understand the dao must first understand what it is that made the Duke of Zhou and Kongzi what they were.)
Now there is no better way to honor Kongzi than by paying close attention to his character as a man. Although it is true that in embodying the dao he could do only as he did, yet he was still such a person as had never before existed in human history. The way I see it, the achievement of the Duke of Zhou’s “summing up” rests in the earlier kings, while Kongzi’s achievement in making clear his teachings rests in all of subsequent history. To set the Duke of Zhou and Kongzi apart [from one another] and evaluate their relative merits is foolish. Therefore, if one wants to understand the dao one must see what it is that made the Duke of Zhou and Kongzi what they were.>
Section Two
1. Han Yu said,
The Duke of Zhou and those before him served as rulers;
And so they were able to put it into practice;
Those who came after the Duke of Zhou served as ministers;
And so they offered more developed explanations.54
Now, it is by “developing explanations” that the dao is made clear, but it is also in this way that the dao is obscured. Kongzi assimilated the dao of the Duke of Zhou and made his teachings shine forth for all time. However, in doing this, Kongzi never devised theories of his own. He made clear the Six Classics and preserved the old statutes of the Duke of Zhou. This is why he said, “A transmitter and not a creator, I trust in and love antiquity,”55 and “There are, I suppose, those who act without knowledge, but I do not do so.”56 “The things of which the master regularly spoke were the Book of Odes, the Book of History, and the maintenance of rites.”57 This is to “make clear the Way of the former kings in order to guide the people.”58 It was not that Kongzi exalted the former kings in order to humbly cultivate his own character, and therefore did not create anything of his own.59 Basically, there was nothing that Kongzi could have created. Having Virtue but lacking position, Kongzi had no authority to create institutions, and he couldn’t teach others with empty words, for, as it is said, “without demonstration one will not be believed.”60
The way I see it, the occupation of teaching already existed in the time of Fuxi and Huangdi. If we look at what is said in the Great Appendix of the Book of Changes, we will understand that the sages themselves served as models for proper conduct and established their teachings in response to actual affairs, and that outside of the conduct of government there were no teachings or models [to be found].61 Teaching, in the court of Emperor Shun, to be sure, was handled by special officers. Educational policies and institutions, from the dissemination of the lessons of duty by the Minister of Education and the instructions of the Master of Music62 to the setting up of local schools, are common to administrations from [the time of] Emperor Shun down to the Zhou dynasty.63 The functions of such education officials as the Perfector, Master, and Guardian are explained in the “Offices of the Zhou.”64 However, since these persons had positions in the ranks of the officials, what they taught was preserved in government records. What people studied was the dao of cultivating one’s self, regulating one’s family, governing one’s state, and keeping peace in the world.65 They took as teachers those who were responsible for public office or in charge of the law. Governing and teaching were not two things; the roles of official and teacher were united. How, then, could there be any who used empty words to maintain their own personal theories?
Scholars have paid honor to Kongzi in a way that seems to appropriate him as the founding teacher of their own particular group. In doing this they reveal that they actually do not understand Kongzi. Kongzi taught the ultimate perfection of the dao for human beings; he cannot be said to have taught the ultimate perfection of the dao for scholars. When a scholar is someone of great worth who has not encountered an enlightened ruler to serve or secured a position from which he can put the dao into practice, he then will spend his life preserving the dao of the ancient kings for people to study in later ages. This is a necessity imposed upon him by his situation. What the dao for human beings enjoins i
s broad and great. Surely it is not right for those who have not encountered an opportunity to serve in some official capacity to stick unwaveringly to this course of preserving the ancient way for posterity and avoid having anything further to do with human affairs. The Book of Changes developed from the trigrams of Emperor Fuxi, but we need not follow him in wearing straw clothing and living in the wilds .66 The Book of History begins with the “Canon of Shun,” but we need not weep and cry to Heaven as Shun did.67 My point is that the domain in which the truth of these classics is to be applied always differs. How then can those who study Kongzi say that they will not attempt any active achievement but instead set their sights upon passing on the doctrine in an age when the Way is not practiced?68
2. The Book of Changes says, “What is above form is called the dao; what is within form is called actual things and affairs (qi ).”69The dao can no more be abstracted from the material world than a shadow can be separated from the shape that casts it. Because those in later ages who accepted Kongzi’s teachings obtained them from the Six Classics, they came to regard the Six Classics as “books that set forth the dao.” However, they failed to realize that the Six Classics all belong to the realm of actual things and af fairs. [For example,] the Book of Changes is a book that explains things and helps people to succeed in their undertakings. In the Zhou court the Grand Diviner was in charge of it.70 It is therefore clear that its use was the responsibility of a specific office and that it was classed as a government document. [Similarly,] the Book of History was the responsibility of the Historian of the Exterior; the Book of Odes was part of the charge of the Grand Preceptor ; the Book of Rites comes from the Master of Ceremonies; for the Book of Music there was the Master of the Court Orchestra; and for the Spring and Autumn Annals of each state there was a State Recorder. In the three royal dynasties and in earlier times, the Book of Odes, Book of History, and other classical disciplines were taught to everyone. It was not, as in later times, when we find the Six Classics placed on a pedestal, treated as the special subject matter of the Confucian school, and singled out as “books which set forth the dao.” The reason, as I see it, was that students in ancient times studied only what was in the charge of state officials, the state’s doctrines of government, and they simply applied this learning to the ordinary problems of everyday human obligations. They saw what they found in the classics simply as things that had to be as they were. They never saw beyond this any “dao” set forth in these books.
Kongzi transmitted the Six Classics to instruct posterity, because he believed that the dao of the ancient sages and kings is something that cannot be seen, while the classics are the actual embodiment of the dao, which can be seen.71 He thought that people of later times, who have not themselves seen the ancient kings, ought to use these [records concerning] actual things and affairs, which they could keep and treasure, in order to grasp in understanding the invisible dao. And so Kongzi made clear the government doctrines of the ancient kings and the documents, which the officials had kept, in order to show them to others. He did not write theories of his own, which would have been to talk about the dao divorced from the real world. When Kongzi explained why he wrote the Spring and Autumn Annals, he said, “I could have set forth my principles in empty words, but they would not have been as trenchant and clear as they are when illustrated in [concrete] actions and events.”72 We see clearly then that there is no dao set forth in the classics apart from the documents illustrating political doctrines and the day-to-day functioning of human relationships.
The Qin dynasty forbade unauthorized discussion of the Book of Odes and the Book of History and decreed that those wishing to study the laws should be taught by officials.73 Qin’s only offense against antiquity was its interdiction of the Book of Odes and the Book ofHistory. Its decree that those who wished to study the laws should take officials as their teachers was in complete accord with the principle that dao and actual things and affairs are united as one, and that the official and the teacher, governing and teaching, ought not to be split apart [and regarded] as two things. Government and learning in later times, having become separate, could not be recombined; this was something brought about by Heaven. Government officials kept only the documents of their own particular time, while teachers of the classics passed on to their students the traditional commentaries on the classical texts. This state of affairs was simply the result of necessity. Nonetheless, the reason why the work of Confucian scholars has been maintained from age to age is that what they have preserved is the dao of the ancient kings. However, the Confucians who preserve these classics say that they are special books that “set forth the dao.” Is it ever, anywhere in the world, possible to talk about the dao apart from actual things and affairs, or to have a shadow without a shape to cast it? When they turn away from the actual things and affairs of the world, the day-to-day working-out of human relationships, and hold on to the Six Classics and speak only of “the dao,” then one certainly cannot talk with them about what the dao really is.
3. The Book of Changes says, “The humane person sees it and calls it humanity ; the wise person sees it and calls it wisdom; the masses use it every day but do not realize what it is.”74 It is in this way that the dao becomes hidden. 75 Now of course it is nobler to see it and say what it is than to use it every day without realizing what it is. Nevertheless, when people do not recognize the dao, the dao is preserved; when it is seen and characterized, it is destroyed. When the great dao becomes hidden, it becomes so not because of ordinary ignorance but because of the confused views of the worthy and the wise. We may suppose that when the roles of official and teacher, of governing and instructing, were united, all the most intelligent people in the world conformed to one standard. And so, as the dao was found preserved in actual things and affairs, people’s heart-minds harbored no wayward thoughts. When official and teacher, governing and instructing, separated, and intelligent and talented people no longer conformed to a [single] standard, then because the alternation of yin and yang produces partiality in one’s endowed nature, it was simply inevitable that each person took his own opinion as the inviolable truth.76 Now if the regulation of rituals and the control of music each have their own special officer in charge, even someone who had both the eyes of Li Lou and the ears of Music Master Kuang could not but conform to the pattern [of ritual] and the scale [of music].77 However, if, on the grounds that the official traditions have broken off, I say that I will make my teachings shine with the Way (dao) and Virtue (de), then everyone will put forward his own conception of the Way and Virtue. Therefore, Kongzi “transmitted but did not create,” and made clear the Six Classical disciplines, preserving the old traditions of the Duke of Zhou, not daring to discard actual things and affairs and speak of the dao.78 However, the [Zhou-dynasty] philosophers, in their confusion, talked of “the dao” readily enough. Zhuangzi compares them to the ear, eye, mouth, and noses.79 Sima Tan distinguished six schools of philosophy,80 while Liu Xiang classified them into nine traditions.81 Each school believed that it alone possessed the absolute truth and envisioned reordering the world according to its own “dao.” However from an enlightened point of view, these various schools of thought are seen merely as descriptions based upon limited views of the Way. It was hardly the case that the dao had really become what they said it was.
Now the dao is revealed in the realm of actual things and affairs; it is not something named by human beings.82 It was when there were people talking about the dao that the dao began to be labeled differently by different people. This is what is meant by [the phrase], “The humane person sees it and calls it humanity; the wise person sees it and calls it wisdom.” When people followed the dao in their actions, the dao could not be possessed by anyone. Only when people all preached their own conception of the dao, and each acted according to his conception of it, did the dao come to be the possession of individuals. And so we speak of “the dao of Mozi,” or “the dao of Xuzi.”83 The dao took form as soon as three peop
le lived together, and it attained perfect realization with the Duke of Zhou and Kongzi. The sages from age to age never singled it out and called it “the dao,” just as the members of a household, when at home, do not use their surname among themselves. However, when the many schools of philosophy sprouted up and talked about “the dao,” [Confucian] scholars could not but pay honor to the sources of their own tradition. And so, for example, one speaks of “the dao of Yao and Shun,” and another of “the dao of the Duke of Zhou and Kongzi.” For this reason, Han Yu said that dao and de are open concepts (xuwei ).84 However, when dao and de become open concepts, this is their ruination.
Section Three
1. Among a gathering of people, one establishes the host in contrast to those who are guests. When doctrines arise in great numbers, one establishes one as true in contrast to those that are false. When the hundred philosophers confusedly began to talk about “the dao,” and thereby injured the dao, those within the Confucian school began to esteem the dao of Yao, Shun, the Duke of Zhou, and Kongzi as “our dao.” Originally, the dao did not belong to anyone, but people began to appropriate it as their own in order to distinguish it, to some extent, from those daos that were false. They did not realize that people regard as “our own” whatever it is they happen to have. In this way, a force of three divisions will be called “our army” in opposition to that of the enemy, but when not facing the enemy the members of each division will refer to their own unit as “ours.” Now the sages practiced the Six Classical disciplines in actual things and affairs and preserved the dao. However, those who apply themselves to and practice the three schools of the Book of Changes85 or the four schools of the Book of Odes86 cannot overcome their intense partisanship. They do not realize that as a matter of course, the ancients all practiced and mastered the Six Classical disciplines and no one was known for being a specialist in any one of them alone. Later scholars spend their entire lives and all their energies on a limited aspect of one classic; even so, I fear that they don’t get a single thing right. This is not because people today do not measure up to those of antiquity; it is [simply] because of [their different] circumstances.
On Ethics and History Page 5