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.
With things in such a state, what needs to be done? I say, “If [Daoism and Buddhism] are not blocked, [the Way] will not flow. If they are not curtailed, [the Way] cannot be implemented.25 Return their followers to human life.26 Burn their books. Convert their temples into homes. Make clear the Way of the former kings in order to guide the people. Then ‘widowers and widows, orphans and the childless, the disabled and the sick can be properly nurtured.’27 This more or less is what needs to be done.”
APPENDIX 2
A Treatise on Teachers
Students in ancient times certainly had teachers. Teachers transmit the Way, hand down expertise, and resolve doubts. Human beings are not “born with knowledge,”1 so how can they be without doubts? If one has doubts and does not ask a teacher, in the end, one’s doubts may remain unresolved. [Some] of those born before me have heard the Way; they certainly have heard it before me. I will follow them as my teachers! [Some] of those born after me have heard the Way; they too have heard it before me. I will follow them as my teachers! I take the Way as my teacher. Why should I care if someone is born before or after me? For the same reason, it doesn’t matter whether someone is more humble or more eminent, older or younger than me; wherever the Way is, there is my teacher! It is so sad! So much time has passed since the way of the teacher ceased being handed down [that] it is difficult to hope that people will be free from doubts. The sages of old far surpassed the average human being and yet followed others as their teachers. Most people today fall far short of the sages and yet are ashamed of studying under teachers. This is why sages are ever more sagely and fools are ever more foolish. Isn’t it true that what makes sages sagely and fools foolish all lies here?
Those who love their children select a teacher to instruct them, but these same parents are themselves ashamed to study with a teacher. This is nothing but foolishness! The teachers selected to teach the young give them books and train them to punctuate and read these texts;2 this, though, is not what I mean by transmitting the Way and resolving doubts. In the one case, we have [children] who do not know how to punctuate and read texts; in the other, we have [adults] who have unresolved doubts. The former seek guidance from a teacher, but the latter do not. This is to study what is of minor importance while neglecting what is of major importance. I do not see the wisdom in that!
Diviners, music masters, and craftsmen are not ashamed to learn from one another. But if scholar-officials were to call each other “teacher” and “disciple,” their colleagues would gather together to laugh at them. If you asked why, they would say, “Those two are roughly the same age and so must have a similar grasp of the Way.” If the teacher’s rank is lower than the disciple’s, it is thought shameful, while if the teacher’s rank is higher, it is seen as an attempt to curry favor. Oh, this is why the Way of the teacher cannot be revived! Scholar-officials regard diviners, music masters, and craftsmen as inferiors, but now it is clear that the former are not equal to the latter in wisdom. This is strange indeed!
A sage has no constant teacher.3 Kongzi took as his teachers Tanzi, Chang Hong, Music Master Xiang, and Laozi.4 People like Tanzi were far less worthy than Kongzi, but Kongzi said, “Walking together even with only two companions, I am sure to find someone who can teach me.”5 This shows that disciples need not necessarily be inferior to their teachers, and teachers need not be superior to their disciples. Some simply understand the Way before others or command special knowledge or expertise. This is all there is to it.
Pan is a son of the Li clan; he is seventeen years old.6 He loves the ancient style of writing7 and has studied all the major classics and their commentaries. Unfettered by contemporary fashions, he has studied with me. Delighted that he is carrying on the Way of the ancients, I wrote A Treatise on Teachers as a present for him.
APPENDIX 3
Letter in Reply to Li Yi
The 26th day of the 6th month, from Han Yu to Mr. Li,1
The words and sentiments of your letter are exceedingly lofty, and yet you pose your questions in the most deferential and respectful manner. Given this, who could refuse to tell you what they know? That the Way and Virtue2 themselves will be yours some day soon is beyond doubt, much less your mastery of their mere exterior expression in writing. Still, I am someone who only has “seen Kongzi’s outer gate and wall but has yet to enter his chamber,”3 how could I presume to know right from wrong? Nevertheless, I cannot but tell you what I know.
What you have said about “establishing words”4 is correct, and what you have done is very close to what you have hoped to achieve. But I still do not know your true aim. Do you hope to surpass others and thereby find employment, or do you hope to attain the ancient ideal of establishing words? If you hope to surpass others and thereby find employment, you already are far better than most and certainly will be employed. If you hope to attain the ancient ideal of establishing words, then do not expect quick success or be seduced by power or profit. Nurture the roots and wait for the fruits. Add oil and look for the light.5 When the roots flourish, the fruit blossoms. When oil is plentiful, the light shines. The words of the benevolent and righteous [naturally] are mild and inviting.
Still there are difficulties, and I do not know whether or not my own [literary] efforts have attained the [ancient] ideal. Nevertheless, I have been studying for more than twenty years. When I began, I did not dare to look at any text that was not from the Three Dynasties6 or the Western (206 B.C.E.—23 C.E.) or Eastern Han (25–220 C.E.); I did not dare to harbor any thought that was inconsistent with the aims of the sages. At home, I seemed lost in forgetfulness. Engaged in affairs, I seemed to be missing something. I appeared serious, as if deep in thought. I appeared dazed, as though I had lost my way. Whenever I would express my thoughts in writing, I focused all my efforts on ferreting out and eliminating clichés. This was exhausting and difficult work. When other people looked at my writings, I did not understand their ridicule for what it was. I continued on like this for several years without any change, and then I could discern what was true from what was false within the ancient writings and what though true still was not wholly perfect. These differences stood out clearly and distinctly, as sharp as black and white. I worked to eliminate what was false and not wholly perfect and slowly made progress. Whenever I would express my thoughts in writing, they flowed forth freely. When other people looked at my writings, I was delighted if they laughed. I worried if they offered praise, because that would be a sign that my work still retained elements that [too easily] pleased people.7 I continued on like this for several years, and then [my writing] flooded forth like in a torrent! I still worried that my work contained impurities, and so I would stand before it, assay it, and examine it carefully with a calm mind until I was certain that it was perfectly pure; only then would I let it go. Nevertheless, I still must cultivate myself. And so I travel the path of benevolence and righteousness and wander to the source of the Book of Odes and Book of History. For the rest of my days, I shall never lose sight of this path or be cut off from this source.
Vital energy is like water, while words are like things that float upon water. If there is a great volume of water, then objects large and small will float.8 This is the relationship between vital energy and water. If there is an abundance of vital energy then one’s words will be fitting, regardless of whether one’s sentences are long or short or one’s tones high or low.9 [But] can even those who have attained this level of writing dare to say they are close to perfection? For those who are close to perfection, what difference would it make to them to be employed by others? And so, to wait for others to offer one employment, isn’t this to be like a tool or utensil?10 Whether or not you find employment depends on others. Gentlemen are not concerned abo
ut such things. They have a way to order their heart-minds and a method to regulate their conduct. If employed, they bestow this [way and method] upon others. If not employed, they transmit these to their disciples and express them in writing, to serve as a model for later ages. Those who choose to pursue such a life, will it be enough to bring them happiness or will it fail to make them happy?
Only a few have set their heart-minds upon the ancients! Those who set their heart-minds upon the ancients will be neglected in their own age. I sincerely delight in and cannot help feeling concern for such people. I sing their praises in order to encourage them, but not because I presume to praise those worthy of praise and blame those worthy of blame. Many have consulted me for my opinions. Since your words show that you have not set your heart-mind on profit, I have set aside all hesitation to tell you what I think.
Yours,
Han Yu
Notes
Notes to Part I
1 The Complete Collection of the Four Treasuries (Sikuquanshu ) is the imperial library collection of literature in four classes: Classics, Philosophy, History, and Literary Anthologies. For a discussion of its importance and an incisive and lively description of Qing intellectual life in general, see Benjamin A. Elman, From Philosophy to Philology: Intellectual and Social Aspects of Change in Late Imperial China, second printing (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990).
2 Zhang also wrote or assisted in the compilation of a number of local histories, which unfortunately are no longer extant. Some of his most interesting ideas about historiography concern the importance of and proper approach to writing local history.
3 Kang Youwei clearly was reading Zhang’s works and explicitly argued against several of Zhang’s most characteristic views. For example, while Zhang argued that Kongzi simply preserved and passed on the lessons of the Duke of Zhou, Kang insisted that Kongzi was a radical social reformer who had founded his own religious tradition. For a discussion of these aspects of Kang’s views, see Kung-chuan Hsiao, A Modern China and a New World: K‘ang Yuwei, Reformer and Utopian, 1858—1927 (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1975), 97–136. For further discussion of Zhang’s influence on modern thinkers like Kang, see David S. Nivison, The Life and Thought of Chang Hsüeh-ch’eng (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1966), 282–83.
4 Naitō Torajirō published the first traditional-style biography—a so-called chronological biography (nianpu —of Zhang in 1920.
5 Hu Shi published his own chronological biography in 1922. This work was subsequently augmented and revised by Yao Mingda in 1931. Yu Yingshi has produced a number of pioneering studies on Zhang. His most important Chinese-language work on Zhang compares Zhang’s philosophy to that of his contemporary Dai Zhen. See On Dai Zhen and Zhang Xuecheng (Lun Dai Zhen yu Zhang Xuecheng) (Taibei: Huashi chubanshe, 1980). Also important is his English essay “Zhang Xuecheng Versus Dai Zhen: A Study in Intellectual Challenge and Response in Eighteenth-Century China,” in Philip J. Ivanhoe, ed., Chinese Language, Thought and Culture: Nivison and His Critics (La Salle, IL: Open Court Press, 1996), 121—54. See also Nivison’s reply, 297—303 in the same volume.
6 See his “Chang Hsüeh-ch‘eng and His Historiography” in W G. Beasley and E. G. Pulleyblank, eds., Historians of China and japan (Oxford University Press, 1962), 167—85. Another concise and helpful source on Zhang’s life and works is Hiromu Momose’s entry “Chang Hsüeh-ch’eng” in Arthur W Hummel, Eminent Chinese of the Ch‘ing Period (1644—1912), vol. 1 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1943–44), 38—41.
7 See Nivison, Life and Thought.
8 See her “Women in the Life and Thought of Zhang Xuecheng,” in my Chinese Language, Thought, and Culture, pp. 94—120; her translation of Zhang’s essay “Women’s Learning,” in Kang-I Sun Chang and Haun Saussy eds., Women Writers of Traditional China: An Anthology of Poetry and Criticism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), 783—99; and her translation of two biographies on women, “Two Biographies by Zhang Xuecheng (1738—1801),” in Susan Mann and Yu-Yin Cheng, eds., Under Confucian Eyes: Writings on Gender in Chinese History (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2001), 217—29.
9 For a more thorough study of the relationship between history and ethics in Zhang’s thought, with an eye toward what it can contribute to ethical understanding today see my “Lessons from the Past: Zhang Xuecheng and the Ethical Dimensions of History,” Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 8.2 (June 2009): 189—203.
10 For example, the great Song Confucian Zhu Xi (1130—1200) saw history as an important source for moral knowledge and integral to self-cultivation, but his views differed dramatically from what Zhang proposed. The Ming-dynasty philosopher Wang Yangming (1472—1529) influenced Zhang in a number of ways, particularly in regard to the issues of ethical particularism and the role of intuition in moral evaluation, and Dai Zhen (1724—77) inspired Zhang to pay attention to facts and guard against excessive abstraction, though Zhang saw history and not philology as the key to understanding the dao. For some of the ways in which these figures influenced Zhang’s philosophy, see my “Whose Confucius? Which Analects? Diversity in the Confucian Commentarial Tradition,” in Bryan W Van Norden, ed., Essays on the Analects of Confucius (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 119—33, and “Lessons from the Past: Zhang Xuecheng and the Ethical Dimensions of History.”
11 This expression sets the theme in a letter Zhang wrote to Sun Xingyan in 1797. For a discussion, see my “Lessons from the Past”; and Nivison, Life and Thought, pp. 99—100, etc.
12 Sympathetic concern helps us to understand one another by imaginatively entering into and thereby understanding another person’s perspective and motivation. Traditionally it is thought to be one of the central aspects of the Confucian “golden rule”: What you do not want others to do to you, do not impose on others. For an incisive historical survey of interpretations of the Confucian golden rule, see David S. Nivison, “Golden Rule Arguments in Chinese Moral Philosophy,” in Bryan W Van Norden, ed., The Ways of Confucianism: Investigations in Chinese Philosophy (La Salle, IL: Open Court Press, 1996), 59—76.
13 I translate the Chinese term xin as “heart-mind” to emphasize the traditional Chinese belief that affective and volitional as well as cognitive aspects were thought to be located in the xin.
14 I will use “Virtue” whenever I translate or intend the Chinese word de and “virtue” when I refer simply to a good trait of character.
15 For a more detailed discussion of these views, see Nivison, Life and Thought, pp. 60—63, 156—62, etc.
16 For a thorough and in some respects different analysis of the significance of this teaching, see Nivison, Life and Thought, especially pp. 201—3.
17 I have argued that Confucians share a general form of this kind of problem, which one can understand as akin to the problem of theodicy. Of course their problem revolves around the nature of the dao and not God. See my Ethics in the Confucian Tradition: The Thought of Mengzi and Wang Yangming, Revised Second Edition (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company 2002), 59—87.
18 For an introduction to Wang’s thought, see the appropriate sections of Ethics in the Confucian Tradition.
19 For Wang’s teachings regarding “pure knowing” (liangzhi , see Ethics in the Confucian Tradition, pp. 25—26, etc.
20 For Wang’s views about “the unity of knowing and acting,” see Ethics in the Confucian Tradition, pp. 78—80, etc; for the concept of “real knowledge” (zhenzhi ), see pp. 79–80, etc.
21 Setting aside Zhang’s speculative theory of history, one could make a similar and stronger argument for why there are no covering laws governing the understanding of history itself.
22 For these ideas, see chapter 6 of the Records of the Grand Historian. Sima Qian (c. 154—90 B.C.E.) is the author of this work, the first official history of China. For a selective translation and study, see Burton Watson, tr., Ssu-ma Ch’ien: Grand Historian of China (New York: Columbia Un
iversity Press, 1963).
23 For additional discussion of the context and content of Zhang’s essays and letters, see Nivison, Life and Thought. I have noted several cases where his account is particularly helpful for the issues I wish to highlight.
24 An earlier and much shorter version of this essay appeared as the opening selection of the Comprehensive Principles of Bibliography (Jiaochou tongyi ), but the version translated here was written in May of 1789. The Comprehensive Principles of Bibliography was completed in 1779. For a discussion of its title, nature, and importance, see Nivison, Life and Thought, 42—44. There are minor variations in the two published editions of “On the Dao” and these differences are fully presented and noted in the translation. See the footnote to part two of Section One of Essay 1.
25 For more details and references to English versions of these essays, see note 1 of the translation.
26 For a discussion of this group of essays, see Nivison, Life and Thought, pp. 103–5.
27 Hu Shi with emendations by Yao Mingda, Chronological Biography of Mister Zhang Xuecheng (Zhang Shizhai Xiansheng nianpu (Shanghai Commercial Press, 1931), 68. The translation is from Nivison, Life and Thought, p. 105.
28 For an essay that explores the implications a view like Zhang’s might have for contemporary analyses of intellectual property rights, see my “Intellectual Property and Traditional Chinese Culture,” in Joseph Keim Campbell, Michael O‘Rourke, and David Shier, eds., Topics in Contemporary Philosophy, Vol. 3, Law and Social Justice (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 125—42.
On Ethics and History Page 17