答顾东桥书

Your letter says: 'Scholars today pursue the outward and lose the inward, broad but without essentials. Hence you specially champion sincerity of intention, needling the deep-seated illness — a great boon indeed.'

You see the sickness of the age so clearly — how then would you cure it? As it is, my heart you have already summed up in one phrase: what more is there to say? What more? As for sincerity of intention, it has from the first been the first principle of the sages' teaching. Only because recent scholars treat it as second did I lift out what is essential — not something I could specially champion.

Your letter says: 'I only fear the doctrine is set too high and the work too swift; young students, learning through intermediaries, may slip into the Buddhists' shortcut of illuminating the mind, seeing one's nature, sudden awakening. No wonder hearers doubt.'

My teaching of investigating things, extending knowledge, sincerity and rectification addresses the learner's own mind amid daily affairs. Investigating and practicing, working on solid ground — how many stages, how much accumulation are there in it! It is the direct opposite of empty sudden awakening. Hearers who have no resolve to become sages and have never examined it in detail doubt it — no wonder. But one of your penetration should see at a single word; yet you too say the doctrine is too high, the work too swift — why?

Your letter says: 'You hold knowledge and action advance together without before or after — as the Mean says, honoring the moral nature while pursuing inquiry, mutually nourishing, inner and outer, root and branch one thread through. Yet the order of work cannot lack sequence: knowing food, one eats; knowing the soup, drinks; knowing clothes, dresses; knowing the road, walks — never the deed before the thing is seen. This is a hairspread-in-an-instant, not a hard division of knowing today and acting tomorrow.'

Having granted mutual nourishment and one thread through inner and outer, root and branch, the advance-together of knowledge and action needs no further defense. To add that the order of work cannot lack before-and-after — is that not contradicting yourself? The examples of eating and the rest are the plainest of all; only your recent habits veil them from you. One must first have the desire to eat, and then knows food; the desire to eat is intention, is already the beginning of action. Whether the food is good or ill is known only after it enters the mouth — who knows it before? One must first will to travel, then knows the road; the will to travel is intention, the beginning of action; the road's dangers are known only by treading it oneself. Soup and clothing follow the same rule. On your own figure, it would be the deed before the thing seen. Your further remark — that it is only a hairspread in an instant, not know today and act tomorrow — still wants fineness. Yet even on your terms, the union and advance of knowledge and action admit no doubt.

Your letter says: 'That true knowledge is for action, and without action knowledge does not count, is urgent teaching spurring learners to practice — well and good. But to say action itself is knowledge may drive men to seek the mind alone and neglect the principles of things, with dark places they cannot reach. Is that the established method of the school, knowledge and action advancing together?'

Knowledge at its most genuine and solid is action; action at its lucid and discerning is knowledge. The two works were never to be parted; only because later scholars split them in two and so lost the original substance of knowledge and action did the teaching of union and joint advance arise. That true knowledge is for action your own examples of eating show, as touched on before — a remedy urgently raised, yet the substance of knowledge and action was always thus, not my private tilt framed for passing effect.

'Seeking the mind alone, neglecting principles' is the speech of one who has lost his original mind. The principles of things are not outside my mind: outside the mind to seek them, there are none; dismissing them to seek the mind, what would the mind be? The mind's substance is nature, and nature is principle. With a filial heart there is the principle of filial piety; without the filial heart, no such principle. With a loyal heart, the principle of loyalty; without it, none. Is principle outside my mind? Zhu Xi said: learning is mind and principle; the mind, though master of one body, truly commands the world's principles; the principles, though scattered in the myriad affairs, truly do not lie outside one man's mind. In that one sundering and one joining he already opened the defect of making mind and principle two. Hence the later plague of 'seeking the mind alone, neglecting principles' — precisely from not knowing the mind is principle. Seeking principle outside the mind, dark impasses arise — Gaozi's 'rightness is external', which Mencius condemned as not knowing rightness. The mind is one: as wholehearted compassion it is called humaneness; as fitting measure, rightness; as ordered pattern, principle. One may not seek humaneness outside the mind, nor rightness — yet principle alone may be? Seeking principle outside the mind is why knowledge and action became two. Seeking principle in my mind is the school's teaching of their unity — what doubt remains for you?

Your letter says: 'Your reading of the old text takes extending knowledge as extending the knowledge of the original substance — Mencius's aim of realizing the mind, and Zhu Xi too took the mind's empty numinous awareness as its measure. Yet realizing the mind rests on knowing nature; extending knowledge rests on investigating things.'

So far, right. Yet the intent behind your words remains unclear. Zhu Xi assigned realizing the mind, knowing nature, knowing Heaven to things investigated and knowledge extended; preserving the mind, nourishing nature, serving Heaven to sincerity, rectitude and self-cultivation; undivided by early death or long life, cultivating and awaiting, to knowledge complete and humaneness exhausted — the sage's affair. My view is the direct reverse. Realizing the mind, knowing nature, knowing Heaven belong to those born knowing who act at ease — the sage's affair; preserving the mind, nourishing nature, serving Heaven to learning and acting with advantage — the worthy's affair; undivided by lifespan, cultivating and awaiting, to knowing through hardship and acting through striving — the learner's affair. How can realizing and knowing be assigned to knowledge alone, preserving and nourishing to action alone? Hearing this you will be startled again; yet truly nothing in it is doubtful — let me state it.

The mind's substance is nature; nature's source is Heaven. To realize the mind fully is to realize nature fully. The Mean: only the utterly sincere can realize his nature; knowing Heaven-and-earth's transforming nourishment, tested before the spirits without doubt — this is knowing Heaven. Only the sage can do so — hence born knowing, acting at ease: the sage's affair.

To preserve the mind implies it is not yet fully realized; hence the work of preserving. Preserved long enough that preservation is no longer needed yet nothing unpreserved — only then may one speak of realizing. The knowing of knowing Heaven is the knowing of a prefect over his prefecture, a magistrate over his county: all its affairs one's own — one with Heaven. Serving Heaven is the son serving the father, the minister the ruler — still two with Heaven. What Heaven has conferred on me is mind and nature; I but preserve them, not daring to lose, nourish them, not daring to harm — as parents gave me whole and I return myself whole. Hence learning and advantage: the worthy's affair.

As to undivided by lifespan, that stands lower still than preserving the mind. The preserver, though not yet realizing, is already single-minded in good; when preservation lapses, he but returns to it. To bid one be undivided by lifespan is still to let lifespan divide the mind; divided, the heart for good is not yet single; not yet able even to preserve — what talk of realizing? Bid him not let lifespan divide his heart for good — 'death and life, early or late, are fixed by the Mandate; I am simply single-minded in good, cultivating myself and awaiting it' — that shows he does not yet know there is a Mandate. Serving Heaven, though two with Heaven, truly knows where the Mandate lies and but reverently attends it; 'awaiting' means not yet truly knowing where it lies, still waiting — hence 'establishing the Mandate'. Establish is found in establishing virtue, words, deeds, fame: what never was, now first set up — Confucius's not knowing the Mandate, one cannot be a noble person. Hence hardship and striving: the learner's affair.

To set realizing the mind, knowing nature, knowing Heaven as investigation and extension — charging beginners who cannot yet keep their hearts single with the born-knowing sage's task — is chasing wind and shadows, the mind nowhere to lodge, and cannot but lead the whole world running itself ragged. Today's defects in extension and investigation are plain to see. Your 'pursuing the outward, losing the inward; broad without essentials' — is it not this same fault? This is the most crucial point of learning: err here and there is no place one does not err. This is why I brave the world's ridicule, forget the perils to my person, and cannot hold my peace.

Your letter says: 'I hear you tell learners that even the doctrine of exhausting principle in things is trifling with things and losing the will, and that you cite Zhu Xi's passages on wearying of the manifold for the essential and nourishing the root, marking them his final late-year position — this too seems wrong.'

Zhu Xi's investigating things meant exhausting their principle in the things themselves — seeking a fixed principle in each affair and thing, carrying my mind out into things to find principle: mind and principle split in two. To seek principle in things is like seeking the principle of filial piety upon the parent's body. Is that principle truly in my mind, or upon the parent's body? Were it truly upon the body, then after the parent's death would my mind hold no principle of filial piety? Seeing a child fall into the well, the principle of compassion must stir — is it upon the child's body, or in my mind's innate knowledge? That one may not plunge in after it, or that one may extend a hand — these too are principles: upon the child's body, or out of my mind's innate knowledge? So with all things and affairs: hence the error of splitting mind and principle in two.

That split is Gaozi's rightness-external, deeply condemned by Mencius. That the age pursues the outward, loses the inward, broad without essentials — you already know it; how did it come about? And is 'trifling with things and losing the will' still too strong? My extension-and-investigation means extending my mind's innate knowledge to all affairs and things. That innate knowledge is precisely heavenly principle. Extending its principle to all things, all things receive their principle. Extending the mind's innate knowledge is extending knowledge; all things receiving principle is investigating things: mind and principle joined into one. Joined into one, all I have said, and Zhu Xi's late-year views, need no words to be understood.

Your letter says: 'The mind's substance is never unclear in itself, but confined by endowment and veiled by desires few escape dimness; without study, inquiry, thought and discrimination to illumine the world's principles, the springs of good and evil, of true and false, cannot be self-known; to follow feeling and whim works uncountable harm.'

This passage is near-truth and yet not truth, heir to the old defect; it cannot pass unexamined. Inquiry, thought, discrimination and action are all learning; there is no learning without action. To learn filial piety one must serve and support, practice it in person — could empty talk of mouth and ear count as learning it? To learn archery one must bend the bow, nock the arrow, draw full and hit the mark; to learn writing, spread paper, take brush, apply ink. Of all learning under heaven none is learning without doing: the moment learning begins, action has begun. Earnestness means solid and unwearied: already acting, and making the acting firm, the work unceasing. Doubt breeds inquiry — inquiry is learning, is action; doubt again, thought — thought is learning, is action; doubt again, discrimination — discrimination is learning, is action. When discrimination is clear, thought careful, inquiry sifted, learning mastered, and still the work does not cease — that is earnest practice. Not that after study, inquiry, thought and discrimination the deed is then appended.

Thus: seeking ability in the affair is called study; seeking release from doubt, inquiry; seeking coherence, thought; seeking fineness of discernment, discrimination; seeking to tread the substance, action. Analyzed, five; in the affair, one. Here my unity of mind and principle, the joint advance of knowledge and action, parts ways from later doctrine.

You now single out study, inquiry, thought and discrimination to exhaust the world's principle and omit earnest practice — assigning them all to knowledge and treating the exhausting of principle as devoid of action. Is there under heaven a learner who does not act? One who without acting could be said to exhaust principle? Cheng Hao said: exhausting principle alone, one fulfills nature and arrives at the Mandate. Only humaneness utterly humane deserves the name of exhausting humanity's principle; only rightness utterly right, rightness's. Utterly humane, human nature is fulfilled; utterly right, rightness's nature is. Learning that reaches the exhausting of principle has reached its top — and still not set into action: is there such a thing under heaven? Knowing that without action there is no learning, one knows that without action there is no exhausting of principle; knowing that, one knows knowledge and action advance as one and cannot be cut in two.

The principles of the myriad things lie not outside my mind; yet one must say 'exhaust the world's principle' — as if my mind's innate knowledge were insufficient and must be patched from the world's breadth without: again mind and principle made two. The work of study, inquiry, thought, discrimination and earnest practice — even pushed through hardship a hundredfold, expanded to fulfilling nature and knowing Heaven — is nothing beyond extending my mind's innate knowledge; beyond innate knowledge, is a hair's breadth to be added? To insist on exhausting the world's principle without turning back to the mind: the springs of good and evil, the dividing of true and false — leaving the mind's innate knowledge, where would one examine them? Your 'confined by endowment, veiled by things' confines and veils precisely this. To remove the veil yet not work here, seeking outside — like a man with failing sight who will not take medicine to cure the eye but gropes abroad for brightness: can brightness be fetched from outside? The harm of following whim is likewise nothing but failing to examine heavenly principle finely in this mind's innate knowledge. Here is the hair that becomes a thousand miles; it cannot go unexamined — do not call the argument too severe.

Your letter says: 'You teach extending knowledge and brightening virtue but warn against exhausting principle in things. Were the dim to sit alone in deep seclusion, hearing no instruction, would they reach extended knowledge and bright virtue? Even if stillness brings some awareness, a glimpse of nature — that is but the useless seeing of Chan stillness; could it truly know past and present, meet changing affairs, be of real use to state and world? And your words — knowledge is the substance of intention, things are intention's employment; ge is as in correcting the ruler's erring mind — though transcendent and untrammeled by old views, I fear they miss the Way.'

My doctrine of extension and investigation is precisely for exhausting principle; I never forbade the exhausting of principle for idle sitting. Exhausting principle in things, as the 'pursuing the outward, losing the inward' of before — that alone I disallow. If the dim truly examine this mind's heavenly principle affair by affair, thing by thing, so extending their innate knowledge, then though dull they will grow bright, though weak strong; the great root stands, the reached Way moves, the nine standards thread through without remainder — where is the lack of practical use? Those dead-set on vacancy and stillness, precisely because they cannot thus examine and extend, abandon human relations, take extinction and nothingness as constant — hence they cannot order family, state or world. Who says the sages' learning of exhausting principle and fulfilling nature carries that defect?

The mind is the body's master; its empty, numinous, bright awareness is the innate knowledge in itself. Stirred by response, it is called intention. Knowledge first, then intention; no knowledge, no intention — is knowledge not intention's substance? Intention's employment must have its object, and the object is the affair: intention on serving parents, serving parents is the thing; on governing the people, governing is the thing; on reading, reading; on hearing lawsuits, the hearing. Wherever intention is, there is a thing; the intention present, the thing present; absent, absent — is the thing not intention's employment?

Of ge, some gloss it as 'arrive': arrived at the Ancestral Temple, the Miao came. But arriving at the Temple means pure filial sincerity and reverence, everything rightly ordered in the seen and unseen worlds, and only then ge; the wild Miao came only when civil virtue was spread wide — the sense of 'correct' is mixed in, not exhausted by 'arrive'. In correcting the erring heart, correcting the ruler's erring mind, it is wholly rectifying the incorrect to return to the correct — not 'arrive'. And how do we know the Great Learning's ge was not glossed 'correct' rather than 'arrive'? On 'arrive' one must say exhaust-arrive at the principles of things before it parses — the pivot of effort in exhaust, the field in principle. Drop the exhaust above and the principle below and say extension of knowledge lies in arriving at things: does that parse?

That exhausting principle fulfills nature is the sage's settled teaching in the Commentaries. Were investigating things simply exhausting principle, why did the sage not say outright extension of knowledge lies in exhausting principle, instead of this winding, unfinished phrase to open later ages' defects? The Great Learning's ge shares the great aim of exhausting principle yet differs subtly: exhausting principle comprises investigation, extension, sincerity and rectification as its work. Say exhausting principle and all four are included; say investigating things and extension, sincerity and rectification must be jointly named before the work is complete and tight. To single out investigating things and call it exhausting principle assigns exhausting wholly to knowledge and denies investigation any action — losing not only the intent of ge but the sense of exhausting itself. Hence the later split of knowledge and action into first and second halves, daily more fragmented, the sagely learning daily more broken and dark — the source lies just here. You too, heir to long habit, may well deem it 'not to fit the Way' — not wrongly.

Your letter says: 'You make the work of extension such that doing the warming and the support is itself sincerity — no separate investigating things. This too seems wrong.'

That is your own conjecture reshaping my view, not what I told you. As you frame it, would it even parse?

In my view: to intend warming, to intend support — that is intention, not yet sincerity. Only when the intention is actually carried out, seeking self-content without self-deception, is it sincerity.

Knowing the fit measures of warming and support — that is knowledge, not yet extension. Only when the knowledge of the measures is extended and actually applied in warming, and the knowledge of fit support applied in supporting, is it extension.

The affair of warming, the affair of support — those are things, not yet investigation. Only when in warming one does exactly what innate knowledge knows as the fit measure, to the last hair, and in support likewise, is it investigation.

The thing of warming investigated, the innate knowledge of warming is extended; the thing of support investigated, the innate knowledge of support is extended — hence things investigated, then knowledge arrives. The innate knowledge of warming extended, the intention of warming becomes sincere — hence knowledge arrives, then intention is sincere. Such is my doctrine of sincerity, extension and investigation. Think it over and no doubt will remain.

Your letter says: 'The great outline of the Way is easy to see — innate knowledge and ability that ploughman and ploughwife can reach. But the details of circumstance and the hairspread-thousand-mile errors must be learned. Speak of filial piety: who does not know warming and inquiring? But Shun marrying without first telling his parents, King Wu taking the field before his father's burial, nourishing the will or the mouth, small rod or great, slicing the thigh, the mourning hut — constancy and crisis, excess and shortfall — these must be weighed for right and wrong as the touchstone of conduct, else the mind-substance stays veiled and affairs go wrong.'

That the great outline is easy to see — true. Yet later scholars slight what is easy to see and do not walk it, and study what is hard to see: the Way near, they seek it far; the task easy, they make it hard. Mencius: the Way is like a great road — is it hard to know? The sickness is not walking it. Innate knowledge and ability are one in ploughman and sage; only the sage can extend it, the ploughman cannot — there lies the divide. Details and changes — did the sage not know them? He simply did not make them his study. His study was precisely extending innate knowledge, refining the mind's heavenly principle — unlike later learning. You neglect the extending of true knowledge and fret anxiously over these — the very veil of studying the hard-to-see.

Innate knowledge toward details and changes is as compass and square toward circles and squares, the rule toward lengths: details cannot be fixed in advance any more than all circles and lengths can be enumerated. With compass and square truly set, none can deceive you about round and square, and the world's rounds and squares are inexhaustibly yours; with the rule laid down, none deceive you about length; with innate knowledge truly extended, none can deceive you about details and changes, and the world's details and changes are inexhaustibly met. The hairspread error — if it is not examined in the subtlety of a single thought of the mind's innate knowledge, where else would one's learning be applied? To fix the world's rounds without compass, exhaust its lengths without rule — I see only distortion and error, daily toil and no attainment.

You say: speak of filial piety in warming and inquiring — who does not know it? Yet those who extend that knowledge are few. If a rough notion of the ritual counted as extending knowledge, then all who know a ruler should be humane could be said to extend their knowledge of humaneness, all who know a minister should be loyal, of loyalty — who under heaven would not be extending knowledge? So seen, extension must lie in action, and without action there is no extension — and is not the unity of knowledge and action the plainer?

Did Shun, marrying unannounced, have a precedent to consult, a person to ask — or did he appeal to the true knowledge of a single thought in his mind, weigh the balance of weights, and act under necessity? Did King Wu, marching before burial, find a rule in some canon — or weigh the fitness in the innate knowledge of one thought and act under necessity? Had Shun's heart not been sincerely set on not cutting off the line, Wu's not sincerely on saving the people, then unannounced marriage and marching before burial would be the greatest of impieties and disloyalties. Later people, not extending their innate knowledge to examine rightness amid the mind's responses and exchanges, would hang in mid-air discussing such anomalies and clutch them as the touchstone of conduct, hoping to err nothing in the event — how far astray! The other cases follow by analogy, and the ancients' learning of extension may be known from this.

Your letter says: 'That the Great Learning's investigating things seeks the mind alone might yet be stretched to fit; but the classics' many phrases — hear much, see much; former words and past deeds; love the ancients and earnestly seek; learn broadly and inquire; warm the old and know the new; study broadly and expound; love to ask and observe — all plainly seek amid affairs and draw upon discourse; the order of work brooks no confusion.'

The sense of investigating things was set out fully before; the charge of forced fitting needs no second answer.

As to hearing and seeing much: Confucius spoke so because Zizhang pursued the outward and the lofty, would make hearing-and-seeing itself his learning, and would not seek in his mind or leave the doubtful in suspense — hence his words and deeds earned blame and regret; the seen and heard only fed his fault. It was medicine for Zizhang's illness, not a curriculum. The Master said: there are those who act without knowing; I am not so — the very sense of Mencius's sense of right and wrong, all men have it: virtue's innate knowledge does not arise from hearing and seeing. To hear much and choose the good to follow, see much and remember — that seeks the twig-ends of sight and hearing, already second-best: hence it is called the next best to knowledge. If hearing-and-seeing knowledge is the next best, what is the best? Here is glimpsed where the school applied its strength in extending knowledge. The Master said to Zigong: Si, do you take me for one who learns much and remembers? No — one thread through all. Were it truly much learning and remembering, why would he mock Zigong with a lie? The one thread — what is it but extending innate knowledge?

The Changes: the noble person records many former words and past deeds to store up virtue. With storing virtue as the heart, every recording of former words is storing virtue — precisely the work of unity of knowledge and action.

Loving the ancients and earnestly seeking: loving the ancients' learning and keenly seeking this mind's principle. The mind is principle; learning learns this mind; seeking seeks this mind. Mencius: the way of learning is nothing else but seeking the lost mind. Not as later ages, widely reciting the ancients' phrases and calling it love of antiquity while eagerly hunting tools for fame and profit outside.

Broad learning and inquiry — already fully treated.

Warming the old and knowing the new — Zhu Xi himself put warming the old under honoring the moral nature. Can virtue's nature be sought outside? Since knowing the new must come through warming the old, and warming the old is for knowing the new, this too proves knowledge and action no two stages.

Study broadly and expound — in order to return to stating it sparingly. Without that return, what would the broad study and full expounding be for?

Shun's loving to ask and observe was solely to hold to the mean, bringing refinement and unity to bear on the mind of the Way. The mind of the Way is innate knowledge.

The noble person's learning never leaves affairs or discards discourse; but the affairs and discourse he engages in are all the work of knowledge and action united, precisely to extend his mind's innate knowledge — unlike the world's talkers of mouth and ear who split knowledge and action into two things with a real order of stages to recite.

Your letter says: 'Yang Zhu's and Mozi's versions of humaneness and rightness, the village-worthy's corruption of loyalty and good faith, the abdications of Yao, Shun and Zizhi, the depositions and campaigns of Tang, Wu, Xiang Yu, the regencies of the Duke of Zhou, Wang Mang and Cao Cao — none with a touchstone to verify: which to follow? And unversed as one is in the changes of past and present, in rites, music, names and things — were the state to raise the Bright Hall, build the Biyong academy, fix the calendar, draft the Feng and Shan sacrifices, where would one's competence show? Hence the Analects' born knowing refers to moral principle only; rites, music, names, things, the changes of history — these await learning to be verified in action. That may stand as the settled conclusion.'

The cases you list can be argued by analogy with the Shun and Wu discussion before; the doubt over historical changes was met by the compass-and-rule figure under innate knowledge. The Bright Hall and academy, however, still call for a word. The matter is long; taking your own words as the target, your perplexity may ease a little.

The Bright Hall and Biyong first appear in Master Lü's Monthly Ordinances and Han commentators' notes; the classics and Four Books barely touch them. Were Lü and the Han scholars wiser than the worthies and sages of the three dynasties? In King Xuan of Qi's day the Bright Hall still stood unbroken; then under You and Li the halls of Zhou were intact — yet useless. Yao and Shun dwelt in thatched huts on earthen steps, the Hall perhaps unbuilt — no bar to their perfect order; You and Li kept the halls of Wen, Wu, Cheng and Kang entire — no rescue from their disorder. Why? Does it not say: with a heart that cannot bear others' suffering, governing with unbearing government, a thatched hut is itself the Bright Hall; with the hearts of You and Li, the Bright Hall is but the chamber where tyranny issues? Emperor Wu began the lectures on it, Empress Wu built it grandly in Tang — what came of their order and disorder?

The Son of Heaven's school is Biyong, the lords' Pan Palace — names taken from the lay of the water. Yet the schools of the three dynasties had as their one aim the illumining of human relations; importance lay not in the ring or half-ring of the walls. Confucius: a person without humaneness — what can ritual do, what can music do? Composing rites and music belongs to those of centered, harmonious virtue, voice itself the pitch-pipe and body the measure. Vessels and numbers are the luthers' business, the invokers' office — hence Zengzi: what the noble person values in the Way is threefold; the dishes and platters have their keepers. Yao charging Xi and He — reverently accord with august heaven, to calendar the sun, moon and stars — its weight lay in reverently granting the people their seasons; Shun at the jade transit — its weight in aligning the seven governings. All this: urgent hearts of loving the people carrying out the rule that nourishes them; the root of calendar and seasons lies there.

The calendrical learning of Xi and He — Gao Yao and Xie could hardly match it, Yu and Ji hardly; Yao and Shun's knowing did not reach all things; yet today, following Xi and He's methods down the generations, even shallow star-gazers compute the ephemerides without error. Are the age's petty clever then worthier than Yu, Ji, Yao and Shun?

The Feng and Shan is the most uncanonical of all — later flatterers' lure to win their sovereign's favor, vaunting extravagance to unsettle the royal mind and waste the state's wealth: deceiving heaven and beguiling men, shamelessness at its largest, what the noble person will not discuss — why Sima Xiangru was scorned by the world and after ages. That you take it for the scholar's proper study — has it been thought through?

The sage is sage through being born knowing. The commentators say born knowing refers to moral principle alone, while rites, music, names and things await learning verified in action. Were those truly of the essence of sage-making, and the sage needed learning to know them, the sage could not be called born knowing. That he is so called, principle alone, excluding rites and things — then those are no part of sage-making; and learning-to-know and hardship-to-know should also concern this principle alone. Today's learners, failing at what the sage could know — learning-to-know it — rush instead to know what the sage could not know, and call it study: have they not lost the very method of hoping for sagehood? All this has only opened your several doubts a little; it has not yet reached the discourse of pulling up the root and stopping the source.

If the discourse of pulling up the root and stopping the source is not made clear to the world, then those under heaven who study the sage will find it daily more tangled and hard; men will sink to beasts and barbarians while flattering themselves students of the sage.

My doctrine, though lit for a moment, would thaw in the west while freezing hard in the east, the mist lift before while clouds boil up behind; I should clamor myself into peril and death with never a hair's help to the world. The sage's heart takes heaven, earth and the ten thousand things as one body: all under heaven, inner or outer, near or far, whatever has blood and breath are his brothers and infant children; there is none he does not wish to keep safe and to teach and nourish, fulfilling the thought of all-things-as-one-body.

The hearts of men under heaven were at first no different from the sage's; only the private self came between, the screen of thing-desire closed over, the great grew small, the open was dammed; each heart its own, till fathers and sons, brothers, face each other as foes. The sage grieved at this, and so spread abroad the humaneness of heaven-earth-things-as-one to teach the world, that all might master their selfishness, strip their veils, and recover the sameness of the mind's substance. The great heads of that teaching are what Yao, Shun and Yu handed one another — the mind of the Way is subtle; refinement and unity alone; hold fast the Mean. Its working items are Shun's charge to Xie: between father and son affection, ruler and minister duty, husband and wife distinction, old and young order, friends good faith — five, no more. Through Tang, Yu and the three dynasties, teachers taught only this, learners learned only this. Then no man held a different view, no house a different practice: at home in this was called sage, striving toward it worthy; turning from it, though open-browed and bright like Zhu, was called unworthy; down to the lanes and fields, farmer, artisan, trader — all had this learning, single-minded on perfecting their virtue. Why? No medley of hearsay, no drudgery of recital, no flood of fine writing, no chase of profit — only being filial to parents, respectful to elders, faithful to friends, recovering the sameness of the mind's substance. This is native to one's nature and borrowed from nothing outside — who then could not do it?

In the schools only the perfecting of virtue was the business. Differences of talent — one strong in rites and music, one in governance and teaching, one in water, soil and sowing — were, upon that virtue, honed finer within the schools. When virtue raised a man to office, he held that office for life, unchanged. Those who employed knew only single heart and shared virtue to give the people peace together, weighing fitness of talent, not ranking by loftiness of post, calling ease fair and toil foul. Those who served knew only single heart and shared virtue; if it fit their powers, they dwelt all their lives in burdensome office and read it not as toil, in humble detail and read it not as mean. Then the people under heaven, easy and open, looked upon one another as one family's kin. Those of lesser endowment kept contentedly to the farmer's, artisan's, trader's lot, each diligent at his trade, birthing and nourishing one another, with no hankering after heights beyond.

The differences of talent — such as Gao Yao, Kui, Ji, Xie — came forth each to yield his powers. As in one household's affairs: some see to food and clothes, some trade surplus and want, some furnish the tools, planning together, pulling together, to fulfill the hopes of serving those above and rearing those below, each fearing lest the one in charge slacken and double his own burden. So Ji toiled at the grain and was not ashamed not to know teaching: Xie's skill in teaching was his own; Kui kept the music and was not ashamed not to master ritual: Yi's mastery of ritual was his own. Their learning of the heart was pure and bright, whole in the humaneness of all-things-as-one-body; spirit streamed through, will and breath ran free, with no division of self and other, no wall between thing and me. As in one body: the eye sees, the ear hears, the hand grasps, the foot walks, each serving the body's use. The eye is not ashamed to lack hearing — what the ear engages, the eye attends; the foot is not ashamed to grasp nothing — where the hand reaches, the foot steps first. The primal breath fills and circles, the blood-channels run clean, so itch and pain, breath and touch answer as if by spirit — a fitness past telling. Hence the sages' learning is utterly easy, utterly simple, easy to know and follow, easy to learn and to grow able in: its one great head is recovering the sameness of the mind's substance — knowledge and skill are no part of the question.

With the three dynasties' decline, the royal Way guttered and the arts of hegemony blazed; after Confucius and Mencius, the sagely learning darkened and strange doctrines ran wild. Teachers no longer taught it, learners no longer learned it. The hegemons' followers stole the outward likeness of the former kings, borrowed it from without to serve their private lusts within; the world swept after them, and the sages' Way grew waste and blocked. Imitation bred imitation; day upon day men sought the schemes of wealth and power, the plots of deceit, the plans of conquest — everything that cheats heaven and beguiles men for an hour's gain, the arts of hunting fame and profit — Guan Zhong, Shang Yang, Su Qin, Zhang Yi and their kind past counting.

Long years of it: strife and plunder, calamity past enduring; men sank to beasts and barbarians, and even hegemony could no longer run. The world's scholars, grieving, hunted the old sage-kings' statutes and gleaned and patched among the embers. Their hearts truly meant to win back the former kings' Way. But the sagely learning was far away, the hegemonic tradition soaked deep; even the worthy and wise could not escape the dye. What they polished and set forth to brighten and restore served only to raise the hegemon's fences higher, till the very gate and wall of the sagely learning could no longer be seen. Then arose the learning of glosses, to make a name; the learning of recital, to pass for breadth; the learning of fine writing, to shine. Such schools, thick as driftwood, stood contending across the world past counting; ten thousand paths, a thousand byways, none knowing which to walk.

The world's learners were like crowds in a circus of a hundred feats: jesters leaping, wonders vying, smiles and graces offered on every side; looking before and behind, no time to answer, eyes dazzled, wits lost, wandering day and night in the din like men mad and heart-struck, unknowing where their own household's estate has gone. The rulers of the age too lay bemused and topsy-turvy in these doctrines, lifelong at useless paper-work, unknowing what for. Here and there one saw the emptiness, the wild error, the fragment and tangle, and rose towering to put it into solid deed — yet at the summit attained nothing beyond the wealth-and-power, five-hegemons enterprise. The sages' learning receded daily darker, the habit of profit sank daily lower. Men dabbled in Buddha and Laozi, yet those teachings never beat their profit-loving hearts; they sought a mean among the scholars, yet the scholars' arguments never broke their profit-loving views.

To this day the poison of profit has soaked to the marrow of men's hearts, habit become second nature these thousand years: boasting knowledge against each other, crushing with power, scrambling for gain, vying in skill, fishing for repute. In office, the granary hand covets arms and justice too, the rites-and-music man fingers the appointments; a county magistrate dreams the provincial heights, the censorate eyes the chancellor's keys. Unable at the task, yet not foregoing the title; unversed in the doctrine, yet not forgoing the praise. Breadth of recital but feeds arrogance; plenty of knowledge but serves the doing of ill; width of hearsay but looses the tongue; richness of phrase but gilds the lie. What Gao, Kui, Ji and Xie could not combine, today's callow students all mean to master and expound. Their styling and slogans never fail to say: to share in completing the world's work — while the true bent of their hearts holds that without this they cannot slake their private thirst.

Alas! With such accretions, such hearts, taught by such learning — small wonder they hear a sage's teaching and see wens and buckled tenons; that they deem innate knowledge insufficient and the sages' learning useless — the momentum could lead nowhere else! Alas! A scholar born into such an age — how shall he seek the sages' learning? How speak of it? A scholar born into such an age who yet would learn: is it not toil and tangle? Is it not straitness and peril! Alas, sorrow indeed!

Yet heaven's principle in the human heart can never be wholly drowned; the light of innate knowledge is one through ten thousand ages. Let men but hear this discourse of pulling up the root and stopping the source: there will be those who ache and grieve, wound and pain, rise up in wrath, flood forth like rivers burst from their banks, past all damming. If not the heroic, who rise awaiting nothing — whom else could I look to?

(The latter half of this entry, from 'if the discourse of pulling up the root and stopping the source is not made clear,' was separately printed by Chen Longzheng under the title 'Discourse on Pulling Up the Root' — one of Wang Yangming's most famous writings, embodying his ethical thought.)