答罗整庵少宰书

With a bow: yesterday, honored by your teaching on the Great Learning, I boarded ship in haste and could not reply. At dawn the river journey gave a little leisure and I read your letter again. Fearing affairs will crowd in once I reach Gan, I first set down the outline of an answer.

Your letter says: 'Seeing the Way is hard; embodying it harder. The Way truly is not easily lit, and learning truly must be discussed — one may not rest in one's own view as the final rule.' Happy indeed — how came I to hear such words? How dare I take my view as the final rule and rest in it? I have long wished to join with the world's learners to clarify it together; yet for years some have mocked my doctrine, some reviled it, some set it below dispute. Who would deign to teach me? Who would deign to teach me, expounding again and again, sorely fearing to fail to set me right? Then of all who love me under heaven, none so deep and true as your heart. What gratitude could match it! Virtue unattended, learning undiscussed — Confucius grieved for these; yet today's scholars, barely able to recite glosses, all deem themselves knowers of learning, with no further seeking — lamentable! The Way must be embodied before it is seen — not seen first, then embodied; it must be learned before it is clear — no clarifying apart from discussion and learning. And there are two kinds of discussants: those who discuss with body and mind, and those with mouth and ear. The mouth-and-ear men guess and measure, hunting shadows and echoes; the body-and-mind men act with penetration and practice with awareness, having it truly in themselves. Know this, and you know the learning of Confucius's school.

Your letter says I restored the old text of the Great Learning because I hold learning must be sought within, while the Cheng-Zhu doctrine of investigating things seeks without; and so I discarded Zhu's re-chaptering and cut his supplemented commentary. I presume no such thing. Has learning an inner and an outer? The old text is simply the text handed down in the school of Confucius. Zhu, suspecting omissions and errors, corrected and patched it; to me it had none — I merely follow it wholly as it stands. If my fault is over-trusting Confucius, so be it; it was not a willful removal of Zhu's chapters and commentary. Learning is prized for what the heart attains. What the heart finds wrong, though the words be Confucius's own, I dare not call right — still less words beneath Confucius. What the heart finds right, though from the commonplace, I dare not call wrong — still less from Confucius. And the old text has come down several thousand years: its language reads clear and coherent, its program of work simple and practicable. On what warrant decide this passage must stand there, that one here, this lacking thus, that to be patched so — and so correct and re-stitch? Would that not weigh betraying Zhu heavily and betraying Confucius lightly?

Your letter says: 'If learning needs nothing from outside and must only turn inward and examine within, what do the four words rectify the mind and make the intention sincere fail to cover? Why plague the beginner at the gate with a stretch of investigating things?' Indeed, indeed! For the essential, self-cultivation alone suffices — why add rectifying the mind? Rectifying suffices — why add sincerity? Sincerity suffices — why add extension, add investigation? Just because the work is laid out in detail while summing to one affair — this is the learning of refinement and unity, and this is what must be pondered. Principle has no inner or outer, nature no inner or outer, hence learning none. Lecture and discussion are not thereby not-inner; reflection and self-examination do not thereby drop the outer. To say learning must draw from without makes one's nature have an outside — rightness-external, wit in selfishness. To say turning inward is seeking within makes one's nature have an inside — self-assertion, selfishness. Both know not that nature has no inner or outer. Hence: refine the meaning to enter the spirit, thence to apply; use the applied to secure the self, thence to exalt virtue — virtue of nature, the way joining inner and outer. From this the learning of investigating things may be known. Investigating things is where the Great Learning actually lays hands: from first to last, from beginner to sage, this work only — not a stretch merely at the gate. Rectifying, sincerity, extension, investigation all serve self-cultivation, and investigation is where the applied strength is daily visible. Thus investigating things is correcting the mind's things, the intention's things, the knowledge's things; rectifying the mind is rectifying the mind of things; sincerity is making the intention toward things sincere; extension is extending the knowledge of things. Where is inner or outer, this or that in it? Principle is one: as congealed it is called nature; as the master of the congealing, mind; as the master's stirring, intention; as the stirring's bright awareness, knowledge; as the awareness's responding, thing. Spoken of at the thing, correcting; at the knowledge, extending; at the intention, making sincere; at the mind, rectifying. Rectify this; make sincere this; extend this; correct this — all of it exhausting principle to fulfill nature. Under heaven there is no principle outside nature, no thing outside nature. That learning is dark comes of scholars taking principle as outer and thing as outer, forgetting Mencius long ago condemned rightness-external — falling heir to the pit unaware. Is that not also plausible-yet-false and hard to see? It cannot go unexamined!

Your doubts about the doctrine of investigating things must be these: that it affirms the inner and condemns the outer; that it gives itself wholly to introspection and abandons lecture and discussion; that it cleaves to the bare outline and root and slights the branches and details; that it wallows in arid vacancy and stillness and fails the variety of principles and affairs. Were it so, I should offend not the school and Zhu Xi alone — it were doctrine beguiling the people, rebellion against the Way: any man might execute me, and you, upright as you are, before all. Were it so, anyone with a gloss or two and an ear to the philosophers' lees would know it false — and you, of all men, brilliant. My investigating things embraces and compasses the whole of Zhu's nine propositions; only the handling has its key and differs in working — the hairspread, as I said. But the hairspread is where the thousand miles begin: it cannot go undiscriminated.

Mencius carried his attack on Yang Zhu and Mozi to fatherless and rulerless. Those two were worthies of their day; born beside Mencius, they might have passed as such. Mozi's universal love was humaneness overdone; Yang's each-for-himself, rightness overdone. Were their doctrines so wildly unnatural as to dazzle the world? Yet their legacy Mencius ranked with beasts and barbarians — what is called killing posterity with a doctrine. Today's defects of learning — are they humaneness overdone? rightness overdone? or un-humaneness and un-righteousness overdone? I know not how they measure against flood and beast. Mencius: do I love disputation? I cannot do otherwise. Yang's and Mo's ways choked the world; in his day the world honored them no less than it today exalts Zhu Xi — and Mencius alone clamored among them. Ah, sorrow! Han Yu said the harm of Buddha and Laozi exceeds Yang and Mo. Han Yu's worth fell short of Mencius: Mencius could not save the world before its breaking; Han Yu would keep it whole after — misjudging his strength, and would see himself perish unpreserved. Alas! Of myself, still more misjudged in strength, I shall surely see myself perish unpreserved. Amid a world's giggling, one alone weeps and sighs; while all serenely stream along, one alone racks his head and knits his brow. If this is not madness and heart-loss, then truly some great anguish lies hidden within — and who but the utmost-humaneness under heaven could perceive it?

My Final Conclusions of Zhu Xi's Late Years was likewise done under necessity. The dating, early or late, is not everywhere verified; not all of it is from the late years, but much is. The intent was patient mediation, with the lighting of this learning as the weight. All my life I honored Zhu's words as spirits and divining stalks; to run counter to them once — the heart truly could not bear it: hence the book, under necessity. Who knows me says my heart grieves; who knows me not, what do I seek? Not to cross Zhu is my original heart; to cross him under necessity — the Way being such, without directness the Way does not appear.

That I have decisively parted from Zhu — would I deceive my own heart? The Way is the world's common Way; learning the world's common learning — not Zhu's private holding, nor Confucius's. What is common, speak of it commonly. Speech that is right, though it differ from mine, profits me; speech that is wrong, though it agree, damages me. What profits, I must welcome; what damages, must disown. So today, differing from Zhu, I may yet be speaking what he would welcome. The noble person's errors are like eclipses of sun and moon: mended, all look up; the petty person's errors are always masked. Unworthy as I am, I dare not serve Zhu with a petty person's heart.

Your instruction, hundreds of words back and forth, all springs from not yet knowing my doctrine of investigating things. Once that doctrine is clear, the hundreds of words dissolve without further pleading. So I dare not spin them out thread by thread, multiplying petty offense. Nor, short of setting it forth face to face, can it wholly come through between brush and paper.

Ah! Your guidance and opening of the way to me — how earnest, how thorough! Who loves me as you do? Dull as I am, how could I not feel and admire it? Yet not to cast at once from my heart what it holds true and merely receive your words — that too is not to betray deep love, but hoping to answer it. When autumn ends and I turn east, I shall surely seek one meeting to close my questioning — teach me to the last, I beg.