答聂文蔚

In spring you wearied yourself with a long detour to visit me, questioning and verifying with such warmth — how can I bear such kindness! I had meant to gather two or three fellows in some quiet place and keep you ten days, laying out my small views for the profit of mutual filing; but your official calendar and worldly tangles made it impossible, and we parted heavy, as if something were lost. Then your letter came, a thousand-odd words turned over and over, reading past all comfort. The praise ran over — the great heart that would lift the young; and the correcting was true and keen, wishing to set me inside the land of sages and worthies, entrusting Chongyi to convey your earnestness. Short of deep friendship and true love, none could do so; I feel it and am shamed, and fear to be unworthy of it. Yet how dare I not whip myself forward and stop at grateful modesty!

You say that Zisi, Mencius, Zhou and Cheng met unwittingly across a thousand years; that rather than the whole world's half-belief, one man's true belief is better; that the Way abides of itself and learning abides of itself — the world's belief no more, one man's no less. That is indeed the noble heart unvexed though unaffirmed — how could the age's drab and busy ever reach it! Yet in my own case there is a great cannot-help-myself within, no weighing of others' belief or unbelief.

Man is the heart of heaven and earth; heaven, earth and the ten thousand things are originally one body with me. The people's torment and poisoning — which of them is not a pain cut into my own body? Not to know one's body's pain is to lack the sense of right and wrong. That sense knows without deliberation, can without learning — innate knowledge. In the human heart it knows no sage or fool, one through all the world and all the ages. Let the world's gentlemen but devote themselves to their innate knowledge: of themselves they will share right and wrong, likes and dislikes alike, see others as themselves, the state as their family, heaven and earth and all things as one body — and peace not-being would be unattainable. The ancients saw good as if they had themselves brought it forth, saw evil as if it had crept in through their own door; saw the people's hunger and drowning as their own; and one man unreached was as if they had pushed him into the ditch — not posed to win the world's credence, only extending innate knowledge toward self-content. The sagehood of Yao, Shun and the three kings: they spoke and none disbelieved — speaking by extended innate knowledge; they acted and all rejoiced — acting by extended innate knowledge. So the people lived easy and open, unresentful under the axe, unbeholden under the boon; the bounty reached the outer barbarians, and whatever had blood and breath honored and loved them — for the sameness of innate knowledge. Ah, how simple and easy the sages' governing of the world!

In later ages the learning of innate knowledge darkened; the world's people set private wits against one another. Each heart its own; narrow, crabbed opinions, arts of cunning, falseness, dark crookedness, past all telling — outwardly borrowing the names of humaneness and rightness, inwardly working self-service and profit; twisting words to court the crowd, posing conduct to fish for fame; covering another's good and stealing it as one's own strong point; exposing another's private fault and stealing it as one's own uprightness; winning by wrath and calling it devotion to duty; tipping others over by guile and calling it hatred of evil; envying the worthy and grudging the able while calling oneself impartial in right and wrong; wallowing in desire while calling oneself sharing the common likes and hates. Thus trampling and maiming one another — from one's own flesh and blood inward, never free of mine-and-yours, victory-and-defeat, fence set against fence — how then should the wide world and the multitude of people and things be seen as one body? No wonder the din and jostle, calamity chasing calamity without end.

Truly by heaven's grace I have lit, as it were, upon the learning of innate knowledge, holding that only through it can the world be brought to order. So whenever I think of the people sunk in the mire, my heart aches and grieves; forgetting my own unworthiness, I would fain save them by this Way — measuring myself not at all. The world, seeing me thus, joins in laughter and abuse, deeming me mad and heart-struck. Ah — what is that to heed! The pain is on my own body; what leisure for men's laughter? A man who sees father or brother fallen into a deep pool cries out and scrambles, barefoot and tumbling, down the cliff face to save him. The gentlemen looking on still stand by bowing and chatting, thinking: here is one who has cast off decorum and dress, howling and staggering — mad, heart-struck. To bow and chat beside the drowning and not save — that only a passing stranger without flesh-and-blood feeling could do; yet even he is called less than human, without the pang of compassion. But one who has the love of father and son, brother and brother has never failed to ache to the quick, run himself breathless, scrambled to the rescue — the peril of drowning itself unheeded, let alone the mockery of madness; still less the asking to be believed. Alas! Call me mad and heart-struck — so be it. The hearts of all under heaven are my heart. The world yet holds the mad — how should I not be mad! It yet holds the heart-struck — how should I not be heart-struck!

In his own day Confucius was called a flatterer, taunted as glib; some denied him worthiness, some abused him for not knowing ritual, some sneered 'that Qiu from next door'; some envied and blocked him, some hated him and would have killed him. The gatekeeper at dawn and the basket-bearer — worthies of their day — said: 'Is this the one who does what he knows cannot be done?' 'How shrill and mean! None knows him — then let it end.' Even Zilu, of the inner hall, could not be free of doubt at what he saw, chafed at where his master would go, and thought him impractical. Then how many disbelieved the Master — more than two or three in ten! Yet he hurried and fretted like a man seeking his lost son on the highways, never leaving his mat warm — was that to be known and believed by men? It was the humaneness of heaven-earth-things-as-one-body, pain so pressing that though he would stop, he could not. Hence his words: if not with these people, with whom? To wish to keep oneself clean and confound the great bonds! Resolute indeed — then nothing more to be said! Ah — who but one truly of one body with heaven, earth and all things could know the Master's heart? As for those who hide from the age unvexed, joyful in heaven and knowing the mandate — they are at home everywhere, their way running parallel, never at war.

Unworthy as I am, how dare I take the Master's way upon myself? Only that the ache has come to lie upon my own body, and I look about for any who will help me, that together we may reason out the cure. Could heroic fellows now be found to bear me up and right me, to light the learning of innate knowledge together through the world, till all men know to extend their own innate knowledge, living at peace and nourishing one another, the veil of self-service stripped away, the habits of slander, envy and quarrel washed clean, and the great community reached — then my madness would drop off whole, and I escape the heart-struck plague at last. Would that not be joy!

Ah! Seeking heroic fellows in the world today — if not you, Wenwei, whom could I hope for? Your talent and resolve could truly pull the world from the flood; and knowing now the gear is in yourself, borrowed from nothing outside — follow it and expand it, river bursting to sea: who could stay it? Your one man's belief no less — to whom else could the task be left?

Kuaiji has ever been a land of hills and waters: deep woods and long valleys at every stroll, cold or heat, dark or dawn, never unfitting. Dwelling at peace, eating one's fill, no dust of the crowd, good friends gathered from all sides, rightness daily new — what joy under heaven could surpass? Confucius: no grudging heaven, no blaming men; learning from below, reaching above. My few fellows and I are bent on just this — what leisure for hankering abroad? Only the ache cut into the skin I cannot quite dismiss — hence all these words again.

The cough and summer's poison have made me slothful with the brush; your messenger, come so far, has waited a month, and at parting, taking up the pen, I have filled sheet on sheet unawares. Deep as our knowing is, thread upon thread said, still much seems unsaid.