The Classic of Reversal反經 · 長短經

The Author’s Preface序

Zhao Rui finished this book in 716, the fourth year of the Kaiyuan reign, and signed the preface “Zhao Rui, a commoner of the grass, of Anchang Crag on Mount Changping in Qi county, Zizhou.” He was summoned to court in the Kaiyuan years and did not go. Almost nothing else about him survives.

Master Zhao said: the man who makes carriages is anxious that people should not be rich; the man who makes arrows is afraid that people will not be wounded. Is it that one loves men and the other hates them? It is their trades that drive them to it. So it is with the men of the age and the men on the make: read the diplomats and you begin to think about upheaval among the princes; get good at the unorthodox stroke and you begin to look forward to a time of dust and wind. That was said long before me and it cannot be otherwise.

Therefore our late master Confucius went deep into the root of it and was troubled by the end of it, and so made the Spring and Autumn Annals, in which the king’s way is made great, and set out the Classic of Filial Piety, in which conduct is made beautiful. To fence off the shoot and block the seepage, to hold a thing down before it rises — that is what the sage meant by composing. And yet: make a law out of good order and the harm it does is bound to be disorder. And once there is disorder, what will save it?

So in governing an age and ordering men one seldom hears of simple continuation. The three dynasties did not share a ritual; the five hegemons did not share a law. They were not contradicting each other. They were each repairing a different failure. The face a state presents may be one, but the way of loyalty and the way of pattern must differ; sages may blow one wind, yet the names of emperor and king are not the same. Is this not because teaching is set up according to the time, which follows from the one side, and affairs are completed according to circumstance, which is dragged along by the other? What follows from the one side is thick or thin according to what it meets; what is dragged by the other is king’s work or hegemon’s work according to what it runs into.

So the government of the ancients had three kinds. The king’s government transforms men; the hegemon’s government overawes them; the strong state’s government coerces them. Each has its place and they are not interchangeable. Guanzi said: “A sage can assist the times; he cannot go against them. A clever man’s good planning is not as good as being in step with the moment.” Master Zou said: “Government and teaching, plain or ornamented, are ways of putting things right: use them when the time calls, drop them when it has passed.” From which: to run a king’s transformation at a hegemon’s court is perverse; to run a hegemon’s intimidation in an age of strong states is out of joint. And if the times have fallen into deceit and the straight way is worn down, to want to take the ancient kings for your model and spread virtue broadly is to wait for a guest from Yue to pull a drowning man out, or to call a grown man to put out a fire. Excellent, no doubt — but is that what is meant by being at home in the changes of the time?

The hegemon’s way is a mixed way. Black and white are compounded in it; virtue is not used pure. It looks to whether the thing comes off, and does not ask how; it argues on the large scale and does not keep the small proprieties. Though it speaks of benevolence and cites right conduct, it does not reach the three kings; but for propping up what is falling and steadying what has tipped, they come to the same reckoning. I was afraid that scholars, soaked in what they have been told, do not know that the king’s way and the hegemon’s way are separate strategies. So I have set the matter out as long-and-short, and taken the art of it as my text, so that the man who would get through the changes might have the headings drawn up for him. Sixty-three chapters in all, in ten scrolls, called the Classic of the Long and the Short.

What it is chiefly for is to make the root firm and to change with the time; the rise and the ruin, the order and the disorder, are all set down in the several chapters. It is a far-sighted plan for a continuing line and a way of managing the world. I do not mean to correct the age or show off to it, to hunt a reputation or court a name. I have simply let out what I have seen and heard, to trip the catch for those who come after. To all of you who hold office: look into it, if you will. (The received text has nine scrolls and sixty-four chapters; the tenth, on covert schemes, was lost long ago. The count in the preface does not match what survives, and the Siku editors concluded that the preface as copied is at fault.)

Scroll One · Civil Matters, Upper卷第一　文上

Eight chapters, all of them about men. They are taken in an order: first the ruler’s part (to use what is not yours as though it were), then the way of employing men (each according to what he is long in), then a grading of men, then the offices that go with each grade, then how to see which grade a man is, then a chapter on physiognomy, then why gentlemen must be treated with ceremony, and last a chapter on the frame of government. The whole scroll does one thing: it turns judging men from a question about virtue into a question of technique.

The Large Frame大体第一

The opening chapter, and it sets the ruler’s part. Four pieces of evidence point at one sentence: to know men is the king’s way, to know business is the minister’s way.

Laozi: “Order the state by what is straight, use troops by what is odd, take the empire by having no business of your own.” Xun Qing: “A ruler counts it ability to officer men; a common man counts it ability to be able himself.” Under Yao, Shun was minister of instruction, Xie of war, Yu of works, Hou Ji of the fields, Kui of music, Chui of craft, Bo Yi of ritual, Gao Yao of law, and Yi drove the game. Yao could not do a single one of those things. Why then was he ruler and the nine of them ministers? Because he knew what the nine tasks were, gave each man his own, and every one of them was equal to it.

Han Gaozu said: “At planning in the tent and deciding a battle a thousand li away I am not the equal of Zifang; at holding the state together, soothing the people, keeping the supply road open, I am not the equal of Xiao He; at leading a million men so that every battle is won and every town taken, I am not the equal of Han Xin. These three are the outstanding men of the age, and I could use them. That is why I have the empire.”

So: the formless is lord over things, and the endless is the root of affairs. The drum has no part in the five notes and is master of all five. A man who has the way does not do the work of the five offices; he is master of the men who do it. The former kings, knowing this, used what was not theirs as though it were their own — that is getting through to the ruler’s way. A ruler who has not got through to it behaves otherwise: he does it himself, and so cannot employ the worthy; and not employing them, the worthy come to hate him. This is how reputation is damaged and the state put in danger.

Tang and Wu came into all the wealth of Xia and Shang in a day, and gave the land away in fiefs, and no one in the empire dared not be pleased; and gave the wealth away in rewards, and everyone in the empire vied to be useful. They had got through to using what was not theirs. Hence: to set up offices and divide the duties is the ruler’s frame; to delegate and hold men to the result is the ruler’s frame; to be fond of planning and never weary is the ruler’s frame; to be broad and so keep the multitude is the ruler’s frame; to swallow an insult and hide a fault is the ruler’s frame. A ruler who has the frame of one is feared and loved by his ministers, and that is how emperors and kings have made their work stand.

Employing the Long Suit任长第二

The chapter refuses to measure men with one ruler.

To weigh talent and check ability is the chief thing in governing an age. Short of a sage, who can cover a hundred kinds of conduct and run through every principle? So Shun set his many officers by what each could do; the Han spoke of its three outstanding men in three different terms.

When Yi Yin had earthworks to raise he put the strong-backed to carrying earth, the one-eyed to pushing the barrow, the bent-backed to plastering — each to what suited him, and everyone’s nature came out even. Guan Zhong told his lord: for ceremony I am not the equal of Xi Peng, make him master of protocol; for opening land and gathering grain I am not the equal of Ning Qi, make him master of the fields; for a battle line that does not turn I am not the equal of Wangzi Chengfu, make him master of horse; for judging a case I am not the equal of Bin Xuwu; for going against the ruler’s face in remonstrance I am not the equal of Dongguo Ya. “If you want the state ordered and the army strong, these five are here. If you want hegemony, Yiwu is here.”

The Duke of Yellow Stone: “Use the clever, use the brave, use the greedy, use the stupid. The clever delight in setting up their merit, the brave in acting on their will, the greedy in going straight for gain, the stupid in not minding death. Use each by the passion that is already in him: this is the fine hinge of an army.” The Huainanzi: there is nothing more poisonous than aconite, yet a good doctor keeps it in his bag, because there is a use for it.

Cao Cao’s order put it hardest of all: “A man who can get things done need not have conduct; a man of conduct need not be able to get anything done. Was Chen Ping scrupulous? Did Su Qin keep faith? Yet Chen Ping settled the Han and Su Qin saved a weak Yan — because their long suit was used.” Put Han Xin behind a curtain to lecture, or Dong Zhongshu in armour, and you will get nothing from either.

Grades of Men品目第三

Not a ranking to praise and blame with, but a scale. The next chapter cannot assign offices until this one has marked the scale.

Confucius: men come in five sorts. The common man keeps no rule in his heart about how a thing ends and utters nothing that could serve as a standard; he does not pick a worthy man to attach himself to, nor make himself firm by acting; he sees the small and is blind to the large, and drifts with things without knowing what he is holding to.

The gentleman-scholar has something settled in his heart and something he keeps to. He may not have the whole art of the way, but he follows a line; he may not have every excellence, but he has a place to stand. His knowledge is not many things but a testing of what he knows; his speech is not much but a testing of what he means; his action is not much but a testing of what he acts on. Wealth and honour cannot add to him, poverty and meanness cannot take from him.

The gentleman is loyal and trustworthy in speech without resentment in his heart; benevolence and right conduct are in him without display; his thought is clear and his words are not overbearing; he acts firmly and trusts the way, unwearied, and seems always about to be overtaken and is never caught. The worthy man does not step over the bar; his conduct is within the compass; his words may be a law to the empire without hurting him, his way may transform the people without damage to the root. The sage is joined with heaven and earth, and changes without a fixed direction; the common people do not know his virtue, and those who watch him cannot tell where he begins.

The Qianjing gives another set: virtue enough to draw men from far off, faith enough to unite the divided, discernment enough to judge antiquity, talent enough to cap the age — this is the ying, the flower of men. Law enough to make a teaching stand, conduct enough to cultivate right, benevolence enough to get the multitude, clarity enough to see down — this is the jun. Then the hao, and then the jie. And further down: men of memory, men of letters, men of talk, men of nerve — each named and each placed.

Measuring Talent量才第四

The scale falls on the office. A vessel that does not fit its place is like a peck measure filled to a bushel: what is over is thrown away.

Yi Yin: the man whose wisdom gets through to the great way, who meets change without running out, who can sort the true state of ten thousand things and whose word is enough to tune the seasons and temper wind and rain — raise him to be one of the Three Excellencies, whose business is always the Way. The man who does not miss the four seasons and understands the lie of the land, who can put through what will not go through — raise him to be one of the Nine Ministers, whose business is always Virtue. The man who understands human affairs and holds a line like a plumb-string, who keeps the passes and fills the storehouses — make him a grandee, whose business is always Benevolence. The man who is upright and remonstrates hard and has no cunning in him, who puts the private away and speaks by rule — make him a knight, whose business is always Right. Fix these four and the empire is straight.

Then the Duke of Tai on the grades of a commander, and it is the coldest piece of writing in the scroll. The man of many words and a foul tongue, hated by everybody: set him to watch the alleys and sniff out trouble. The man who likes business, lies down late and rises early and never regrets the labour: a commander of his own household. The man who looks into a thing before he speaks, who encourages men and feeds them, who is steady and says little and divides property evenly: a commander of ten. The anxious, severe, blood-drawing man who will not take advice and puts men to death often, sparing not even his kin: a commander of a hundred. The man who loves to win an argument, who bullies and cuts men down with punishment: a commander of a thousand. The man whose face is composed, who speaks only now and then, who knows whether his men are fed and what is easy or hard for them: a commander of ten thousand. The man who trembles, who is more careful each day than the last, who keeps the worthy near and takes their counsel: a commander of a hundred thousand. The man who is warm and honest and steady, whose mind is not in two places, who brings forward the worthy and does not bend the law: a commander of a million.

Knowing Men知人第五

The difficulty is stated flatly: men are not easy to know, and knowing men is not easy. What follows is a procedure, not a doctrine.

Guangwu of the Han had a fine ear and was wrong about Pang Meng; Cao Mengde could read a man and was undone by Zhang Miao. Why? Because likeness is what confuses the world. The sly look clever and are not clever; the stupid look like gentlemen and are not; the reckless look brave and are not. The ruler who is losing his state looks wise, the minister who is losing it looks loyal; young darnel looks like grain, a yellow ox looks like a tiger at a distance; white bone can be taken for ivory, and quartz for jade. All of it is near and none of it is the thing.

Confucius: “The human heart is more dangerous than mountains and rivers, harder to know than heaven. Heaven at least has its spring and autumn, its winter and summer, its dawn and dusk. Men have a thick face and a deep feeling.” The Duke of Tai listed the mismatches: there are men severe and worthless, men mild and thieving, men outwardly respectful and inwardly contemptuous, men who look decisive and cannot decide, men all in a haze who turn out honest, men who dawdle and deliver.

So there is an art. Question him closely and watch his words; press him in argument and watch him shift; talk with him in private and watch his sincerity; ask him plainly and openly and watch his virtue; send him far off with money and watch his honesty; try him with a woman and watch his constancy; tell him of a danger and watch his courage; make him drunk and watch his bearing. Zhuangzi adds: send him away and watch his loyalty; keep him near and watch his respect; load him with work and watch his ability; put a question to him out of nowhere and watch his wit; hold him to a deadline and watch his good faith; mix him into a crowd and watch his colour.

Li Ke’s five: whom he keeps by him when at home; whom he advances when in funds; whom he recommends when in office; what he refuses to do when out of favour; what he refuses to take when poor. And the Duke of Tai’s eight tests, which are the same instrument again. The chapter is a set of controlled trials.

Reading the Face察相第六

After a chapter saying men are not easy to know, a chapter on the oldest shortcut. Its own limits are stated first: rank and wealth lie in the bone structure, grief and joy in the colour of the face, success and failure in the power to decide.

That men were judged by their faces is old. The Zuo Commentary: the Zhou scribe Shufu, in Lu, was known to be able to read a face, and Gongsun Ao showed him his two sons. The History of the Han: Gaozu, having enthroned Liu Bi as king of Wu, looked at him and said, “Your face has rebellion in it. Fifty years from now there will be trouble in the south-east. Will it not be you? The world is one house — be careful, do not rebel.”

The middle of the chapter is the most specialised writing in the book. The face has its five peaks and four rivers, its five offices and six bureaus; a man whose cheekbones have just begun to rise and whose colour is moist is a lord of the ninth grade, and the scale runs up to the first. One who resembles a dragon will be a civil officer; a tiger, a general; an ox, a chief minister; a horse, a military officer. Then the eyes, one kind after another; then the nose, the mouth, the teeth, the temple hair and the fingers.

A number of the characters in this chapter the base text could only describe rather than write — the Song and Qing printings had graphs that no font has. Twenty-seven of them have been restored here from the ideographic-structure databases; three have no Unicode character at all and are left as the base text left them. It is worth saying plainly that this chapter, unlike the rest of the book, is not argument: it is a technical manual of a kind the Tang took seriously and we do not.

On Gentlemen论士第七

The warmest chapter in the scroll: why a man in power must court men who are not.

Duke Huan of Qi went three times in one day to see the petty officer Ji and was not received. His attendants told him to stop. “A gentleman who is haughty about rank and salary certainly holds his lord cheap,” said the duke, “and a lord who is haughty about hegemony holds his gentlemen cheap. If the master may be haughty about salary, dare I be haughty about hegemony?” He went five times and was received. The Book says: he who can find himself a teacher becomes king.

King Xuan of Qi said to Yan Chu, “Chu, come forward.” Chu said, “King, come forward.” The king’s colour changed: “Is a king the honourable one, or a gentleman?” Chu answered: “When Qin attacked Qi the order went out that anyone who cut firewood within five hundred paces of Liuxia Ji’s grave should die without pardon; and another order that anyone who brought in the king of Qi’s head should be made a marquis of ten thousand households with a thousand ingots of gold. By which it appears that a living king’s head is worth less than a dead gentleman’s grave-mound.” The king took him for his teacher.

Chunyu Kun to King Xuan: the ancients liked good horses and so do you; the ancients liked good food and so do you; the ancients liked beautiful women and so do you; the ancients liked gentlemen and you alone do not. The king said there were none. Kun answered: there are no Hualiu or Qiji today either, yet you pick the best you can find and you are a lover of horses; there are no Mao Qiang or Xi Shi today, yet you pick the best you can find and you are a lover of beauty. “If you must wait for the gentlemen of Yao and Shun and Yu and Tang before you will like any, then the gentlemen of Yao and Shun and Yu and Tang would not like you either.”

The Frame of Government政体第八

The scroll closes by turning from men to the state. The last line is the hinge of the whole book: the constant is set down first so that the variable can be discussed afterwards.

Kings were not set up in antiquity to be waited on. It was because among the people of the world the strong covered the weak and the cunning cheated the simple, and so a Son of Heaven was set up to even them out. Because one man’s clarity cannot light the whole sea within, the Three Excellencies and Nine Ministers were set up to help him. Because remote countries with strange customs would not be reached by his favour, princes were set up to teach them.

Guanzi’s fifteen are then taken one at a time. To set the state on ground that will not tip: have virtue. To pile up in a granary that does not run dry: attend to the five grains. To store in a treasury that is not exhausted: grow mulberry and hemp and raise the six animals. To send orders down as water runs from a spring: follow the heart of the people. To employ men in offices where they will not quarrel: let each do what he is long in. To make plain the road that ends in death: be severe with punishments. To open the gate that is certain to be gained: keep faith with rewards. Not to attempt what cannot be done: measure men’s strength. Not to seek what cannot be got: do not force men to what they hate. Not to settle where you cannot stay: do not snatch at one age’s convenience.

Then a list of fifteen things to do, from making the registers plain and the five-household groups exact, through fixing landholding and the penal terms, setting up rulers and elders, hurrying the farming and the silk, pushing back the secondary trades, urging schooling, testing skill, picking out the hardy, keeping up the arms, tightening the prohibitions, keeping faith with reward and punishment, putting down idleness, and looking into harshness. “Though a sage should arise again, he would say exactly this.” And the last line: having meant to discuss the changes of the long and the short, I set up the way of government first, as the warp.

Scroll Two · Civil Matters, Middle卷第二　文中

Four chapters. Scroll One looked down at the men below; this one looks up at the ruler and out at the state as a whole. Ruler’s virtue comes in grades — emperor, king, hegemon, strong state; ministers come in six right kinds and six wrong; every temperament carries its own defect; and a state can be diagnosed from its six sorts of ruler, nine airs, four disorders and four dangers. The base text carries no general title for this scroll, and the Siku editors reasoned that “Civil Matters, Middle” must have dropped out. The Qing printing whose opening leaf is the cover of this page has it in full.

The Virtue of a Ruler君德第九

The first chapter of the scroll, and the one that gives the book its scale of government.

The Three Augusts said nothing and their transforming power ran to the four seas, so that the world had no one to thank. The Emperor took his measure from heaven and earth, spoke and gave orders, and the world was at peace; ruler and minister gave the credit to each other and the people did not know why things went well. The King controls men by the Way and makes their hearts submit; he sets a square to guard against decline, and though he has a watchful government and armour ready, he has no use for the blade. The Hegemon controls his gentlemen by leverage, binds them by good faith, and employs them by reward: let the faith fail and the gentlemen fall away, let the reward be spoiled and they will not serve.

So the root of ordering a state is punishment and virtue. Heaven completes the year by the two breaths; men complete good government by the two instruments; and even a sage in office cannot use one alone. Much virtue and little punishment: the Five Emperors. Punishment and virtue in halves: the Three Kings. Much punishment and little virtue: the Five Hegemons. Punishment pure, strong and destroyed: Qin.

The rest of the chapter is comparison, case by case, and the two chief sources for it are Yu Shinan’s Brief Discourse on Emperors and Kings and Ban Gu’s appraisals in the History of the Han. Was Gaozu better than Guangwu, the one open-handed and large, the other exact and minute? Cao Zhi’s verdict is hard on Gaozu: his fame was not pure virtue, his conduct was not pure principle, and after his death a savage woman was let loose on his own blood. Yu Shinan’s is the opposite way about: Gaozu’s ministers were the rarest men of any age and he could use them all; to weigh Guangwu against him is to put a good second beside a first.

Can the Zhou’s Cheng and Kang be set beside the Han’s Wen and Jing, as Ban Gu said? Yu Shinan: Cheng and Kang inherited the traces of Wen and Wu with the Duke of Zhou and the Duke of Shao for ministers, transforming a people already thick with goodness — the wind bending the grass is not even a comparison. Wen of Han came to a country with the wreck of Qin still in it, and nearly put punishments out of use. That was the harder thing. And Emperor Wu, of the great talent and the great designs? “Beside the First Emperor of Qin he comes off better. In arrogance, extravagance and cruelty they are near neighbours. Both had more merit than virtue.” The conclusion the chapter reaches about Wu of Han and the First Emperor is the same sentence: they were rulers who established merit, not rulers who preserved what they had.

The Conduct of a Minister臣行第十

Six right kinds and six wrong, and then a series of cases in which the classification breaks down.

The six right: the sage minister, who sees the hinge of survival and ruin before the shoot has stirred and forestalls it, so that his lord stands clear in a place of honour; the great minister, who empties his own mind, presses the ruler with ritual and right, and covers his faults; the loyal minister, up early and late to bed, tireless in bringing worthy men forward; the wise minister, who sees where a thing will fail and stops the gap at the source, turning the disaster into a benefit; the upright minister, who keeps to the text of the law, takes no gifts and lives plainly; the blunt minister, who will go against the ruler’s face and tell him his faults when the state is in confusion.

The six wrong: the place-holder, safe in his office and his salary, floating with the age; the flatterer, who says “excellent” to everything and finds out privately what the ruler likes; the traitor, sly within and prim without, who brightens the men he wants advanced and blackens the men he wants dropped; the slanderer, clever enough to dress up a wrong and eloquent enough to carry it, who splits a family from inside; the usurper, who takes the power into his own hands and forges the ruler’s orders; and the minister who ruins a state, who leads the ruler into what is not right and shuts out the light.

Then the hard cases. Was Yang Fu, who spoke his mind to the throne, a loyal minister? Master Yuan says no — a blunt man, not a loyal one: he made his ruler’s faults known to everybody. Chen Qun talked with the ruler all day and never once spoke of his faults, and sent in his memorials in such a way that nobody knew: that was loyalty. Ji Bu served under Xiang Yu, was famous for courage, and afterwards let himself be sold as a slave rather than die. Sima Qian: “How low he brought himself!” — and yet he brought himself low on purpose, knowing what he was worth. Guan Zhong would not die for Prince Jiu: “I am not ashamed of not dying for Prince Jiu; I am ashamed that my authority does not reach the other princes.” The chapter’s point is that the same act has no fixed name: it is read off the office a man holds and the work he has undertaken.

A Table of Virtues德表第十一

A short chapter that turns “virtue” into a table of correctable biases.

Confucius: by nature men are close to one another; by practice they drift apart. So the sage leads men’s natures, cuts back the drift, is careful whom he lets them keep company with, and trims what is one-sided in them. “Examine what a man likes and hates, order his passions and his nature, and the king’s way is complete.”

The way to order a nature is to find out what you have too much of and strengthen what you are short of. The quick and penetrating should beware of looking too closely; the little-read and little-travelled of being walled in; the bold and hard of being violent; the kind and warm of never deciding; the calm and easy of being late; the large-minded of forgetting.

Then the twelve materials of the Treatise on Personalities, each with its own failure built in. Severe, straight, firm and resolute: his material is in setting things right, his fault is in cutting and exposing. Yielding, easy and forgiving: his beauty is breadth, his fault is that he never decides. Fierce and heroic: his charge is daring, his fault is suspicion. Careful and cautious: his good is in scruple, his fault is doubt. Strong and stubborn: his use is as a main timber, his fault is obstinacy. Subtle in argument: his ability is untying knots, his fault is drifting. Broad and universal: his height is in covering everything, his fault is muddiness. Clean and incorruptible: his distinction is frugality, his fault is narrowness. And so on to the twelfth. “These are the materials of constraint and height; they are not the virtue of the mean.”

And the Wenzi: let the heart be small and the will large, the wit round and the conduct square, the abilities many and the affairs few. A small heart thinks of trouble before it is born; a large will takes in every country and makes itself the hub; round wit has no end and flows to the four quarters; square conduct stands upright and is not bent, and does not change its grip in adversity.

Order and Disorder理乱第十二

The state treated as an object that can be diagnosed. Three tables, and the reading runs backwards: not “is this ruler good?” but “which of these airs does the country smell of?”

The six rulers (Xun Yue’s): the one whose body is upright and whose nature is humane, who acts for others and not for himself, is a king-ruler. The one who masters himself, asks questions and puts things into practice, who acts from what is right and not from his mood, is a governing ruler. The one who works at his business and does not dare be slack, who puts the public first, is a surviving ruler. The one in whom public and private run side by side and who wins one and loses one, is a declining ruler. The one whose feeling outruns his sense of right and whose measures go past the limit, is an endangered ruler. The one who uses slanderers and drives out the loyal, who indulges himself, spends the public money on favours and punishes in anger past the law, and who papers over a wrong rather than mend it, is a doomed ruler.

The nine airs: ruler and minister close and yet ceremonious, the many officers in accord without being identical, yielding and not contending, industrious and not resentful — the air of a state with ritual. Custom not uniform, office not weighty, small officials slandering and commoners getting up opinions — a declining state. Ruler and minister competing in cleverness, the court competing in merit, grandees in reputation, commoners in profit — a state at odds. Many desires above, many tricks below, no settled law and government coming out of several doors — a state in disorder. Extravagance called breadth, arrogance called height, licence called being at ease, while keeping the rites is called being hidebound — a wasted state. Harshness called perception, profit called public spirit, cutting down those below called ability, attaching oneself above called loyalty — a treacherous state. And so to the airs of a state in danger and a state about to fall.

Then the four disorders and the four dangers. The chapter is a diagnostic sheet, and every item on it is something an outsider could observe in a week.

Scroll Three · Civil Matters, Lower卷第三　文下

The hinge of the book, and the source of the name it now goes by: the thirteenth chapter, “Reversal,” stands here. The first two scrolls built a whole apparatus of statecraft; this scroll turns the whole of it over. Benevolence, right, ritual, music, name, law, punishment and reward each produce their own opposite; the fourteenth chapter sets the maxims of antiquity against each other in fifty-three pairs and declines to adjudicate; the fifteenth says a law out of step with its time makes the disorder worse the more firmly it is enforced; the sixteenth goes through the schools of thought one by one and gives each its virtue and its disease. A reader who took only this scroll would not have read the book wrongly.

Reversal反经第十三

The chapter the modern title comes from. It is not against law and order; it is a warning that every good instrument carries its own way of going bad.

The three dynasties did not fall because their laws fell. The men who handled the laws were not the right men. So law is the footprint the former kings left; without the man, the way does not walk by itself.

Yin Wenzi: benevolence, right, ritual, music, name, law, punishment, reward — these eight were the art by which the Five Emperors and Three Kings governed. And then, one by one, the reverse of each. Benevolence is how favour is spread over things; it is also how partiality is born. Right is how a standard of conduct is set up; it is also how showy falsehood is made. Ritual is how respect and care are practised; it is also how idleness and contempt come in. Music is how feeling and will are harmonised; it is also how licence gets loose. Name is how high and low are set straight; it is also how self-importance and usurpation grow. Law is how a diverse multitude is evened out; it is also how division is made. Punishment is how the unsubmissive are overawed; it is also how brutality is bred. Reward is how loyalty and ability are encouraged; it is also how mean contention starts.

The Wenzi runs the same operation on institutions. Writing was made to manage a hundred affairs, so that the dull should not forget and the clever should keep record; when it declined, men used it to get the guilty off and kill the innocent. Parks were made to supply the ancestral temple and train the soldiers; when they declined, men galloped and hunted in them and stole the people’s season. Raising the worthy was done to even out the teaching and straighten the lawsuits; when it declined, factions formed and each pushed its own.

The Han Shi Waizhuan on the “five reversals” of a gentleman: he has rank and honour and does not use them to love men and act rightly, but turns them into arrogance; he has a rich house and does not use it to relieve want, but turns it into unmeasured display; he has courage and does not use it to guard his lord, but turns it into private brawling; he has wit and does not use it to set up straight designs, but turns it into cunning and fraud; he has good looks and does not use them to preside over a court, but turns them into seduction. And the Duke of Tai, which is the coldest formulation in the chapter: “Make the punishments plain and men are cowed; cow them and something breaks out. Look too closely and men are harassed; harass them and they move; move them and they are not settled, and it is easy for a change to come.”

Right and Wrong是非第十四

The most peculiar chapter in the book in form. Fifty-three pairs, each headed “the case for” and “the case against,” each made only of quotations, and the author scarcely intervenes: his own notes in this chapter come to barely three hundred characters.

It opens by saying why: gain and loss take different roads, plain and ornamented make different governments; the records of the past hand down their teaching, and every one of them can now be argued against with reason.

For: the Greater Odes — “clear-sighted and wise, and so he keeps himself safe”; the Changes — “the great virtue of heaven and earth is life.” Against: the Analects — “a gentleman faced with danger gives up his life”; and again, “a gentleman will kill himself to complete his benevolence; he will not seek life at the cost of it.”

For: Guanzi — “doubt the present, look at the past; not knowing what is to come, look at what has gone.” Against: the Lüshi Chunqiu — “a man choked to death on food, and you would forbid the world to eat: absurd. A man drowned from a boat, and you would forbid the world to sail: absurd. A man lost his state by using arms, and you would abolish the world’s arms: absurd.” Du Shu: “Traitors have existed from antiquity to now. One in a century is treading on the last one’s heels; one in a thousand li is shoulder to shoulder. To take them as a warning is to stop men eating because of one who choked: the choked are few and the starved will be many.”

For: Confucius — “I hate those who take exposing evil for uprightness.” Against: Guanzi — “I hate those who take concealing evil for benevolence.” And Cao Xi’s Discourse on Impartiality: covering up the bad and displaying the good is what the lanes and alleys say; it was invented to stop men slandering each other out of love and hate, and it is not an exact principle nor a fair judgement. Where good and bad are not told apart, disorder comes of it; where friends are all of one voice, ruin follows.

And so, pair by pair, through fifty-three of them. The reader is left holding the scales himself, which is the point. (On this page the two headings are set as labels, because in the Siku printing they stand in the small type used for notes and are not part of the sentences they head.)

Fitting the Change适变第十五

On time. This is the chapter whose second half was missing from the punctuated base text and has been restored here from the Siku edition — some two thousand seven hundred characters, containing the whole assessment of the Huang-Lao, Confucian, Mohist and Legalist methods.

The former kings made their measures to fit their time and shaped affairs as the work required; the law suited its time and so there was order, the business fitted its task and so there was success. Now the time has moved and the law has not; the task has changed and men still do it after the ancients. So the law and the time contradict each other, and the more firmly the law is set up the worse the disorder grows.

A king’s government first removes what harms men and gives them food and clothing, then teaches them ritual and right, then overawes them with punishment so that they know what to like and what to avoid. That is the king’s art. The hegemon’s art is to honour the ruler and lower the minister, to keep authority in one place, to let no order come from a second door, to keep faith with reward and punishment, and to see that the officers are in order and the orders are carried out.

Then the Laozi’s “I do nothing and the people transform themselves,” with the Wenzi’s gloss, which is the best short definition of non-action in Chinese: “Non-action does not mean that you cannot be drawn and cannot be pushed. It means acting along the grain of things, establishing merit out of what is already there, pushing what is naturally so.” Tang and Wu were sage rulers and could not have taken a skiff on the lakes with the men of Yue; Yi Yin was a worthy minister and could not have ridden with the Hu; Confucius and Mozi were universally learned and could not have gone through the thickets and the crags with men who live in the hills.

And then the four methods, each with its examples and each given its due. Huang-Lao: Cao Can governed Qi by it and the state settled; handing over to his successor he said only, “I leave you the prisons and the markets — mind you do not disturb them much,” and when asked whether there was nothing more important, answered, “The prison and the market are where things are allowed to be contained together. Disturb them and where are the bad men to go?” Qin used extreme punishment and the empire rebelled; Emperor Wu used sharp law and the jails filled. “That is the harm it does.” The Confucian method: the seven teachings and the three utmosts, from the Kongzi Jiayu — honour the old and those below grow more filial; be glad to give and those below grow more open; love virtue and nothing is hidden from you; hate greed and those below are ashamed to contend. The Mohist: the chapters on moderating palaces and clothes, quoted nearly whole. The Legalist: Shang Yang, Shen Buhai, Shenzi, Yin Wenzi, Han Fei and Li Si on names and shares — “when the name and the share are undetermined, even Yao and Shun and Yu and Tang would all join the chase; once determined, even a poor thief does not dare take.”

The chapter will not choose. “Different as their warp and weft may be, and different the failure each repairs, in bringing the multitude through alive they all have something in them.” What it will not have is the man who quotes a rule made for one age to refute a remedy made for another, or the man who cites the style of the ancient kings to sneer at a hegemon’s government without asking what time it is. “He speaks falsely and argues well, he follows the wrong and makes it glossy: this man is a criminal, and the gentleman forbids him.”

Setting the Schools Straight正论第十六

A survey of the nine currents of thought, modelled on the bibliographical treatise of the History of the Han but with a paragraph added to each school beginning “and when it goes wrong.”

The standard is set first, from the Record of Rites. The Odes teach warmth and depth, the Documents breadth of reference, Music breadth and ease, the Changes cleanness and fineness, Ritual respect and restraint, the Annals the ordering of words and the arrangement of events. And each has its failure: the Odes make men simple, the Documents make them false, Music makes them extravagant, the Changes make them injurious, Ritual makes them fussy, the Annals make them unruly. A man deep in the Odes is warm without being simple; deep in the Documents, wide without being false — and so through the six.

The Confucians came out of the office of instruction: they help the ruler follow the two breaths and make the teaching clear, they range in the six classics and attend to benevolence and right. That is their height. Where it goes wrong, the confused lose the fineness and the cranks trim to the fashion, until men leave the root of the way and make a noise to catch a crowd. The Daoists came out of the office of the scribes, who kept the record of success and failure; they hold the essential, keep the root, guard themselves by emptiness and hold themselves by lowliness — the art of the man who faces south. That is their height. Where it goes wrong, they would abolish ritual and music and throw out benevolence and right and govern by emptiness alone, which cannot be done.

The Yin-Yang school came out of the astronomical office and reverently follows heaven, which is their height; where it goes wrong they are bound by taboos and swallowed by the small arts. The Legalists came out of the office of law: reward and punishment are made to accord with the ritual order, which is their height; where it goes wrong they are pitiless and cut away the teaching and the transformation. The Logicians came from the ritual officers and are good at rectifying names; where it goes wrong they tangle and cut and turn it into a game. The Mohists came from the temple guardians: they honour thrift and the worthy, and where it goes wrong they see no distinction of rank. The Diplomats came from the office of envoys and are good at responding to a situation; where it goes wrong they make deceit their whole trade. The Miscellanists and the Agriculturalists follow, each in the same form.

Scroll Four · Annals of the Hegemons, Upper卷第四　霸纪上

One chapter, the longest in the book. It runs from the removal of the Zhou capital eastward down to the fall of Sui and the rise of Tang. The main text is barely five thousand characters — a bare chronological skeleton; the author’s own notes run to thirty thousand and put the flesh on it, passage after passage lifted from the histories. The two must be read together: without the notes the main text is hardly a piece of writing at all.

The Hegemon’s Design霸图第十七

The skeleton: Zhou held the empire and governed it for three hundred years and more; under Cheng and Kang punishments were laid aside and not used for forty years. Then the five hegemons rose one after another — a hegemon assists the Son of Heaven, raises what is profitable and removes what is harmful, punishes the violent and forbids the crooked, and sets the sea within to rights in order to honour the Son of Heaven. When the five hegemons were gone and no sage followed them, the Son of Heaven was left weak and alone, his orders were not carried out, the princes did as they pleased, the strong bullied the weak and the many were violent to the few.

Tian Chang usurped Qi and the six great houses divided Jin, and the age of the Warring States began: “this was when the people first began to suffer.” Strong states worked at conquest and weak ones at defence; the vertical and the horizontal alliances formed, chariots ran hub to hub, lice bred in the armour and the people had no one to complain to. Then Qin ate the empire piece by piece and swallowed the warring states, made the government of the sea within one, pulled down the walls of the princes, and its law was severe and its government harsh and flatterers were many. Meng Tian was sent north against the Hu and Wei Tuo south to garrison Yue, troops standing idle in useless country and no one able to live. The First Emperor died and the empire rose in revolt.

And from here the chronicle proper: Chen Sheng and Wu Guang at Chen, Wu Chen and Zhang Er in Zhao, Xiang Liang at Wu, Tian Dan in Qi, Jing Ju at Ying, Zhou Shi in Wei, Han Guang in Yan — the heroes rose out of every gorge and the house of Qin perished. Then Gaozu of Han, a village headman of Pei; the covenant that the first man into Xianyang should be king there; the death of Xiang Liang at Dingtao; Han Xin’s crossing at Jingxing and the battle with the river at his back; Lou Jing urging the capital be put inside the passes; Guangwu at Kunyang; Guandu; the Red Cliff; Liu Yuan and Shi Le; the abdications that made Song, Qi, Liang and Chen; Li Mi and Wang Shichong; and last the Tang.

The notes are where the book lives. Kuai Tong talks the magistrate of Fanyang into surrendering and thirty towns follow “like balls rolling down a slope.” Xiao He tells the king of Han that to be king in Han is at least better than dying, and that the man who can bend below one and stretch above ten thousand is what Tang and Wu were. Li Zuoche offers to cut Han Xin’s supply line and is not listened to, and afterwards Han Xin buys his advice with a thousand pieces of gold. Lou Jing on why the Zhou could hold Luoyang and the Han could not. Zhang Liang on why a capital behind the passes is a hand at the throat and a fist in the back.

The chapter ends with a “discourse” quoting Gan Bao — the rise of a dynasty waits on the mandate of heaven, and if there is succession it is not a human business — and Fan Ye on how great enterprises are lost: the three dynasties by favourite women, Qin by extravagance and cruelty, the Western capital by the consort families, the Eastern by the eunuchs. And then the author’s own summing up, which is not fatalistic at all: from Qin and Han down to Zhou and Sui, those who got the empire got it by getting hold of worthy and outstanding men and raising what profited the people and removing what harmed them; and those who lost it lost it, without exception, by employing small men and by extravagance without measure.

Scroll Five · Annals of the Hegemons, Middle卷第五　霸纪中

One chapter, on the Warring States. Nearly the whole of the persuasions of Su Qin and Zhang Yi is copied into the notes, so that the scroll amounts to an abridged Intrigues of the Warring States with a frame around it. The base text of this page had this scroll spliced bodily into the middle of the first note of Scroll Four; it has been cut out and put back where it belongs. See the colophon.

The Seven Powers in Outline七雄略第十八

The empire is a great vessel and the living are a heavy store. A vessel that large cannot be managed by one man; a store that heavy cannot be guarded alone. So the wilds were marked off and the borders divided, which is what enfeoffment is for; and near kin and distant were set to hold each other in place, which is what keeps the rise and the fall in check. The Zhou looked at the two dynasties before it, set up five degrees of rank, enfeoffed eight hundred states of which fifty-five were of the royal surname, deepened the root and made the trunk fast so that it could not be pulled up. At the height, the dukes of Zhou and Shao assisted its government; in its decline the five hegemons propped up its weakness. But a law that makes those below thick ends in a tail too big to wag.

After Kings You and Ping it sank year by year; rank and salary came mostly from the retainers of retainers, and campaigns were no longer ordered by the Son of Heaven. Wu was absorbed by Yue, Jin was divided in three, Zheng was swallowed by Han, Lu was destroyed by Chu. For forty years the sea within had no master, and then it was the Warring States. Qin held the ground of advantage and rode a cunning and treacherous army, eating away at the east, and the east was afraid of it. Su Qin of Luoyang bound the princes vertically to keep Qin out; Zhang Yi of Wei broke the vertical league and strung them horizontally. This is where the vertical and the horizontal begin.

Then the persuasions, almost in full. To King Wen of Yan: Yan is safe because Zhao screens it on the south; Qin attacking Yan fights a war a thousand li from home, Zhao attacking Yan fights one a hundred li from home, and a man who worries about the danger at a thousand li and not the one at a hundred has made the worst calculation there is. To Marquis Su of Zhao, to the king of Han — “to serve Qin is to cut off a piece of yourself each year; the land runs out and the demands do not” — to Wei, to Qi, to Chu. And then Zhang Yi, going round the same six courts and undoing each speech in turn. Le Yi’s letter about the flatfish that cannot swim unless it has its pair; Lu Zhonglian refusing to honour Qin as emperor; Fan Ju on befriending the far and attacking the near; Huang Xie’s letter to the king of Qin; Gan Luo, aged twelve, getting five cities out of Zhao by talking.

The chapter ends with a discourse weighing the five degrees of enfeoffment against the commandery system. Zhou lasted eight hundred years and even at the end, reduced to a commoner, the king was still nominally the common lord of all, because the branches held each other up. Qin, having watched Zhou lose its grip, abolished the degrees and set up commanderies; the ruler had the sea within and his own sons were commoners; and the day he died the empire fell apart, because a man in a torn coat could shout in a marsh and there was no prince with any reason to come to the throne’s help. So neither is safe. Where there are commanderies and order, men in plain clothes conceive ambitions; where the five degrees rule an age, there is the danger of the leagues. Every system has its disease. The only conclusion is that the ruler must be anxious, day after day, cultivate his virtue to hold the thing steady and choose worthy men to use — “and then, though there were a sage like Tang or Wu, he could not rise; how much less a man of no account.”

Scroll Six · Annals of the Hegemons, Lower卷第六　霸纪下

One chapter, on the Three Kingdoms, and the key is struck in the first paragraph: the reason Wu and Shu could stand against Cao Cao was not virtue or unity but ground. The scroll then works through the geography of the empire region by region and reckons what each is worth for attack and defence. The base text has no general title for this scroll either; “Annals of the Hegemons, Lower” is the Siku editors’ reconstruction from the pattern.

The Leverage of the Three Kingdoms三国权第十九

When the Han lost its grip the net let the fierce through. Yuan Shao looked down from the Yellow River, Liu Biao rose in Jing, Ma Chao and Han Sui held the west of the passes, Lü Bu and Chen Gong seized the east — men with a hundred thousand troops and a thousand squadrons of horse, and every one of them an outstanding man of his day. Yet Cao Cao held the Son of Heaven and gave the princes their orders, and in six or seven years eight or nine out of ten of them had been wiped out. Wu and Shu were little states with the territory of four provinces between them, and their men were timid in a public war and bold in a private brawl, and neither in numbers nor in strength were they a match for the Yuans and Liu Biao and Lü Bu. Why, then, could these two look their enemy in the face and hold him off? Because the ground was not the same, and the leverage made them what they were.

Cao Pi came down to the Yangzi, saw the water running, and said, “This is how heaven keeps north and south apart.” Liu Zi called Nanzheng a prison of heaven and the Xie valley a stone tunnel five hundred li long. Every earlier record is afraid of those depths. The chapter’s own gloss on the famous maxim is dry: heaven’s season is not as good as earth’s advantage, and earth’s advantage is not as good as concord among men — but a middling man holding ground like this could still have drawn out his term.

Then the survey. Shu: five thousand li square, forty commanderies, a metropolis in itself, “the storehouse of heaven,” a thousand li of rich fields, silk enough to clothe the empire, timber, bamboo, fish and salt, iron and copper, and water carriage down to the Yangzi. Li Xiong’s advice to Gongsun Shu; Zhang Song and Fa Zheng bringing Liu Bei in; the road by which Deng Ai came over the mountains at the end. Jing: the throat of the river, which is why Lu Su told Sun Quan to take it and why Lü Meng crossed in the white clothes of a merchant to get it back. Wu: the lakes and the river, and Zhou Yu’s reckoning before the Red Cliff — the northerners are not used to boats, the horses have no pasture, the season is against them, and the illness will do the rest.

The chapter closes with Jia Yi’s Memorial on Security, on why the kings who were near kin rebelled and the king of Changsha, with twenty-five thousand households and no power at all, stayed loyal to the end: “it was not that his nature was different; the shape of things made him so.” And then the author’s own application of it to his own day — the men who hold a walled city now hold a thousand li of it; they are not kin to the throne and they hold ground better than mountains and sea; a man with a state of his own cannot fail to look into this.

Scroll Seven · Deliberation on Power卷第七　权议

Two chapters. The first, on taking warning, is the second longest in the book and lays the successions of dynasties out in a line; its conclusion is a single sentence — the empire is not one man’s empire but the empire’s empire. The second shows the same plan producing opposite results in different years.

Taking Warning惧戒第二十

The Changes: “Tang and Wu turned the mandate over, in accord with heaven and answering to men.” The Documents: “Soothe me and you are my lord; abuse me and you are my enemy.” The old saying: a cornered rat will bite a wildcat and a common man will rush a lord of ten thousand chariots. The Duke of Yellow Stone: a ruler cannot be without virtue, for without it his ministers rebel.

King Wen at Feng asks the Duke of Tai what to do about the king of Shang, and the answer is the longest single passage in the chapter and the best statement of patience in the book. Cultivate yourself, humble yourself before the worthy, be good to the people, and watch heaven. Until heaven shows a calamity you may not lead; until men show a disaster you may not plan. “The empire is not one man’s empire. Taking the empire is like chasing a wild animal: when it is caught the whole world has a share in the meat.” To take nothing from the people is the way to have the people; to take nothing from the state is the way to have the state. “I look at their fields and the weeds are beating the grain; I look at their crowd and the crooked are beating the straight; I look at their officers and they are savage and rapacious and break the law, and those above do not notice. This is the sign of a state about to fall.”

Then the successions. Shuxiang tells Han Xuanzi why Prince Gan cannot succeed in Chu — there are five difficulties in taking a state: to be favoured and have no men; to have men and no party; to have a party and no plan; to have a plan and no people; to have people and no virtue — and Prince Gan has none of the five, while Qiji has all of them. Zigong goes out once and throws Qi into confusion, preserves Lu, breaks Wu and makes Yue hegemon; Confucius’ comment is uneasy about it. Then Qin’s fall; Wang Mang’s usurpation; Gengshi’s collapse; the end of Sui and the rising at Taiyuan, with the white banner and the oath in the fields.

And the last paragraph, which is why the chapter is called what it is. Confucius, reading the line in the Odes about the officers of Yin pouring the libation in the Zhou capital, sighed and said, “Wealth and honour are not constant. If it were not so, what would princes take warning by and what would the common people be encouraged by?” The Changes: “In safety do not forget danger; in survival do not forget ruin. Thus the person is safe and the state can be kept.” To know fear, and from fear to take warning, is a blessing to a man who has a state.

What the Time Calls For时宜第二十一

The same thing in two different years is two different things. It is not the things that are perverse; it is the time that has changed.

At the end of Qin, Chen She reached Chen and the local men urged him to take the royal title. Zhang Er and Chen Yu told him not to: “Do not take the title. March west quickly, set up the heirs of the six states, make yourself a party. Then there will be no armies in the field and no walls held against you, and you can punish Qin, hold Xianyang and give the princes their orders. If you make yourself king of Chen alone, the empire will come apart.”

Years later, with Chu and Han deadlocked, Li Yiji gave Gaozu exactly the same advice — set up the heirs of the six states, and their lords and peoples will all wear your virtue. Gaozu said, “Good,” and had the seals cut. Zhang Liang came in and raised eight objections, one after another. Tang enfeoffed the heir of Jie because he could hold Jie’s life in his hand; can you hold Xiang Ji’s? That is the first. King Wu marked Shang Rong’s village, freed Jizi, raised a mound over Bi Gan; can you? That is the second. He opened the granary at Juqiao and scattered the treasure of Lutai; can you? The third. And so to the seventh, which is the one that bites: the wandering gentlemen who left their families and their ancestral graves to follow you are all waiting for a foot of ground. Restore the six states and every one of them goes home to serve his own lord — with whom will you take the empire? Gaozu spat out his food and cursed the scholar and had the seals destroyed.

The chapter then runs the same test on “hold the Son of Heaven and give the princes their orders.” Ju Shou urged it on Yuan Shao, who would not, and Cao Cao did it and won. Du Sichong urged Xiao Yan to fetch the prince of Nankang and set him up, and Zhang Hongce warned that the prince in another man’s hand would make Xiao Yan somebody’s instrument; Xiao Yan refused both, went straight on, took Jiankang and had the south. The same move, and the right answer is different each time. Change with the time; do not hold to one thing.

Scroll Eight · Miscellaneous Discourses卷第八　杂说

Nineteen chapters, the most scattered and the most readable part of the book. Each is two or three hundred characters and takes one perverse fact about the world: how to read a man before you speak to him; that good faith is not unconditional; that loyalty gets a man suspected; that the useless is the great use; that resentment is bred by kindness; how to treat a man who served your enemy well; that nothing can be counted on; fate; that only the greatest selfishness comes out as public spirit; that a defeat can be made into a success; why clear wits go dark; that government should stay close to the ground; that goodness only counts when it accumulates; that the world’s likes and the facts run opposite; that argument is unnecessary if you look at roots and traces; that a fault is read off the party a man belongs to; that gentleman and small man are mostly a matter of circumstance; that arrogance can be a form of ceremony; and finally a dictionary of the words themselves.

Angling for the Feeling钓情第二十二

Confucius: to speak before you have seen the colour of a man’s face is blindness. And: before he trusts you, he takes your advice for abuse. Xun Qing: to speak when it is apt is wisdom, and to keep silent when that is apt is wisdom too. So a man who is about to speak must first angle for the feeling of the man he is speaking to.

The middle of the chapter is Han Fei’s “Difficulties of Persuasion,” taken over almost whole. Persuade him with solid profit and he thinks you low and common and will put you at a distance. Persuade him with a high name and he thinks you have no grasp of the case and will not take you up. Talk with him about great men and he thinks you are probing him; talk about little men and he thinks you are hawking influence. Discuss what he loves and he thinks you are borrowing his capital; discuss what he hates and he thinks you are testing him. Business succeeds by being kept close and talk fails by leaking, and you need not have leaked it yourself — it is enough that your words touched what he was hiding, and then you are in danger.

The chapter’s own contribution is the four kinds of angling: by word, by affair, by a worthy man and by colour. The last has its own table, from the Qianjing: joy comes out of the face freely; anger comes out coarsely, to insult; desire comes out warm, to please; fear comes out cowed, to submit; grief comes out startled, to be still. “Human feeling must show itself in something. A man who knows this can put a case to a ruler.”

Good Faith in Disguise诡信第二十三

Confucius: a gentleman is firm but not obstinate in small promises. And: good faith close to right is a word you can go back on. From which it follows that only right decides, and good faith is not obligatory.

The Duke of She said, “In my village there is a man who is straight: his father took a sheep and the son bore witness against him.” Confucius: “In my village the straight man is otherwise: a father screens his son and a son his father, and straightness lies in that.”

Chu besieged Song; Song asked Jin for help, and Jin sent Xie Yang to tell them the army was coming. Zheng caught him and handed him to Chu, and the king of Chu bribed him heavily to say the opposite. He agreed, was put up on a siege tower, and shouted the true message. The king was going to kill him. “You agreed and went back on it. What for?” Xie Yang: “A ruler is able to lay down a command, and that is right; a subject is able to carry it out, and that is good faith. Good faith carries right and puts it into effect, and there is the profit. Right does not have two faiths and faith does not have two commands. Your bribe was ignorance of what a command is. I took your command in order to complete my own. To die and complete it is my salary.”

The chapter ends on the deliberate paradox: “So the crooked turns out to be good faith and the deceitful turns out to be loyalty. Deceit and disguise are the very root of loyalty and faith.” Which is the thirteenth chapter’s operation carried out on one virtue at a time.

Loyalty Suspected忠疑第二十四

Blame and praise, right and wrong, cannot be fixed. Take Chen Ping, with Gaozu’s judgement and Chen Ping’s own designs: slander him and he is pushed away, praise him and he is brought close. Take Wei Shang, with Emperor Wen’s clear eye and Wei Shang’s loyalty: apply the law and he is a criminal, apply generosity and he is a hero. The men of the age who hear a case mostly have a bias, and a biased hearing is a wrong hearing.

The Lüshi Chunqiu: a man lost his axe and suspected his neighbour’s son. He watched him walk, watched his face, listened to him talk — every gesture was the gesture of a man who had stolen an axe. Then he dug in a gully and found the axe, and the next day the neighbour’s son did nothing that looked in the least like it. The son had not changed. The man had.

And the Huainanzi at the end, which is the finest thing in the chapter. Look at your face in a basin of water and it is round; look at it in a cup and it is oblong. The face has not changed; what has changed is what you are looking into. “I may wish to keep myself straight and wait on things — but how am I to know what the age is looking at me in? Right and wrong have nothing fixed in them anywhere under heaven. Every age calls right what it calls right and wrong what it calls wrong. I should like to pick the right and live in it and pick the wrong and drop it; but not knowing what the age counts right and wrong, which is which?” So there are men who are loyal and suspected of it, and it will not do to be careless about that.

The Use of the Useless用无用第二十五

The old saying: what catches the bird is one mesh of the net, and a net of one mesh will never catch a bird; what makes a bird fly far is the strength of the six quills, but without the help of all the other feathers it will not fly far. So the use of what has no use is a large thing.

Huizi said to Zhuangzi, “Your words are useless.” Zhuangzi: “Once you know about uselessness you can be talked to about use. Heaven and earth are wide and great, and what a man uses of them is the space under his feet. Very well: pare away the rest down to the Yellow Springs — has a man still got a use for it?” “No.” “Then the use of the useless is clear enough.”

Chen Ping had wit to spare and was suspected; Zhou Bo was plain and loyal and was trusted. Where benevolence and right are not enough to hold men together, the clever man is suspected for his surplus and the plain man is believed for his want. The Han summoned the recluses Fan Ying and Yang Hou and the court waited on them like gods, and when they came they turned out to have nothing in particular. Li Gu and Zhu Mu said such men were simply stealing an empty reputation and were of no use. And yet the young men looked at them and were formed into instruments, and the ruler of the age treated them with ceremony and by it got the multitude. Trace their uselessness and it is exactly that which was of use. To mock the distant arts and cheapen the flower of the state is going too far.

Kindness Breeds Resentment恩生怨第二十六

The proverb in the Commentary: “Do not resent where there is nothing to resent — I am resented.” Whence: resentment is never felt toward the distant; it is felt toward the near.

Gaozi said the ode “Xiaobian” is a small man’s poem, because it is resentful. Mencius: “How stiff the old gentleman is about poetry! Suppose a man of Yue draws his bow on me: I shall talk about it afterwards laughing, because he is nothing to me. Suppose my own brother draws his bow on me: I shall talk about it in tears, because he is my own. The resentment in ‘Xiaobian’ is the love of one’s own, and the love of one’s own is benevolence.”

Han Jianzi, sent to look at the army of Qin, told his duke: “Fewer than ours, and their fighting men are twice ours.” “Why?” “You went out on their help and came back on their favour; you ate their grain in the famine. Three gifts and no return. That is why they have come.” And Du Ye to Wang Yin: “I have heard that where the kindness is deep the demands are close, and where the love is at its height the asking is close. To be intimate and not be treated differently, to be near and not be marked out — who could feel no resentment?” Resentment is a form of closeness, and kindness is where resentment is born.

Submission in Disguise诡顺第二十七

Master Zhao said: when cloud and thunder fill the world and nobody knows on which roof the crow will settle, the man who has given his pledge to a lord governs men for that lord and does his office for him. Therefore Gaozu rewarded Ji Bu for his offence and Duke Wen of Jin was pleased with the eunuch’s fault, and the old cornering was not held against them. That is a man who has got hold of the large frame.

When Duke Wen was in exile, Duke Xian sent the eunuch Pi to attack him at Pu, and Pi cut off his sleeve. When he came back and took the state, and Lü and Xi in fear were about to burn the palace and kill him, Pi asked to be let in. The duke sent word: “At Pu the order was for one night and you came at once. Later, when I was hunting with the lord of the Di, you came for Hui to kill me; the order was three nights and you came on the second. There was an order, but why such speed?” Pi answered: “I supposed when you came in that you would have understood it. If you have not, you will meet trouble again. A ruler’s order has no second; that is the old rule. To remove the ruler’s enemy, one uses all one’s strength. What were the men of Pu and the men of Di to me? Now that you are on the throne, will there be no men of Pu and Di? Duke Huan of Qi set aside the arrow at his belt-hook and made Guan Zhong his minister. If you would have it otherwise, you need not trouble to give me an order — I shall go. Men are leaving; it is hardly only your punished servant.” He was let in, told of the plot, and the duke escaped it.

And the other side: Duke Hui killed Li Ke, Gaozu executed Ding Gong, Shi Le put Zao Song to death, Liu Bei kept Xu Jing at a distance — and every one of them had his reasons. Fan Ye’s sentence closes it: “A man who keeps faith with his old lord can be employed by a new one; a man ashamed to be rewarded for bringing his following over can be given a great reward.”

Nothing Can Be Counted On难必第二十八

Every ruler wants his minister loyal, and loyalty does not necessarily get believed: Wu Zixu was thrown in the river and Chang Hong died in Shu, and they say his blood turned to jade in three years. Every parent wants a filial son, and filial conduct is not necessarily loved: Xiao Ji grieved and Zeng Shen wept. These are the things that cannot be counted on.

Marquis Wen of Wei asked Huju Zi whether one could rely on the worth of a father, a brother, a son, a minister. “No. Why? No father was worthier than Yao, and Danzhu was banished; no son was worthier than Shun, and Gusou was confined; no brother was worthier than Shun, and Xiang was insolent; no younger brother than the Duke of Zhou, and Guan and Cai were executed; no minister than Tang and Wu, and Jie and Zhou were destroyed by them. He who looks to others does not arrive; he who relies on others does not last. If you want order, begin with yourself. What is there in men to rely on?”

And at the end a list of what else cannot be relied on. “Those who come together by power and profit part when the power and the profit run out.” “A woman who serves a man by her looks loses his love when the looks go.” Mozi: “Even a loving father does not love a useless son.” The Duke of Yellow Stone: “A ruler cannot be without virtue; without virtue, ministers and people rebel.” The Odes: “Seek the blessing in yourself.” The chapter repeats the last line twice, which is unlike it.

Fate运命第二十九

Heaven’s way and the allotment of lives are what the sages seldom spoke of; there is a meaning in them, but it is hard to have it in detail. Still, comparing the past with the present and sorting the threads, and taking the three tendencies together, one may make out the rough shape of it.

Xun Yue: the changes in the essence of the three lights are the essence of the two breaths; the root of them is in earth and they show above in heaven; government fails here and the change appears there. And yet: quote the Documents on the omens of calamity and there are the floods of Yao and the drought of Tang; quote the Changes on the surplus blessing of an accumulating house and there are the early deaths of Yan Hui and Ran Boniu. The returns on good and evil vary ten thousand ways and cannot be made uniform, which is why men who look and listen are confused by them.

The chapter’s device is Xun Yue’s three tendencies, hung on three sayings of Confucius. “Death and life are allotted” — that is the straight principle. “He will not die a natural death” — that is dying when one need not have died. “He has got off by luck” — that is not dying when one might have. Then the same three are carried over to teaching: some men are formed without being taught, some are formed after being taught, and some are not formed though they are taught.

The end refuses both fatalism and its opposite. Heaven and earth have their sameness and their difference. To take hold of the difference and demand the sameness is confusion; to keep to the sameness and look for the difference is to be worn out. Slow and quick, deep and shallow, the changes are mixed in among them, and so things are uneven and cannot be levelled. The gentleman therefore spends his whole mind and his whole strength — “and so goes to meet his fate.” The Changes: “Exhaust the principle and use up the nature, and so arrive at fate.”

The Great Selfishness大私第三十

One of the shortest chapters and the finest reversal in the book. Guanzi: “To know that giving is taking is the treasure of government.” The Book of Zhou: “Meaning to take it, you must first give it.”

The Duke of Yellow Stone: “Get it and do not hold it; set it up and do not take it. Let the doing be yours and the having be your officers’ — and who then knows where the profit is?” They are made princes, he is made Son of Heaven; let the towns hold themselves and the gentlemen help themselves: that is the king’s way.

Tang said, “If I have done wrong, let it not reach the ten thousand quarters; if the ten thousand quarters have done wrong, let it fall on me.” Tang did not treat his own person as his own; he treated the ten thousand quarters as his own. King Wen said, “If there is a benevolent man, what need for him to be my kin?” King Wen did not treat his kin as his own; he treated the ten thousand states as his own. The former kings were not without selfishness. What they took for their own was not what other men take for their own. That is what it is to know the great selfishness. Hence: it is only by not being selfish that a man completes his selfishness, and the profit that comes of not seeking profit is the largest profit there is.

Making a Defeat败功第三十一

The Wenzi: a man with merit who parts from benevolence and right is suspected; a man with a crime who has not lost the people’s hearts is believed.

King Gong of Chu, dying, called his grandees: “I am without virtue and came young to the altars; I lost the line of the former lord and overturned the army of Chu — the fault is mine. If by the spirits of the ancestral temple I may keep my head and body to the end, let me be called Ling or Li. Will the grandees agree?” When he died, Zinang said: “No. A man who serves his lord follows his goodness and does not follow his faults. Chu is vast and he was its lord, he soothed and campaigned to the southern sea and his teaching reached the states of the north — his glory was great. And having all that, he knew his fault. May we not call him Gong, the respectful?” The grandees agreed. That is making a merit out of a fault.

Wang Chang and Chen Tai lost battles and Sima the general took both defeats as his own fault. Xi Zuochi’s judgement: “He took two defeats for his own and the fault dissolved and the work throve. That may be called wisdom.” Forget your defeat and those below you think about repaying it, and though you should wish not to prosper you could not help it. But hide the defeat and push the fault off, blame everything in the world for it, and high and low fall out of heart and clever and stupid alike let go. Chu was beaten twice and Jin won twice, and the difference is in this. A ruler who governs his state on this principle may go wrong and still be praised, may be checked in the field and still be said to have won. A hundred defeats would do; what are two?

Wits Gone Dark昏智第三十二

Spirit is the deep place wit comes from: let the spirit be clear and the wit is bright. Wit is the tally of the mind: let the wit be impartial and the mind is level. Yet there are men whose spirit is clear and whose wit is bright and who are nevertheless blind to success and failure — not because they are stupid, but because sound and colour, power and profit, anger and love have darkened the wit.

Confucius was acting chancellor of Lu and Duke Jing of Qi was afraid: “With Confucius governing, Lu will be hegemon, and my land is near. I shall be the first swallowed.” Li Qie said, “Getting rid of Zhongni is like blowing a hair off. Why not draw him out with a heavy salary and send Duke Ai a troupe of dancing girls? Duke Ai will take to them and grow slack, and Zhongni will remonstrate, and when he is not listened to he will certainly break with Lu.” Eighty women in embroidered clothes were sent; the duke took them and did not hear a case for three days; Confucius left for Wei. That is being darkened by sound and colour.

Sima Qian on Lord Pingyuan: “A graceful gentleman of a muddy age, but he did not see the large frame. The saying is: profit makes the wits dark. Lord Pingyuan was greedy for Feng Ting’s crooked offer and sank four hundred thousand men of Zhao at Changping, and Handan was very nearly lost.” Darkened by profit. Then darkened by anger and darkened by love, each with its case. The judgement: nobody knows his own son’s faults — not because the wits are less, but because love has taken them. So a man who would argue high and low or sort right from wrong must speak from an impartial mind and listen with one. Fan Ye: when the profit is not your own, your thinking about a matter is not private to you.

Government Kept Low卑政第三十三

The Huainanzi: to save a drowning man with gold and jade is worth less than an ordinary rope. Han Fei: a starving man will not wait a hundred days for fine grain and meat. So government is valuable when it is low enough to get the thing done.

Han Fei again: what is called the subtle speech of the wise is hard even for the highest intelligence. Make a law for the many out of what is hard for the highest intelligence and there will be no way for men to know it. A man who cannot get his fill of chaff does not wait for grain and meat to be full; a man whose short coat is in holes has no need of embroidery to be well dressed. In the business of governing an age, if the urgent thing is not got, the unhurried thing is not the business. The government one has to conduct is the business of the world, and if what husband and wife plainly know is not used, and a man hankers after what the highest intelligence finds hard to discuss, then he is very far from men indeed.

The Yin Wenzi: what has a principle in it and is of no benefit to government, the gentleman does not say; what shows ability and is of no benefit to the business, the gentleman does not do. So what a gentleman says does not go outside name, law, leverage and technique, and what he does does not go outside farming and the battle line. — And then the chapter’s complaint about its own age: men want to be uniquely worthy, uniquely able, to out-argue the crowd and out-dare it; and a worth that acts alone is not enough to make a transformation, and an ability that acts alone is not enough to get the business round.

Shusun Tong proposed to institute the rites and Gaozu asked whether it would not be difficult; the answer was that ritual is a set of forms made out of the time and the feelings of men. Zhang Shizhi spoke of expedients and Emperor Wen told him: “Bring it down. No lofty talk. Make it something that can be done now.” This is the least indulgent chapter in the book toward high talk.

Goodness Has to Accumulate善亡第三十四

The Changes: a house that piles up good has a surplus of blessing; and, good not piled up is not enough to make a name.

Mencius: benevolence beats un-benevolence as water beats fire. But the men who practise benevolence today are using a cupful of water on a cartload of burning brushwood, and when the fire is not out they say water does not beat fire — which is itself the worst kind of un-benevolence. And: of the five grains, which are the finest of seeds, if they are not ripened they are worse than wild millet. Benevolence too is only a matter of bringing it to ripeness.

The Shizi: food is what makes a man fat, but if he eats one meal and asks people “Well? How do I look?” they all laugh at him. Governing the empire is a large business, and men do it as if they ate one meal and asked how they looked. So when men see that Xu Yan lost his state and conclude that benevolence and right cannot be leaned on, or that Chengsang lost the succession and conclude that civil virtue cannot be relied on, they are using a cup on a cartload and asking after one meal whether they have got fat. The confusion is very great.

What Custom Says and What Is So诡俗第三十五

Some things you go along with and lose the right of it; some you love and do harm by; some are hateful to you and are the good thing; some profit you and cost the state.

Liu Liang: King Ling of Chu was arrogant and licentious and without measure, and the officer Shen Hai went along with what the king wanted, laid him out at Ganxi and buried two of his own daughters with him. That is going along and losing the right of it. At the battle of Yanling, when Jin and Chu faced each other, Gu Yang brought Zifan wine and Zifan was destroyed by it — loving and doing harm. Zang Wuzhong: “Mengsun’s hatred of me is medicine and stone; Jisun’s love of me is a sweet fever. The fever’s poison thickens; medicine and stone keep me alive.” Hateful and the good thing.

Then a long passage of Han Fei, which is the sharpest thing in the chapter. To act privately for an old friend is called not abandoning him; to hand out public property is called being a benevolent man; to think lightly of salary and much of oneself is called being a gentleman; to bend the law for one’s relations is called having conduct; to give up office for the sake of a friendship is called being chivalrous; to leave the world and hide is called lofty and honest; to quarrel and go against orders is called being a hard character; to spread favours and gather a following is called having the people. And on the other side of each: not abandoning him means the officials have a crook among them; a benevolent man means the public purse is short; a gentleman means men are hard to employ; having conduct means the legal system is broken; being chivalrous means offices go empty; lofty and honest means men will not serve; a hard character means orders are not carried out; having the people means the ruler is left alone. These eight are a private reputation for a common man and a great ruin for a ruler of men.

An End to Argument息辩第三十六

The Zhonglun: water is cold, fire is hot, metal and stone are hard. These several things have never said a word, and there is nobody who does not know that it is so, because the faith is manifest in the body of them. So conduct has a root and an affair has a trace. Look carefully at the body of a thing and there is nowhere for the feeling to hide.

What is the root of conduct? Confucius: in taking one’s place in the world there is right, and filial conduct is its root; in mourning there is ritual, and grief is its root; in the battle line there is order, and courage is its root. The Duke of Tai: a man who does not use his strength is not my man; an officer who is not fair and clean and does not love the people is not my officer; a chief minister who cannot enrich the state and strengthen the army, temper the two breaths, settle a lord of ten thousand chariots, drill the officers, fix their names and realities and make plain his orders and penalties, is not my chief minister.

What is the trace of an affair? King Wei of Qi called in the magistrate of Jimo: “Since you have been at Jimo, abuse of you has come in daily. But I sent men to look, and the fields are opened, the people have enough, the office has no arrears and the east is quiet. You have not served my attendants in order to be praised.” And he gave him ten thousand households. Then he called the magistrate of E: “Since you have held E, praise of you has been heard daily. But I sent men to look, and the fields are not opened, the people are poor and in distress; when Zhao attacked Zhen you could not save it and when Wey took Xueling you did not even know. You have been serving my attendants with gifts.” And he boiled him. Take a man’s root conduct and measure it against the trace of his affairs, and it is as plain as water being cold and fire hot; good and bad have nowhere to escape to.

Measuring a Fault量过第三十七

Confucius: men’s faults run each with its own party; look at the fault and you know the benevolence.

Sima Qian: Guan Zhong was minister of Qi, brought the princes together nine times and set the empire right once for all; and Confucius made little of him — “Guan Zhong’s vessel was small!” Was it not because the Zhou way was in decline and Duke Huan was already a worthy man, and Guan Zhong did not press him on to be king but stopped at hegemony?

Yu Qing said to the king of Wei, “Chu is strong and great, it has no match in the world, and now it is about to attack Yan.” The king said, “A moment ago you said it had no match and now you say it is about to attack Yan — what is this?” Yu Qing: “To say a horse has great strength is fair enough; to say it can lift a thousand jun is not, and why? Because a thousand jun is not a horse’s job. To say Chu is strong is fair enough; but to cross Zhao and Wei and open a war in Yan — is that Chu’s job?”

So Guan Zhong brought the princes together nine times and Confucius made little of him; and the men of Chu could not attack Yan and Yu Qing called them strong and matchless. Neither is a piece of sophistry. Each is speaking from the party he is in. Which is to say: a judgement of a man carries the standard he was judged by, and the standard is not in the man.

Circumstance势运第三十八

There are gentlemen in the world and there are small men and there is deference; and none of these is necessarily a nature or a conduct. Circumstance carries them there.

The Wenzi: when a man has a surplus he yields, and when he has not enough he fights; from yielding, ritual and right are born, and from fighting, violence and disorder. When goods are many desires shrink; when what is sought is enough, fighting stops. The Huainanzi: a swimmer cannot rescue a drowning man because his own hands and feet are urgently engaged; a man who is burnt cannot put out a fire because his own body is in pain. Nobody sells firewood in a forest or fish on a lake, because there is a surplus of it.

So in an orderly age the small man keeps straight and profit cannot tempt him; in a disorderly age the gentleman turns crooked and punishment cannot stop him. Zhuangzi: under Yao and Shun there was no man in the empire at the end of his rope, and it was not that they were cleverer; under Jie and Zhou there was no man in the empire who got through, and it was not that they were less clever. The circumstances were simply so.

Arrogance as Ceremony傲礼第三十九

The Zuo Commentary: be not arrogant in ritual. The Quli: never be without respect. And yet the ancients used arrogance as a ceremony. Why? Because they wanted another man’s virtue to be seen.

Hou Ying was the gatekeeper of the Yi gate at Daliang. The lord of Wei set out wine, gathered his guests, and when they were seated drove his carriage out with the left-hand seat empty and fetched old Hou himself. On the way Hou made him stop in the market while he stood and talked with a butcher, and watched the lord’s face; the lord grew more courteous. Afterwards he said: “What I did for you today was enough. I am a gatekeeper of the Yi gate and you came for me with your own carriage and horses. In a crowded place you ought not to have made a call — and you made one. But I wanted to bring your name on, so I kept you standing in the market a long while to watch you, and you grew more respectful. The people of the market all took me for a small man and you for a great one, a man who can put himself below a gentleman.”

Wang Sheng stood in the court with the Three Excellencies and the Nine Ministers all assembled, and said, “My stocking has come undone,” and turned to Zhang the commandant of justice: “Tie my stocking for me.” Zhang knelt and tied it. Afterwards men asked Wang Sheng why he had humiliated him. “I am old and poor and I reckoned there was nothing I could ever do for Zhang. Zhang is a famous minister of the empire; so I made him tie my stocking, to add to his weight.” The high officers heard it, thought Wang Sheng worthy, and thought the more of Zhang. The whole chapter is about a transaction with a very high price: a man spends his own reputation to buy another man’s.

Fixing the Names定名第四十

The most dictionary-like chapter in the book, and it is here because Scroll Nine, on war, cannot begin until the words are settled.

A principle got hold of in the mind cannot be made to flow without words; a thing settled over there cannot be distinguished without words. If words do not make the intention flow there is no way of reaching one another; if names do not distinguish things, discernment does not show. Trace it to its source and it is not that things have names of their own by nature, or principles their inevitable designations. You want to distinguish the reality, so you differentiate the name; you want to publish the intention, so you set up the designation.

Then the definitions, one at a time. The Way is what a man treads: to know at rest what to do, in motion where to go, in an affair what to take hold of and when to stop — that is the Way. Virtue is what a man gets: to make every man get what he wants — that is virtue. Benevolence is loving: to bring benefit and remove harm, loving all without partiality — that is benevolence. Right is what is fitting: to make plain what is so and not so, to set up what may and may not be done — that is right. Ritual is treading: to have measure in coming forward and going back, and rank in high and low — that is ritual. Wisdom is what a man knows. Good faith is the word that is kept.

And after the seven, the derived terms: what is meant by a sage, a worthy man, a man of courage, a man of talent; by loyalty and filial conduct, by law and punishment and reward. The chapter is not lexicography for its own sake. It is the last act of the civil half of the book, and the point of it is that once the names and shares are fixed, half the quarrels in the world are already over.

Scroll Nine · The Leverage of War卷第九　兵权

Twenty-four chapters. A short preface stands at the head of the scroll — printed on this page at the head of “Sending Out the Army” — which says that there are perhaps a thousand military books in existence and that a man who does not know how to combine and vary gets nothing from any number of them: “the fewer the more one gets; the more, the more confused.” So the scroll is a pruned digest. The bones are from Sunzi, the Six Secret Teachings and the Weiliaozi; under each precept is set an episode from the histories. The Siku copy numbers the chapters of this scroll afresh from one; this page keeps the running numbers of the whole book.

Sending Out the Army出军第四十一

Master Zhao said: the Odes say “truly civil and truly martial,” the Documents say “martial and then civil.” Confucius: a gentleman who has a civil affair must have a military preparation. The Commentary: heaven produces the five materials and the people use them all, and not one may be dispensed with — who could do away with arms? The Yellow Emperor fought Chi You, Zhuanxu fought Gong Gong, Yao attacked Huandou, Shun attacked the Miao, Qi attacked Hu, Tang attacked Xia, King Wen attacked Chong, King Wu attacked Zhou; the Han had Jing and Suo, Guangwu had Kunyang, Wei had Guandu, Jin had the conquest of Wu. So the Lüshi Chunqiu: “A sage king has an army of benevolence and right; he does not have the abolition of arms.”

Arms are an instrument of ill omen and war is a dangerous business; the field of battle is a place where corpses are set upright, and emperors and kings use it only when they must. So: to rescue disorder and punish violence is called an army of right, and its ruler becomes king. To be attacked and take up arms because there is no help for it is called a responding army, and it wins. To fight out of hatred for a small cause is called an angry army, and it loses. To do it for land and treasure is called a greedy army, and it is broken. To presume on the size of the state and the numbers of the people and want to show one’s power is called a proud army, and it is wiped out.

And then the ceremony of the axe, which is the chapter’s real subject. The Son of Heaven sits in the main hall and summons the general: “The safety of the altars is in the general’s hands. Such a state is not submitting; I would trouble the general to answer it.” The grand scribe divines, a day is chosen, and the axe is handed over — the ruler takes the head of it and gives the general the handle: “From this upward to heaven, the general controls it.” Then he takes the handle and gives him the head: “From this downward to the springs, the general controls it.” “Within the city gate it is for me to control; outside it, for the general.” The general who takes it does not turn back at the ruler’s word.

Drilling the Men练士第四十二

A king leading an army must sort out the outstanding men, know the ranks of his officers and give each an office by what he can do — as limbs and wings, to make his power work.

What follows is a staff table: one man at the heart; five planners; three for the heavens; three for the ground; nine for the art of war; four for supply; four for striking power; three for drums and flags; four for limbs; three of general talent; three for expedients; seven for eyes and ears; five for claws and teeth; four for wings; eight for going about; two officers; two for law and reckoning; two for the arts.

And then a sorting of the rank and file by temperament, which is the chapter’s own idea and the direct descendant of “Employing the Long Suit” in Scroll One. Those with great courage, ready to die, glad of a wound: put them in one company. Those with a rush of spirit, strong and violent: one company. Those trained in the regular and the odd, in the long sword and the carved bow, who keep their dressing: one company. Those who can break a lock and straighten a hook, strong-limbed and many, who can smash a drum and destroy a flag: one company. Those who can climb high and leap far and run light: one company. Those who were once ministers of a king and lost their standing and want to be seen to do something again: one company. And so on through those who have surrendered and want to hide their disgrace, those who are poor and angry and want their own way — each with a name, and each a company.

Pitching Camp结营第四十三

A short chapter and entirely formulaic. The Duke of Tai: in going out to campaign, in stowing gear and setting the line, take six for the rule. The general is to stay at the Nine Heavens position for a full ten days and then shift and open the gate again; keep the built quarter behind and the broken quarter in front; do not drink dead water, do not camp on dead ground, not on the earth-pillar, not in the earth-prison; do not rest at the heaven-stove, do not front the dragon’s head.

Then the pattern: in pitching camp and laying out the line, the general is at the Green Dragon, the drums at the Encountering Star, the men at the Bright Hall, the ambush at the Great Yin, the camp gate at the Heaven Gate, the junior commanders at the Earth Door, executions at the Heaven Prison, judgements at the Heaven Court, the grain at the Heaven Gaol, the weapons at the Heaven Store. “This is called pitching camp by the pattern of heaven, and nothing can harm it.”

This and “The Season of Heaven” below belong to the divinatory part of Tang military writing. They are given here in full and without abridgement, because they are what the book actually contains.

The Way and Its Power道德第四十四

There are three cases in which an army may not go out: if there is no concord in the state, it may not take the field; if there is no concord in the army, it may not form line; if there is no concord in the line, it may not give battle.

Sunzi’s first of the five: the Way is what makes the people of one mind with their superior, so that they will die with him and live with him and are not afraid of danger. The Duke of Yellow Stone: until the army’s well is dug the general does not say he is thirsty; until the tents are up he does not say he is tired; in winter he does not put on a fur and in summer he does not use a fan — this is called a general of ceremony. He shares safety with them and danger with them, and so his men can be kept together and cannot be split, can be used and cannot be worn out.

And the four old instances, all of which are about the same thing — why men are willing to die. The king of Yue slept on brushwood and asked after the sick and became hegemon. Wu Qi sucked the pus from a soldier’s boil and overran his enemy’s country. The weeping at the Yang gate beat the armies of three states. A single jar of wine poured into the river made a whole army feel it. The brave fight for such a man, the clever worry for him, and men look on death as going home and do not turn on their heels.

Prohibitions and Orders禁令第四十五

Sunzi, with the two halves set side by side so that neither can be taken alone. “If the men are punished before they are attached to you they will not submit, and if they do not submit they are hard to use; if they are attached to you and punishment is not carried out, they cannot be used at all.” And: “Look on your men as infants and they will go with you into the deepest ravine; look on them as your own sons and they will stand with you to the death. But generous and unable to employ them, loving and unable to command them, disorderly and unable to govern them — they are like spoilt children, and are of no use.” The Classic: an army takes reward for its face and punishment for its lining.

Then the seven prohibitions of the marquis of Wu, which is the body of the chapter and reads like a legal code. The light: failing to appear at the appointed hour, not moving at the drum, staying behind at leisure, dodging and stopping, being near at first and far off later, not answering to one’s name, the armour not complete and the weapons not ready. The slack: an order received and not passed on, passed on and not carried through, the officer coming late and the man leaving early. The thieving, the deceitful, the treacherous, the disorderly, the mistaken — each with its own list of particulars, and each with its penalty.

Teaching Them to Fight教战第四十六

Confucius: to send men to war untaught is to throw them away. Men who have not been drilled, whose movements are not exact, who strike in front and come apart behind, who fall out of step with the drum and the gong, are not worth one in a hundred. That is throwing them away.

So to command three armies and teach them to fight there must be drum, gong, covenant and order, by which the men are made even. Teach one man to fight; when he has it, join him with ten. Teach ten; when they have it, join them with a hundred; and so by degrees to the mass of three armies.

The great battle order has its five divisions, each with its own road: the left is the Green Dragon, the right the White Tiger, the van the Vermilion Bird, the rear the Dark Warrior, the centre the Yellow Emperor’s own. Where the great general is, the spearhead is to the left and the halberds to the right, shields in front and crossbows behind, drums and flags in the middle, and all rise together. At the drum they advance, at the gong they halt; they follow the pointing of the flag and the five formations fall into order. Hence Sunzi: to govern many as one governs few is a matter of dividing and counting; to fight many as one fights few is a matter of shape and name.

The Season of Heaven天时第四十七

Sunzi: the second is the season of heaven — the two breaths, cold and heat, and the regulation of the times. The Sima Fa: do not raise an army in winter or summer, out of care for one’s own people.

The body of the chapter is the divination of the Tang camp. March with the Great Yin at your back and the Great Yang in front; watch the shining and the dimming of the five planets and the eclipses of the two lights; take Venus for your master and Mercury for your sentry. A conjunction is a sign of certain battle; a planet gone aside is a sign of no battle. Avoid the day of waste and keep the moon’s punishment behind you. Strike the imprisoned with the reigning, the dead with the living. Fine rain washing over the army means a victory when the moment comes; a whirlwind meeting itself means the road home with nothing done. Cloud like a flock of sheep means a rout. This page restores nearly four hundred characters of the omen list here, which had dropped out of the base text.

And then, at the end, the chapter changes key entirely. “Even so: employ the worthy and the able, and the business goes well without any divination; make the orders plain and the law exact, and the reckoning succeeds without any milfoil; enfeoff the meritorious and reward the toiling, and the blessing follows without any prayer; share the bitter and the sweet with them, and they will go against the odds and the work will be done.” Which demotes the whole of what precedes it by one rank, in a single sentence, without deleting any of it.

The Lie of the Land地形第四十八

Sunzi: the third is the advantage of ground — far and near, difficult and easy, wide and narrow, life and death. A man who does not know the shape of the mountains and forests, the defiles and the marshes cannot march an army; without local guides he cannot get the advantage of the ground.

The nine grounds, each with its definition and its handling. Dispersive ground is a prince fighting in his own country: do not fight there. Light ground is a shallow penetration into another’s country: do not stop there. Contested ground is ground that profits whoever holds it: do not attack there. Open ground is where both can come and go: do not let yourself be cut off. Intersecting ground touches three states: make your alliances there. Serious ground is deep in a country with cities behind you: forage there. Difficult ground is forest, defile and marsh: press on. Hemmed-in ground is entered by a narrow and left by a long way round, where a few can beat many: use a plan there. Death ground is where you live if you fight at once and perish if you do not: fight.

And the six shapes of the ground after them, with the six ways an army is ruined by its own general on each. The whole chapter is measurement, not doctrine.

Water and Fire水火第四十九

The Classic: to help an attack with water makes it strong; to help it with fire makes it bright. Water and fire are the auxiliaries of an army.

Attack by fire has five objects: men, stores, baggage, magazines, and the fire-train itself. There must be a reason for the fire and the materials for it must be at hand. There are seasons for starting a fire and days for raising it: the season is when the weather is dry, and the days are when the moon is in the Winnowing Basket, the Wall, the Net or the Chariot Platform, which are the days when the wind gets up.

For water: the Duke of Tai says strong crossbows and long weapons are for fighting across water. Sunzi: water can cut an enemy off — that is, flood a city. And: in crossing a river get well away from it; when the enemy is crossing meet him in the water and strike when half of them are over; if you want a battle, do not draw up close against the water and receive him there. The instances are Han Xin damming the Wei above Longju and letting it go when half the army was across, and Guan Yu drowning the seven armies.

The Five Kinds of Agent五间第五十

The Rites of Zhou already has the double agent. Lü Wang: an agent puts a story into the air and it gathers into a company. So the use of agents is not new.

Five kinds, and “when the five are all at work nobody can make out the road.” The local agent is a man of the enemy’s country, used as such. The inside agent is a man of the enemy’s officialdom. The double agent is the enemy’s own agent turned. The living agent is one who goes and comes back with a report. The dead agent puts about something false outside, lets our own agents know it, and it is passed to the enemy’s.

Ban Chao fills the chapter. As acting long-history he raised twenty-five thousand foot and horse of the western states to strike Shache; Shache called on Qiuci, and the king of Qiuci sent fifty thousand. Ban Chao called his officers and the kings of Yutian and Shule together and said, in words he meant to be repeated: “We are too few. The best we can do is to break up and go, each his own way. Let Yutian go east and I shall turn back west, and we shall move at the beat of the evening drum.” He deliberately let his prisoners slip away; they carried it to Qiuci; the Qiuci king split his army to cut both roads; and Ban Chao, with the two roads emptied, brought his men back at dawn on the camp of Shache and broke it.

The Substance of a General将体第五十一

The Wanji Lun: you may have a million men, but whether the enemy is swallowed at the moment lies in the general. Wu Qi: men commonly judge a general by his courage, and courage in a general is one part in ten thousand. The Six Secret Teachings: if the general is not benevolent the three armies are not close to him; if he is not brave they will not move for him.

Sunzi’s five talents: courage, wisdom, benevolence, good faith, decision. Brave, and he cannot be trespassed on; wise, and he cannot be thrown into confusion; benevolent, and he loves his men; faithful, and he does not cheat them; decided, and he has no second mind.

The four hinges. The whole weight of an army of a million, disposed light or heavy, rests on one man: that is the hinge of spirit. A narrow road and a dangerous one, a famous mountain and a great barrier, where ten men hold and a thousand cannot pass: the hinge of ground. To work agents well and scatter the enemy’s numbers so that his ruler and his ministers fall out: the hinge of affairs. Chariots sound and boats fast, men and horses practised: the hinge of strength. Then the general’s faults and the eight tests by which a man is tried before he is given an army — question him and watch the detail of his words; press him and watch his shifts; ask about his stores and watch his honesty; and so on. The chapter ends on Sunzi: where the general is able and the ruler does not interfere, there is victory.

Reading the Enemy料敌第五十二

Two states put their armies in the field and pitch facing each other; one does not settle matters in the dark. First probe the enemy’s condition. Sunzi: the winning army wins first and fights afterwards. And: reckon him and you know the gains and losses of his plan; watch him and you know the pattern of his movement and his rest.

If you want to know the enemy’s general first, send a man of low rank and high courage with a light, picked force to meet him. Watch how his men come on: whether they rise and sit by the rule; whether, pursuing a retreat, they pretend not to catch up; whether, seeing an advantage, they pretend not to notice. If so, the general has a head on him: do not fight him lightly. But if the crowd shouts and the flags are confused, if the men stop and start of their own accord and the weapons are all ways at once, if they chase a retreat as though afraid of not catching it and grab at an advantage as though afraid of missing it — the general has no plan, and however many they are, you can take them.

And then some thirty signs, which are the expansion of Sunzi’s chapter on marching. Speech humble and preparations increasing: he means to advance. Speech strong and the advance pressed: he means to retreat. Peace asked for without a treaty: a plot. Half forward, half back: a lure. Men leaning on their spears: hunger. The water-carrier drinking first: thirst. Advantage in sight and no advance: exhaustion. Birds settling: the camp is empty. Calling out in the night: fear. The camp in commotion: the general has no weight. The flags moving: disorder. The officers angry: they are tired. Horses fed on grain and the men eating meat, the cooking pots not hung up and nobody going back to quarters: they are a desperate army. Rewards often: he is at the end of his devices. Punishments often: he is in difficulty. Men coming to apologise: he wants a rest.

Leverage in Brief势略第五十三

Sunzi: bravery and cowardice are a matter of leverage; strength and weakness are a matter of shape. And: that water, which is weak, can carry stones along is a matter of leverage.

Cao Cao took Hanzhong, and Liu Ye urged him to go straight on. “You took Dong Zhuo with five thousand foot; you broke Yuan Shao in the north and reduced Liu Biao in the south. Eight of the nine provinces and a hundred commanderies are yours; your power shakes the empire and your leverage overawes what lies beyond the seas. Now you have taken Hanzhong, the men of Shu have lost their nerve and abandoned their posts. Push on and Shu may be settled by a circular letter. Liu Bei is an outstanding man, but he is slow, and he has held Shu only a little while and the Shu men are not attached to him. Break Hanzhong, and Shu is shaken and tips over of itself. Delay a little, and Zhuge Liang, who understands government, will be minister, and Guan Yu and Zhang Fei, the bravest men in three armies, will be his generals, and when the men of Shu have settled and the passes are held, you will not be able to touch them.” Cao Cao did not go on.

And the other side of the same thing, from the same reign: after Guandu he was urged to press the pursuit of Yuan Shao’s sons and refused, saying that pressed they would hold together and left alone they would fight each other; and Gongsun Kang sent him their heads. The chapter is about one thing seen twice: leverage must be used to the full while it exists, and cannot be manufactured when it does not.

Attacking the Mind攻心第五十四

Sunzi: to attack the mind is best, to attack a city is worst; to win by mind is best, to win by arms is worst. What is attacking the mind? Cutting off what he relies on.

A persuader said to the king of Qi: the way to attack a state is to attack the mind, and the sage, in attacking a state and striking an enemy, works first at making the mind submit. What does Qin rely on? It relies on Yan and Zhao. So take the levers of Yan and Zhao. And when you talk to the rulers of Yan and Zhao, do not use empty phrases: use solid profit, to turn their hearts round. That is what attacking the mind means.

Gaozu went west into the Wu pass and meant to throw twenty thousand men at the Qin force below the Yao pass. Zhang Liang: “The Qin troops are still strong and cannot be taken lightly. I hear their general is a butcher’s son and such men are easily moved by profit. Stay behind your wall; send men ahead to lay in rations for fifty thousand, and set flags on all the hills for show.” The Qin general offered to come over, and Gaozu was minded to accept; Zhang Liang said that it was the general who wished it and not his men, and that if the men did not follow it would be dangerous — better to strike them while they were relaxed. He did, and broke them. The shortest chapter in the scroll and the most quoted.

Attacking the Alliances伐交第五十五

Sunzi: a good soldier sees to it that his enemies’ leagues cannot form.

Chu’s Mo’ao was to make a covenant with Er and Zhen; the men of Yun camped at Pusao, meaning to bring in Sui, Jiao, Zhou and Liao against the Chu army, and Mo’ao was troubled. Dou Lian said: “The men of Yun are camped outside their own suburbs, so they will certainly not be on guard, and they are looking every day for the four towns to come. You take post at Jiaoying to hold off the four. I shall fall on Yun by night with picked men. Yun will have a divided mind and will trust to its walls, and none of them will have any will to fight. Beat Yun, and the four towns will certainly fall apart.” It was done, and Yun was beaten at Pusao.

In Emperor Xuan’s time the Xianling and the Han and Kai Qiang made up their feud and joined in raiding. The emperor ordered Zhao Chongguo to strike the Han and Kai first. Chongguo did not obey and wrote: “The Xianling mean to rebel, and that is why they made up with the Han and Kai. But in their private hearts they cannot forget the quarrel, and they are afraid that when the Han army comes the Han and Kai will turn on them. In my humble opinion their plan is still to be ready to fly to the Han and Kai’s help — but they do not trust them.” The chapter is about one thing only: pulling the enemy apart before he has set.

Blocking the Shape格形第五十六

Sunzi: make him move by making him feel safe. And: strike at what he must run to save.

Chu besieged Song and Song sent to Jin for help. Hu Yan said: “Chu has just got Cao and has just made a marriage with Wey. Attack Cao and Wey and Chu must go to their rescue, and Qi and Song are relieved.” It fell out exactly so.

Wei attacked Zhao and Zhao begged Qi for help. King Wei made Tian Ji general with Sun Bin as counsellor, riding in a covered cart. Tian Ji wanted to march to Zhao. Sun Bin: “A man who unties a tangled knot does not pull at it with his fist; a man parting a fight does not use a halberd. Strike at the gap and press on the empty place: the shape will block him and the leverage will stop him, and it will come undone of itself. Liang and Zhao are at each other now, and the light troops and picked men are certainly all worn out abroad, and only the old and weak are tired at home. You had better hurry to Daliang, hold the roads and drive at the empty place. He will let Zhao go and save himself — and in one move we raise the siege of Zhao and collect the damage from Wei.” — Where the last chapter pulled apart the enemy’s friends, this one pulls apart his own line.

The Snake Formation蛇势第五十七

The saying: throw the troops onto dispersive ground and even kinsmen will not hold together; put them in one boat, and what does it matter that one is from Hu and one from Yue? Sunzi: a good soldier is like the shuairan — strike its head and the tail comes, strike its tail and the head comes, strike the middle and both come at once.

In Emperor Xuan’s time the Xianling raided and Zhao Chongguo was sent against them. He brought his army up to where they were; they had been camped a long time and had grown slack, and when they saw the great army they threw down their heavy gear and made to cross the Huang river, where the road was narrow and steep. Chongguo went slowly and drove them. Somebody said, “Go fast, for the advantage.” Chongguo: “These are men at the end of their rope; they must not be pressed. Go easy and they run without looking back; press them and they will turn and fight to the death.” The officers all said, “Good.” The enemy went into the water and several hundred were drowned, and they were broken.

Yuan Shang, beaten, fled to Liaodong with a few thousand men. Gongsun Kang, the governor there, had presumed on his distance and not submitted. Cao Cao, having broken the Wuhuan, was urged to go on: “Press on and the Yuan brothers can be taken.” He did not go, and Gongsun Kang cut off their heads and sent them. Pressed, they would have joined; left alone, they ate each other. This is the one chapter in the book with no note by the author at all.

Winning First先胜第五十八

Sunzi: a good soldier first makes himself impossible to beat, and waits for the enemy to become beatable.

The rebel Wang Guo of Liangzhou besieged Chencang, and Huangfu Song and Dong Zhuo were sent with twenty thousand men apiece. Dong Zhuo wanted to march straight to Chencang; Huangfu Song would not. Dong Zhuo: “A wise man does not wait on the time and a brave man does not leave a decision standing. March fast and the city is saved; do not, and the city is lost. The whole and the ruin are here.” Huangfu Song: “Not so. To win a hundred battles is not as good as bending the enemy without fighting. Therefore one first makes oneself unbeatable and waits for him to become beatable. The unbeatable is with us, the beatable is with him. His defence is short and our attack is long. What is long moves in the ninth heaven; what is short falls into the ninth earth. Chencang is small, but its defences are firm and prepared — it is not a fall into the ninth earth; and Wang Guo is strong, but he is attacking a place we are not obliged to save — that is not the leverage of the ninth heaven. Having neither, he will be beaten and we shall not have moved.” Chencang held out and Wang Guo withdrew worn down, and Huangfu Song then struck him.

Then Zhou Yafu holding Changyi and refusing battle while the rebels wore themselves out, and Sima Yi refusing Zhuge Liang. What can be defended is oneself; what must be waited for is the other man’s mistake.

Leaving the Ring Open围师第五十九

Sunzi: when you surround an army, leave a gap.

Han Zhong of the Yellow Turbans held Wan, and Zhu Jun and Zhang Chao surrounded him. They raised earthworks to overlook the town and beat the drums at the south-west; the rebels all rushed there, and the attack went in at the north-east and over the wall. Han Zhong fell back on the inner town and asked to surrender, and the officers wished to take it. Zhu Jun said: “There are cases where the shape is the same and the leverage is not. In the time of Qin and Xiang the people had no settled master, so a reward for coming over was the way to encourage men to come. Now the sea within is one and only the Yellow Turbans are in revolt; accepting surrender will not encourage anybody to be good, and putting them down will punish evil. Take them now and you open the road to more rebellion: the rebels come on when it profits them and ask for terms when it does not. That is letting the enemy grow.” He pressed the attack and could not carry it.

Then he climbed the earthwork and turned to Zhang Chao: “Now I see it. The ring outside is tight and the camps press close; they asked to give in and were refused, and they want to get out and cannot — so they are fighting to the death. Ten thousand men of one mind cannot be stood against, let alone a hundred thousand.” He raised the siege, pulled back the works, and the rebels came out, and were broken as they came. This chapter and “Profit and Harm” are two halves of one idea: that one shuts oneself in a dead ground on purpose, and that one must never do it to the enemy.

Going the Other Way变通第六十

Sunzi: a good mover of the enemy shows him a shape and the enemy is bound to follow it.

Wei and Zhao attacked Han, and Qi sent Tian Ji to the rescue, going straight for Daliang. Pang Juan left Han and turned home; the Qi army was already past him to the west. Sun Bin said to Tian Ji: “These men of the three Jin are hard and brave and think the men of Qi cowards, and Qi has the name of cowardice. A good soldier takes the situation as it is and leads it where it profits him. The art of war says a man who goes a hundred li after an advantage loses his senior general. Let the Qi army make a hundred thousand cooking fires on entering Wei, fifty thousand the next day, twenty thousand the day after.” Pang Juan was delighted: “I always knew the Qi men were cowards. Three days in our country and more than half have deserted.” He left his foot behind and came on with the light troops by forced marches. Sun Bin reckoned he would reach Maling at dusk, where the road is narrow and full of defiles, and stripped a great tree and wrote on the white wood, “Pang Juan dies under this tree.” Ten thousand crossbows were laid on either side.

And then the same device used backwards: Yu Xu, retreating before the Qiang, increased his fires every day. Asked why, since Sun Bin had decreased his, he said that the Qiang were many and he was few, and that a slow retreat would be overtaken and a seeming increase would not be pursued. Even the most famous rule in the art of war can be turned round and used the other way.

Profit and Harm利害第六十一

Sunzi: throw them into a place where they will die and they live; put them where they will be lost and they survive. And: mix harm into the profit and the business can be pushed through; mix profit into the harm and the trouble can be undone.

Han Xin attacked Zhao, and Zhao massed at the mouth of the Jingxing. Han Xin halted thirty li short of it. At midnight he sent out two thousand light horse, each with a red banner, by a side path to a place from which they could see the Zhao camp, and told them: “When Zhao sees me running they will empty the camp to chase me. Go in fast, pull down the Zhao flags and set up the red flags of Han.” He told his officers they would breakfast on the defeat of Zhao, and they said “yes” without believing him. Then he sent ten thousand men out to form line with the river at their backs. The Zhao army looked at it and laughed.

At dawn Han Xin came out with the drums and flags, and after a long fight threw down the drums and flags and made for the river line; the Zhao army emptied its camp and came after them. The men at the river, with nowhere to go, fought as though their lives depended on it, which they did; the two thousand horse went in and changed the flags; and the Zhao army, seeing the red banners, broke. Afterwards the officers asked what rule in the art of war this had been. Han Xin: “It is in the art of war; you did not look. Does it not say, throw them into a place of death and they live, put them where they are lost and they survive? Besides, I had not the men’s obedience yet. This is what is called driving a market-crowd into battle: put them where they must fight for themselves, and they do. Give them a way out, and they take it.”

The Unorthodox Force奇兵第六十二

The shortest chapter in the book, a hundred and sixty characters. The Duke of Tai: a man who cannot divide and shift cannot be talked to about the unorthodox. Sunzi: engage with the orthodox, win with the unorthodox.

The king of Wei, Bao, revolted from the Han, and Gaozu sent Han Xin against him. Wei massed at Puban and blocked Linjin. Han Xin multiplied his decoys, drew up boats as if to cross at Linjin, and put an ambush across at Xiayang on wooden jars. He took Anyi; the king of Wei was startled and brought his army round to meet him, and was captured, and Wei became the commandery of Hedong.

So the orthodox and the unorthodox are the hinge of the whole art. The Classic: “A victory does not go beyond the orthodox and the unorthodox, and the changes of them cannot be exhausted — a ring with no end to it. Who can come to the end of that?”

Covering and Springing掩发第六十三

Sunzi: a good soldier’s leverage is steep and his timing is short. Move him by an advantage and wait for him with your men. And: a good mover of the enemy shows him a shape and the enemy follows it.

Yan had overrun Qi and was besieging Jimo, and the city had made Tian Dan its general. Tian Dan set out to enrage his own men, and let it be said aloud: “My one fear is that the Yan general will cut the noses off the Qi prisoners and dig up the graves outside the town. That would freeze the heart in me.” The Yan general did exactly that, and the people of Jimo wept and wanted to go out and fight, and their anger was ten times what it had been. Then Tian Dan collected a thousand ingots of gold from the townspeople and had the rich men of Jimo send it to the Yan general with a letter: “When Jimo surrenders, spare my household.” The Yan general was delighted and slackened.

Then a thousand oxen were collected; reeds were tied to their tails and the ends set alight; several dozen holes were cut through the wall; and the oxen were driven out at night with five thousand picked men behind them. The tails burned and the oxen charged into the Yan camp. — And Lü Meng crossing the Yangzi in a merchant’s white clothes, rowing day and night, to take Jingzhou. Neither is a victory won on a battlefield. Both are the release, in a single instant, of force that was stored up while the other man relaxed.

Bringing the Army Home还师第六十四

The last chapter, on the end of a war, and the coldest writing in the book.

Sunzi: raise an army of a million and it costs a thousand pieces of gold a day. Master Wang: with four men out of use, the state has no reserve. So: carry grain a hundred li and there is not a year’s food; two hundred li and not two years’; three hundred li and not three years’. This is called an empty state. An empty state means poor people; poor people mean that high and low are not close; the ruler has nothing to plant his kindness in and the men have nothing to keep themselves alive with, and the mind to fall away is born. This is winning a war and defeating yourself.

Therefore, though the enemy has been broken abroad and the merit established at home, a victory is treated with the rites of mourning. The general puts on undyed silk and asks for punishment from his ruler, and the ruler says: “The army was used against a country that had no way in it. To seize the enemy and gain the victory — the general has no fault.” And then he raises him in rank in order to take away his power.

Hence the saying: when the high bird is dead, the good bow is put away; when the enemy state is destroyed, the minister of plans perishes. “Perishes” does not mean he loses his life. It means he is sunk in a deep place; and to be sunk in a deep place means that his authority is taken and his power is finished. A book about how to take the empire ends by teaching a man how to hand the army back.