Liaofan’s Four Lessons了凡四訓

I. Shaping One’s Own Fate立命之學

The ground floor of the book: how a fate calculated to the last decimal came to be altered by the man it was calculated for. For twenty years Mr Kong’s numbers named Liaofan’s every rank, down to the bushels of subsidised grain he would draw. The turn does not come when he stops believing the numbers; it comes when Yungu points out that to be fixed by them for twenty years without shifting a hair is the very definition of an ordinary man. There is only one remedy, and it is to make the fate yourself.

I lost my father as a boy. My mother told me to give up preparing for the examinations and study medicine instead: it would keep me alive, she said, and it would help others; besides, to master a craft and make a name by it had been my father’s long-standing wish.

Later, at Ciyun Temple, I met an old man with a long beard and an imposing face, who seemed to float as he walked, and I paid him my respects. He said to me, “You are a man of the official road. Next year you will enter the district school. Why are you not studying?” I told him why, and asked his name and where he was from. He said, “My surname is Kong. I am from Yunnan. I hold the true transmission of Master Shao’s Book of Supreme World-Ordering Principles, and by the numbers it should pass to you.” I brought him home and told my mother, who said, “Treat him well.” We tested his reckoning, and it proved right to the last particular. So I took up the thought of study, and consulted my cousin Shen Cheng, who said, “Mr Yu Haigu keeps a school at Shen Youfu’s house; it would be easy for me to place you there.” I accordingly took Mr Yu as my teacher.

Kong cast my numbers: “In the district examination for licentiates you will stand fourteenth; in the prefectural, seventy-first; in the examination before the education commissioner, ninth.” The next year I sat all three, and all three ranks came out as he had said.

He then divined the fortune of my whole life: in such a year I would place so-and-so; in such a year I would be admitted to the stipend; in such a year I would be sent up as a tribute student. So many years after that I would be selected magistrate of a district in Sichuan; after three and a half years in office I should resign and go home; and at the hour of chou on the fourteenth day of the eighth month of my fifty-third year I would die in my own bed — without a son, alas. I wrote it all down and kept it carefully.

From then on, at every examination the ranks came out exactly as Kong had fixed them beforehand. One item alone would not tally. He had reckoned that I should be sent up as a tribute student when I had drawn ninety-one bushels and five pecks of stipend grain; yet when I had drawn some seventy bushels, Commissioner Tu approved my promotion. I privately began to doubt.

And in fact the appointment was later overruled by Mr Yang, the acting seal-holder. Not until the year dingmao, when Commissioner Yin Qiuming saw my reserve paper among the rejected examination scripts, did it go through. He sighed and said, “These five policy answers are five memorials to the throne. Are we to let a scholar of such breadth and grasp grow old at his window?” He directed the district to submit the papers and approved the promotion. Counting the grain drawn before and after, it came to exactly ninety-one bushels and five pecks.

This made me believe all the more that advancement and retreat have their appointed course, that early and late have their appointed hour; and I grew calm, and wanted nothing. (Note the tone: not insight, but surrender. It is exactly this calm that Yungu will shortly break.)

Sent up to the capital, I stayed a year in Peking, sitting still all day and reading nothing. In the year jisi I returned south, to study at the Nanking academy. Before entering it I called on Chan Master Yungu Hui in the hills of Qixia, and we sat facing each other in one room three days and nights without closing our eyes.

Yungu asked, “What keeps ordinary men from becoming sages is only that idle thoughts entangle them. You have sat three days and I have not seen one idle thought rise in you. How is that?”

I said, “Mr Kong has fixed my fate: honour and disgrace, life and death, are all settled by number. Even if I wanted to indulge an idle thought, there is nothing to indulge it about.”

Yungu laughed. “I took you for a man of parts. You are only an ordinary man after all.” (The hardest sentence in the book, and the hinge of it: here, having no idle thoughts is not attainment but resignation.)

I asked why. He said, “So long as a man is not free of the calculating mind, he is bound in the end by yin and yang; how should he not have a fixed number? But it is only ordinary men who have one. For a man of extreme goodness, the numbers cannot hold him; for a man of extreme wickedness, the numbers cannot hold him either. For twenty years you have let another man’s reckoning fix you and have not shifted so much as a hair. What is that but an ordinary man?”

I asked, “Then can the numbers be escaped?” He said, “‘Fate is of my own making; good fortune is of my own seeking.’ What the Odes and the Documents say on this is plain instruction. Our own scriptures say: ‘Seek wealth and rank and you get wealth and rank; seek sons and daughters and you get sons and daughters; seek long life and you get long life.’ False speech is a cardinal prohibition of Sakyamuni; would the buddhas and bodhisattvas lie to deceive men?”

I pressed him: “Mencius says, ‘Seek and you shall find’ — but that is of things whose seeking lies within myself. Virtue and righteousness one can get by effort; but fame and fortune — how are those to be sought?” (A good objection: Liaofan can tell what lies within him from what lies outside. It is precisely that boundary Yungu proceeds to dismantle.)

Yungu said, “Mencius is not wrong; you have read him wrong. Have you not seen what the Sixth Patriarch said: ‘Every field of merit lies within the square inch of the heart; seek from the heart and there is nothing it does not reach.’ Seek within yourself and you gain not only virtue and righteousness but fame and fortune besides — inner and outer both gained: that is seeking that profits the finding. But if you do not turn back and look within, and merely run outward after things, then there is a proper way of seeking while the getting is left to fate — inner and outer both lost. So it profits nothing.”

He then asked, “What did Kong reckon for your whole life?” I told him truly. Yungu said, “Judge for yourself: ought you to pass the examinations? Ought you to have a son?” (The question turns from whether the reckoning is accurate to whether the man deserves what he wants — the pivot of the whole book.)

I searched myself a long while and said, “I ought not. Men who succeed in the examinations have as a rule the look of good fortune about them. My own fortune is thin, and I do not lay up merit or accumulate good deeds to found a thicker one. I cannot endure troublesome business, and I cannot bear with people. Sometimes I overbear others with my wit; I say and do whatever comes into my head; I talk lightly and at random. All these are marks of a thin allotment. How should I be fit for the examinations?

“Foul ground grows things; water too clear has no fish. I am fond of cleanliness — that is the first reason I should have no son. Harmony breeds the ten thousand things; I am given to anger — the second. Love is the root of all begetting; hard-heartedness is the root of barrenness. I hold my reputation too precious and cannot bring myself to spend myself in saving others — the third. I talk too much and waste my breath — the fourth. I am fond of drink and it wears away my essence — the fifth. I like to sit up whole nights and do not know how to husband my vitality — the sixth. There are many other faults besides, too many to count.” (Not one item on the list is circumstance; all six are temperament. This inventory is the working drawing for everything the book later builds.)

Yungu said, “Is it only the examinations? A man in this world who enjoys an estate of a thousand pieces of gold is certainly a thousand-gold man; one who enjoys an estate of a hundred is certainly a hundred-gold man; one who is to starve is certainly a starving man. Heaven merely reinforces each according to the stuff he is made of; when has it ever added a particle of intention of its own?

“Take the getting of sons. A man with a hundred generations of virtue behind him will certainly have a hundred generations of descendants to keep it; one with ten generations of virtue, ten generations of descendants; one with two or three, two or three. Those whose line is cut off short have virtue thinned to nothing.

“Now that you know where you have been wrong, take every mark that has kept you from the examinations and from a son and scour it away. You must accumulate virtue; you must be able to bear with what is coarse; you must be gentle and loving; you must husband your vitality. Let all that went before be as if it died yesterday; let all that comes after be as if it were born today. This is a body reborn in the order of right principle.

“If a body of flesh and blood has its fixed number, shall a body of right principle be unable to move heaven? The Taijia says, “Calamity sent by heaven may still be avoided; calamity of one’s own making cannot be lived through.” The Odes say, “Long may he be worthy of the decree, and seek much happiness for himself.” That Mr Kong reckoned you would not pass and would have no son — that is calamity sent by heaven, and may still be avoided. That you now enlarge your nature, work hard at good deeds and lay up hidden merit — that is happiness of your own making. How should you not enjoy it?

“The Book of Changes is written for the sake of the gentleman, to help him toward good fortune and away from bad. If the decree of heaven were fixed and unalterable, what good fortune could be moved toward, what bad fortune avoided? Its very first statement is: “A house that accumulates good will have blessings to spare.” Can you credit that?” (Yungu makes the existence of the Changes itself the evidence: a book that teaches men to alter their fortune presupposes that fortune can be altered.)

I believed him, bowed, and accepted his teaching. I laid bare before the Buddha the whole of my past wrongdoing, drew up a statement, prayed first for success in the examinations, and vowed to perform three thousand good deeds in requital of the kindness of heaven and earth and of my ancestors.

Yungu produced a ledger of merits and faults and showed it to me, telling me to enter each day’s doings: good deeds to be scored, bad ones deducted. He also taught me to recite the Cundi dharani, so that the vow should certainly take effect. (The ledger was a bookkeeper’s method of self-cultivation, current since the Song: it turns conduct into something countable and settled. It is the instrument by which “shaping one’s fate” comes down to earth.)

He said to me, “Those who draw talismans have a saying: ‘A man who cannot draw a talisman is laughed at by the spirits.’ There is a secret in it, and the secret is only this — not to stir a thought. When you take up the brush to draw, first put down the ten thousand entanglements and let not a speck arise. From that point where the mind does not stir, set down one dot: this is called opening the ground of chaos. From that one dot draw the whole at a stroke, with no further deliberation, and the talisman will have power. In all praying to heaven and shaping of fate, the point of contact must be a place without thought or deliberation.

“Mencius, discussing the shaping of fate, said, ‘Do not make two things of dying young and living long.’ Now dying young and living long are the two most opposed of things. But in the moment when the mind does not stir, what is dying young? what is living long? Divide it finer: make not two things of plenty and dearth, and you can shape your fate in poverty and wealth; make not two things of straitness and success, and you can shape your fate in high and low station; make not two things of dying young and living long, and you can shape your fate in life and death. Of all a man meets with in the world, life and death weigh heaviest; say “dying young and living long,” and every other favourable and adverse thing is comprehended in it.

“As for ‘cultivating oneself and waiting upon it’ — that is the business of accumulating virtue and praying to heaven. Say ‘cultivate,’ and every fault and evil in you is to be dealt with and got rid of. Say ‘wait,’ and every particle of covetous expectation, every particle of anticipating and courting the result, is to be cut clean off. Reach that station and you step straight into the realm before heaven; and that is real learning.

“You cannot yet be free of the calculating mind. But you can hold to the Cundi dharani, without counting and without keeping score, and not let it break. Recite until it is second nature, and you will find yourself not reciting in the midst of reciting, and reciting in the midst of not reciting. When the mind no longer stirs, it will take effect.”

My style-name had been Xuehai, “Sea of Learning”; that day I changed it to Liaofan, “Done with the Ordinary” — for I had understood the doctrine of shaping one’s fate and did not wish to fall into the rut of an ordinary man. From then on I went carefully all day long, and felt myself changed. Before, I had merely drifted and let things be; now there was a watchfulness and an apprehension in me. Alone in a dark room or an unswept corner, I was in constant fear of offending heaven, earth and the spirits; and when men hated me or spoke ill of me, I could take it calmly.

At the Ministry examination the next year, Mr Kong had reckoned I should stand third; I came out first. His words had failed for once; and that autumn I passed the provincial examination.

Yet my practice of right was not pure and my self-examination full of slips. Sometimes I saw a good thing to do and did it without conviction; sometimes I helped a man and then had doubts about it; sometimes my body did the good while my mouth said something wrong; sometimes I held myself in hand sober and let myself go drunk. Faults cancelled merits, and many days were spent for nothing. From the vow in the year jisi until the year jimao — more than ten years — the three thousand good deeds were at last complete. (Ten years for three thousand deeds: the most honest line in the book, and the one that keeps the whole from being a story about an overnight conversion.)

I was then setting out with Li Jian’an beyond the passes and had no chance to dedicate the merit. In the year gengchen I came south again and asked the reverend Xingkong, Huikong and others to make the dedication at the Chan hall of the East Pagoda. Then I made the vow for a son, promising another three thousand good deeds. In the year xinsi you were born — Tianqi. (The base text reads “you were born”; most current editions read “a son was born.” The book is a father’s instruction addressed to his son Yuan Tianqi, and “you” is the reading that fits its voice.)

Each deed I did I noted down with my brush; your mother could not write, and for each deed she did she stamped a vermilion circle on the calendar with a goose quill. Sometimes it was food given to the poor, sometimes living creatures bought and set free; on some days there were more than ten circles. By the eighth month of the year guiwei the three thousand were full. I asked Xingkong and the others again to make the dedication at home. On the thirteenth day of the ninth month I made a further vow, for the metropolitan degree, promising ten thousand good deeds. In the year bingxu I passed, and was appointed magistrate of Baodi. (The woman who could not write and kept the count in red circles is the real book-keeper of this ledger.)

I kept a ruled blank book and called it the Register of Governing the Heart. Rising in the morning to sit in court, I had a servant hand it to the gatekeeper to set on the bench, and everything good or bad that I did was entered, however small. At night I set a table in the courtyard and, in imitation of Zhao Yuedao, burned incense and reported to heaven. (Zhao Bian, styled Yuedao, a famous Song official, recited each night to heaven what he had done that day. Saying it aloud before heaven is the audit clause of this accounting system.)

Your mother, seeing how few deeds there were, would knit her brows and say, “When I was at home I helped with the good deeds, and so we finished the three thousand. Now you have promised ten thousand, and there is nothing to be done in a magistrate’s office. When will they ever be full?”

That night I happened to dream of a divine person, and told him why the good deeds were hard to finish. The spirit said, “The reduction of the land tax alone completes your ten thousand.” Now the fields of Baodi were taxed at two fen three li seven hao the mu; I had had the matter looked into, and it had been brought down to one fen four li six hao. This was indeed so, and I was startled and doubtful. Just then Chan Master Huanyu came from Mount Wutai; I told him the dream and asked whether it was to be believed.

The master said, “If the good intention is truly sincere, one act may stand for ten thousand good deeds — how much more the lowering of a whole district’s tax, with ten thousand people the better for it?” I at once gave up my salary and asked him to feast ten thousand monks at Wutai and dedicate the merit. (One act standing for ten thousand — the seed of the “great and small, half and full” distinctions of the third lesson is sown here.)

Mr Kong had reckoned a calamity for me in my fifty-third year. I had never prayed for long life; that year passed without mishap, and I am now sixty-nine. The Documents say, “Heaven is hard to rely on; the decree is not constant,” and again, “The decree is not fixed.” These are not idle words. From this I know that to say good and ill fortune are of one’s own seeking is the word of the sages, and to say they are decreed by heaven alone is the talk of the world.

What your own fate is I do not know. Even if it is a fate of honour and display, think constantly of obscurity; even if the times are with you, think constantly of adversity; even if there is food enough before you, think constantly of want; even if men love and respect you, think constantly with apprehension; even if your family stands high, think constantly of lowliness; even if your learning is good, think constantly how shallow it is. (In the base text all six read “think constantly”; current electronic texts give the second as “think then,” which breaks the parallel. These six are the daily exercise the book leaves to its heir.)

Looking far, think how to make your ancestors’ virtue known; looking near, think how to cover your parents’ faults. Looking up, think how to repay the state; looking down, think how to make your household’s good fortune. Looking outward, think how to relieve men in their urgencies; looking inward, think how to fence out your own crookedness.

You must know your faults daily and mend them daily. A day in which you do not know your fault is a day spent comfortably in self-approval; a day in which there is no fault to mend is a day with no step forward in it. There is no lack of clever and gifted men in the world; that their virtue does not grow and their work does not widen is owing to two words — letting things slide — which waste a life.

The doctrine of shaping one’s fate that Chan Master Yungu handed down is a principle of the utmost refinement, depth, truth and rectitude. Turn it over till you know it, and work at it; do not let yourself run to waste.

II. The Method of Mending Faults改過之法

The first lesson says fate can be altered; this one says what to alter first. The order is the frame of the whole book: “before we speak of doing good, faults must be mended.” If the foundation leaks, nothing piled on top of it will stand. Mending begins with three states of mind — shame, fear, resolve — then proceeds on three levels: from the deed, from the principle, from the heart. The chapter closes with the signs by which one knows it is working, and the signs by which one knows it is not.

The great officers of the Spring and Autumn period would watch a man’s speech and conduct, guess at his fortune and misfortune, and never be wrong. The records of the Zuo Commentary and the Discourses of the States are full of it.

In general the omens of fortune and misfortune sprout in the heart and show in the limbs. A man who errs on the side of generosity usually gets good fortune; a man who errs on the side of meanness usually comes near to ill. Common eyes have a film over them, and so men say that these things are undecided and cannot be foretold.

Perfect sincerity is at one with heaven. When good fortune is at hand, watch a man’s goodness and you will know it beforehand; when misfortune is at hand, watch his badness and you will know it beforehand. Now, if you would have fortune and keep clear of misfortune, then before we speak of doing good, faults must be mended. (This sentence sets the order of the four lessons, and marks the book off from ordinary books of exhortation.)

For him who would mend his faults, the first thing is to rouse a sense of shame. Consider that the sages of old were men as I am: why are they fit to be teachers for a hundred generations, while I go to pieces like a broken tile? To be steeped in the dust of the senses, to do injustice in secret and think no one knows, to carry it off without a blush — this is to sink day by day toward the beasts without knowing it. Nothing in the world is so shameful. Mencius said, “Shame is a great matter for a man,” since with it he becomes a sage and without it a beast. This is the first lever of mending faults.

The second is to rouse a sense of fear. Heaven and earth are above; the spirits are not to be cheated. Though my fault be hidden and slight, heaven and earth and the spirits look right at it. Grave faults they visit with a hundred calamities, light ones with the loss of present good fortune. How can I not be afraid?

Nor is that all. Even in the privacy of one’s own room, ten eyes are watching and ten fingers pointing. Though I cover it very close and gloss it very cleverly, my liver and lungs are long since on view, and in the end I cannot deceive myself. Let a man see through me, and I am not worth a copper. How can I not go in dread? (The image of ten eyes and ten fingers is from the Great Learning. The base text has “nor is that all” here as well as in the next section.)

Nor is that all. While a single breath remains, a sky-filling evil can still be repented and mended. There have been men of old who did evil all their lives, woke to it as they lay dying, and by rousing a single good thought made a good end — meaning that one fierce thought can wash away a hundred years of evil. It is as with a shadowed valley a thousand years old: one lamp is brought in and the darkness of a thousand years is gone. Faults therefore are not to be weighed by how old or new they are; the whole value lies in mending them. But the world is uncertain and the body soon perishes; let one breath fail to come and there is no way left to mend. In the light, you carry an evil name a thousand years, and no filial son or dutiful grandson can wash it off; in the dark, you sink under the judgment of hell a thousand aeons, and no sage or buddha or bodhisattva can draw you out. How can one not be afraid?

The third is to rouse resolve. When men fail to mend their faults it is mostly from letting things slide and shrinking back. I must rouse myself and act, without hesitating and without waiting. Small faults are like a thorn in the flesh: pick it out at once. Great ones are like a viper on the finger: cut it off at once, with never a moment’s clinging. This is why the hexagram of Increase is made of thunder and wind.

With these three, a fault is mended the moment it appears, like spring ice meeting the sun; how should it fail to melt?

But faults may be mended from the deed, from the principle, or from the heart. The work is different in each, and so is the result. (These three are the real subject of the lesson, and the sharpest piece of method in the book.)

If yesterday I took life and today I bind myself not to take it; if yesterday I raged and railed and today I bind myself not to be angry — this is mending the thing itself. Forcing it from outside is a hundred times harder; besides, the root of the disease is still there, and what is stamped out on this side springs up on that. It is not the thorough and open way.

He who mends well does not begin by forbidding the act; he begins by making the principle plain.

If the fault is the taking of life, then think thus: “Heaven loves living things, and every creature clings to its life; to kill another that I may be fed — how shall I be easy in my mind? Besides, for the creature there is first the butcher’s knife and then the cauldron; the pain of it goes to the marrow. For me there is a table spread with delicacies, gone the moment they are eaten; and coarse rice and a dish of greens would have filled me quite as well. Why destroy its life and diminish my own good fortune?” (The base text has “destroy and harm its life”; most current editions have only “destroy.”)

And think again: “Whatever has blood and breath has some spark of knowing; and having it, is one body with me. Even if I cannot cultivate virtue so perfect that they revere and love me, am I to butcher them daily and make them hate and resent me without end?” Think so far, and there will be times when you sit before a dish and cannot swallow for grief.

If the fault is a quick temper, then think: “Men have their shortcomings, and in reason they deserve pity. If a man offends against reason and crosses me, that is his affair — what is it to me? There is nothing here to be angry at.”

And think again: “There is no hero in the world who is satisfied with himself, and no learning in the world that blames others. When what I do does not answer, it is always that my own virtue is unpolished and my influence has not reached.” Take everything so, and slander when it comes is all so much ground on which I am ground and polished into shape. I shall receive the gift gladly; what is there to be angry at?

Consider too that if one hears slander and is not angry, then though the flames of it reach the sky it is like setting fire to empty air: it goes out of itself. If one hears slander and is angry, then however cleverly and strenuously one argues, it is like a silkworm spinning: one is wrapped in one’s own thread. Anger is not merely useless; it does harm.

And so with every other fault: each is to be thought out on its principle. Once the principle is clear, the fault stops of itself.

What is it to mend from the heart? Faults come in a thousand kinds, and the heart makes them all. If my heart does not stir, where should a fault come from? The student need not go hunting through the classes of them — lust, reputation, gain, anger and the rest — but only set his heart wholly on the good; let the right thought stand in front and the wrong thought cannot settle on him. As when the sun stands in the sky the goblins melt away of themselves. This is the true transmission of “refined and undivided.” The heart makes the fault and the heart mends it; as when one fells a poisonous tree and cuts straight through the root — why hack at it branch by branch and pick it leaf by leaf? (The heart of the lesson: not to police each act, but to change what is producing the acts.)

On the whole, the highest way is to govern the heart, and then one is clean on the instant: the thought stirs and is seen, and being seen is gone. If that cannot be done, then make the principle plain and dismiss it that way. If that cannot be done either, then forbid it case by case. To use the higher way and take in the lower work as well is no bad policy; to hold to the lower and be blind to the higher is clumsy. (The base text reads “the highest is to govern the heart”; current editions add a character, “he who is highest.”)

Still, a man who vows to mend his faults needs good friends in the light to remind him and the spirits in the dark to bear witness. Repent with a whole heart, night and day without slackening, and after one or two weeks, or one, two or three months, there will certainly be signs. Perhaps the heart feels easy and open; perhaps wisdom suddenly opens; perhaps in the thick of confused business every thought comes clear; perhaps meeting an enemy one’s anger turns to gladness; perhaps one dreams of spitting out something black; perhaps one dreams of the sages of old taking one by the hand; perhaps one dreams of walking through the void; perhaps one dreams of banners and canopies. All such fine things are the look of faults dissolved and guilt wiped out. But one must not seize on them to think highly of oneself, and draw a line short of going further. (The last sentence is the safety catch: the moment a sign is taken for a score, the mending stops.)

Long ago Qu Boyu at twenty had already seen the wrong of his former days and mended it all. At twenty-one he knew that what he had mended was not yet wholly mended; at twenty-two, looking back on twenty-one, he seemed to have been dreaming. Year after year he mended by degrees, and at fifty he still knew the wrong of his forty-nine years. Such was the science of mending faults among the ancients. (This passage defines mending: not an event completed once, but a line with no end to it.)

We are ordinary men; our faults are as thick as the quills of a hedgehog. Yet looking back we often seem to see no fault in ourselves — because the heart is coarse and there is a film on the eye.

But a man whose faults are deep and heavy has his signs too. Perhaps the mind is dull and stopped up and forgets a thing the moment it turns away; perhaps he is vexed with no cause; perhaps he blushes and loses countenance before a good man; perhaps he is displeased to hear an upright opinion; perhaps his kindness earns him resentment; perhaps his dreams at night are all confusion, and in bad cases he talks wildly and loses his purposes. All these are the look of one who is storing up evil. If a single one of them fits, he must bestir himself, drop the old and plan the new, and not, I hope, ruin himself. (Current electronic texts drop a character here; the base text reads “dreams at night are all confusion.”)

III. The Ways of Accumulating Good積善之方

Three movements. First ten family histories offered as evidence that accumulated good is repaid. Then eight pairs of opposites — true and false, upright and crooked, hidden and open, right and wrong, partial and whole, half and full, great and small, hard and easy — which take apart the phrase “doing good.” Last, ten headings a man can actually put his hand to. The eight pairs in the middle are the keenest thing in the book: they turn “good” from something one feels into something one has to judge.

The Changes says: “A house that accumulates good will have blessings to spare.” When the Yan family were about to give their daughter to Shuliang He, they went through the long record of his ancestors’ accumulated virtue and concluded that his descendants must certainly rise. Confucius, praising the great filial piety of Shun, said, “The ancestral temple received his offerings; his descendants preserved him.” Both are sound judgments. Let us test them by what has happened. (Shuliang He was Confucius’ father. The lesson states its thesis and then calls ten witnesses.)

Yang Rong, Junior Preceptor, was a man of Jianning whose family had lived by ferrying. After long rains the stream rose and the flood swept away people’s houses, and the drowned came down with the current. Other boats all went to pick up goods; only the Preceptor’s great-grandfather and grandfather saved people and took not one thing of value, for which the villagers laughed at them as fools. By the time the Preceptor’s father was born the family was growing rich. A divine person in the shape of a Taoist said to them, “Your grandfather laid up hidden merit; your descendants shall be noble and eminent. You should bury him in such a place.” They buried him where he pointed, at what is now the White Hare Grave. Later the Preceptor was born, took his degree at twenty, rose to be one of the Three Dukes, and had his great-grandfather, grandfather and father honoured with his own rank. His descendants have been many and eminent, and there are still worthy men among them. (The first witness testifies to a choice that was plainly unprofitable at the time.)

Yang Zicheng of Yin was at first a clerk in the district office, kindly in heart and even-handed in applying the law. The magistrate of the day was severe, and once had a prisoner flogged till the blood ran on the floor and was still not appeased. Yang knelt and pleaded for him. The magistrate said, “But the man has broken the law and outraged all reason; one cannot help being angry.” Yang bowed his head and said, “When those above have lost the Way, the people have long been scattered. If you find out the truth of a case, pity them and do not be pleased. If you may not even be pleased, how much less angry!” At which the magistrate’s face cleared. (He is quoting Zengzi in the Analects. The witness testifies for the rule: before condemning a man, ask what the order above him has failed to give him.)

He was very poor and would take nothing that was sent him. When prisoners were short of food he would find a dozen ways to help them. One day several new prisoners were waiting to be fed and there was no rice in the house: to feed them was to leave his own family without; to keep it was to leave the prisoners in misery. He talked it over with his wife. She asked, “Where have the prisoners come from?” “From Hangzhou,” he said. “They have gone hungry the whole way; you can see the famine in their faces.” So they took the rice from their own store and boiled gruel for them. Afterwards he had two sons, Shouchen the elder and Shouzhi the younger, who became vice-ministers of the Board of Civil Office in the southern and northern capitals; his eldest grandson was vice-minister of Justice, his second grandson a provincial judge in Sichuan, and all of them men of name. Chuting and Dezheng of today are also of his line.

In the Zhengtong period Deng Maoqi raised a rebellion in Fujian and great numbers of gentry and commons went over to him. The court appointed Zhang Kai, Censor-in-Chief, of Yin district, to march south, and he took the rebel leader by stratagem. Afterwards Secretary Xie of the Provincial Administration was sent to hunt down the rebel party along the eastern road. Xie contrived to get hold of the rebels’ own roll of adherents, and to every household not on it he secretly gave a small white flag, arranging that they should set it at their door on the day the troops came; and he warned the soldiers against killing at random. Ten thousand lives were saved. Later Xie’s son Qian took first place in the palace examination and became a chief minister; his grandson Pi took third place. (The weight of this one lies in the roll: not softness, but the trouble of finding out who was who.)

In the Lin family of Putian there was an old lady among the ancestors who loved doing good, and used to make rice-flour dumplings and give them away — to anyone who asked, and never with a weary face. An immortal in the shape of a Taoist came every morning for six or seven of them, and she gave them to him day after day for three years without fail, so that he knew her sincerity. He said to her, “I have eaten your dumplings three years; how shall I repay you? Behind the prefectural office is a piece of ground; bury him there and your descendants shall hold office to the number of a pint of sesame seed.” Her son buried him where he pointed, and in the very first generation nine of the family took the doctorate, and for generations after they were a house of office-holders. Fujian has a rhyme: “Without a Lin the lists cannot be published.” (What matters is “never with a weary face” and “three years without fail”: the weight of a good deed lies in whether it can be kept up.)

The father of the Academician Feng Zhuo’an was a licentiate of the district school. Rising early on a bitter winter morning to go to his lessons, he came on a man lying in the snow, and feeling him found him half frozen. He took off his own padded coat and put it on him, then helped him home and brought him round. That night he dreamed that a spirit said to him, “You saved a life out of a perfectly sincere heart; I send you Han Qi for a son.” When Zhuo’an was born he was named Qi. (Han Qi was a great minister of the Northern Song. The base text misprints one character of “half frozen”; the usual reading is kept here.)

Minister Ying of Taizhou, when a young man, was studying in the hills. Ghosts gathered there at night and howled, and often frightened people, but he was not afraid. One evening he heard a ghost say, “A certain woman, whose husband has been long away and has not come home, is being pressed by her parents-in-law to marry again. Tomorrow night she will hang herself here, and I shall have my substitute.” Ying quietly sold a field, got four ounces of silver, forged a letter as from her husband and sent the silver home with it. Her parents saw the letter, thought the hand unlike his and doubted it; then they said, “A letter can be forged, silver cannot; our son must be safe.” So the woman did not remarry. Her husband did come home later, and the two lived together as before. (Rescue has to be put where the other party can actually believe it: the four ounces of silver did what the letter could not.)

Ying then heard a ghost say, “I should have had my substitute, but that scholar spoiled it.” Another beside him said, “Why not bring some harm on him?” The first said, “The Lord on High, because this man’s heart is good, has made him Minister of Hidden Virtue; how am I to harm him?” From this Ying spurred himself the more; his good deeds grew day by day and his virtue thickened. In years of famine he gave grain for relief; when relations were in straits he took endless trouble to keep them going; when he met with insult and injustice he turned and blamed himself, and bore it with an even mind. His descendants who have passed the examinations are by now a long list.

Xu Fengzhu (Shi) of Changshu had a rich father. Coming on a year of famine, he first remitted his own rents to set the district an example, and then shared out grain to relieve the poor. At night a ghost was heard singing at his door: “No lie, no lie at all — the Xu family scholar has got as far as licentiate of the province.” It went on calling, night after night without a break. That year Fengzhu did indeed pass the provincial examination. His father thereupon accumulated merit the harder, tirelessly: mending bridges and roads, feasting monks and receiving travellers, sparing no pains where any good was to be done. Later the ghost was heard singing again at the door: “No lie, no lie at all — the Xu family graduate goes all the way to the Censorate.” Fengzhu ended as governor of the Two Zhe. (The point is in the second half: after the prophecy came true, his father worked harder, not less.)

Tu Kangxi of Jiaxing was at first a secretary in the Board of Punishments. Lodging in the prison, he questioned the prisoners closely about their cases and found a number who were innocent. He did not take the credit to himself, but wrote the matter up privately and laid it before the presiding officer. At the next autumn assize the officer used his statements in examining the prisoners, and every one of them confessed; more than ten wronged men were released, and the whole capital praised the Minister’s discernment. Tu then represented further: “Under the very wheels of the imperial carriage there are so many wronged men; in the breadth of the empire and the multitude of its people, must there not be others? There should be a commissioner for the reduction of sentences sent out every five years to examine the facts and set them right.” The Minister memorialised, and the proposal was approved. Tu was himself among the commissioners appointed. He dreamed that a spirit said to him, “Your fate gave you no son; but this proposal for reducing sentences accords deeply with the mind of heaven, and the Lord on High grants you three sons, all to wear purple and a golden girdle.” That night his wife conceived, and she bore Yingxun, Yingkun and Yinggai, all of whom became eminent officials. (The base text names the third son Yinggai; most editions read Yingleng. Tu’s merit was not the ten men he freed but his turning a single act of redress into a standing five-yearly duty.)

Bao Ping of Jiaxing, styled Xinzhi, was the son of a prefect of Chiyang, the youngest of seven, and married into the Yuan family of Pinghu; he was on very close terms with my father. He was widely read and highly gifted, but failed again and again in the examinations, and turned his mind to Buddhism and Taoism. One day, rambling east about Mao Lake, he came by chance to a village temple and saw an image of Guanyin standing in the open, streaming with rain. He at once opened his purse, took out ten taels and gave them to the abbot to have the building repaired. The monk said the work was great and the money small and would not finish it; so he took out four bolts of Songjiang cloth and seven garments from his box and gave them too, among which was a ramie jacket newly made. His servant begged him to keep that one back. Bao said, “So long as the sacred image takes no harm, what does it matter if I go naked?” The monk said with tears, “To give away silver and clothes and cloth is not the hard thing; it is this one movement of the heart that is not easily come by.” When the work was done he brought his old father to see it and they stayed the night in the temple; and Bao dreamed that the guardian spirit came to thank him and said, “Your son shall enjoy the emoluments of office.” His son Bian and his grandson Chengfang both took their degrees and became eminent officials. (The monk’s sentence is the eye of the story: many can give the thing, few can give that.)

The father of Zhi Li of Jiashan was a clerk in the penal office. There was a prisoner condemned to death who was innocent, and the clerk pitied him and wished to save his life. The prisoner said to his wife, “Mr Zhi means well by me, and I am ashamed to have no way of repaying him. Tomorrow invite him to the country, and offer yourself to serve him; if he is willing to exert himself I may live.” His wife wept and obeyed. When Zhi came she poured wine for him herself and told him her husband’s meaning. Zhi would not hear of it, and in the end did his utmost and got the sentence reversed. When the man came out of prison the pair went to his house, knocked and thanked him, saying, “Such generous virtue as yours is rare in this late age. You have no son; I have a young daughter, whom I send to be your handmaid. This at least is something the rites allow.” Zhi accordingly performed the ceremonies and took her, and she bore Zhi Li, who took first place at twenty and rose to be a clerk of the Hanlin. Li had Gao, and Gao had Lu, and both were sent up as tribute students and made instructors; and Lu had Dalun, who took the doctorate. (The weight of it is in “would not hear of it”: his wish to save a man never became a claim upon him.)

These ten did different things, but all of them came to the same thing, which is good. Yet to speak more exactly, good may be true or false, upright or crooked, hidden or open, right or wrong, partial or whole, half or full, great or small, hard or easy. All these must be told apart with care. To do good without thinking the principle through is to suppose oneself in training while one is in fact storing up guilt: pains thrown away, and nothing gained.

What is true and false? Some scholars once called on the monk Zhongfeng and asked, “Buddhism holds that good and evil are repaid as the shadow follows the body. Yet here is a good man whose descendants do not flourish, and a bad man whose house rises; the Buddha’s account is groundless.” Zhongfeng said, “While common feeling is unwashed and the true eye unopened, men often take good for evil and point to evil as good. Instead of being sorry that their own right and wrong are upside down, do they complain that heaven’s recompense goes astray?” They said, “How can good and evil come out so opposite?” Zhongfeng asked them to describe it. One said that to curse and strike men was evil, and to respect and treat them courteously was good. Zhongfeng said, “Not necessarily so.” Another said that to covet money and take what was not his was evil, and to be honest and keep within bounds was good. Zhongfeng said, “Not necessarily so.” They went on one after another, and to every case he said no.

So they asked him. Zhongfeng told them: “What benefits others is good; what benefits oneself is evil. If it benefits others, then to strike and curse a man are both good; if it benefits oneself, then to respect and be courteous to him are both evil. Therefore when a man does good, what profits others is public, and being public it is true; what profits himself is private, and being private it is false. Again, what springs from the heart is true and what merely copies the form is false; again, what is done without an end in view is true and what is done for an end is false. All this a man must weigh for himself.” (The base text reads “done for an end of one’s own.” The measure “what benefits others” moves good and evil off the shape of the act and onto the direction the benefit runs.)

What is upright and crooked? Men today, seeing a careful and inoffensive person, will call him good and take him up; but the sages would sooner take the headstrong or the over-scrupulous. As for the careful and inoffensive, though a whole village speak well of him, the sages will have it that he is a thief of virtue. The world’s good and evil, plainly, are the reverse of the sages’. Push this one instance out and there is no taking and leaving in which men are not mistaken. In blessing the good and cursing the licentious, heaven and earth and the spirits agree with the sages about right and wrong, and not with the world about taking and leaving. Whoever means to accumulate good must on no account follow eye and ear, but only scour away, silently, in the hidden springs of the heart. What is pure intention to help the world is upright; a hair’s breadth of wanting to please the world is crooked. What is pure love of men is upright; a hair’s breadth of spleen against the world is crooked. What is pure reverence for men is upright; a hair’s breadth of mockery is crooked. All must be told apart with care. (“A thief of virtue” is Confucius on the village worthy. The least comfortable and most honest passage in the book: general approval proves nothing.)

What is hidden and open? To do good and have men know it is open good; to do good and have men not know it is hidden virtue. Hidden virtue heaven repays; open good enjoys a name in the world. A name is itself a kind of good fortune; but a name is what the maker of things begrudges. Men of the world who enjoy a great name unmatched by the reality mostly meet with strange disasters; men without fault who are unjustly saddled with an evil name often have descendants who rise suddenly. Subtle indeed is the line between the hidden and the open! (Reckoning fame as a reward already drawn is a very cool piece of accounting.)

What is right and wrong? By the law of Lu, a man of Lu who ransomed a countryman from bondage in another state might draw the money back from the treasury. Zigong ransomed a man and would not take the money. Confucius heard of it and was displeased, and said, “Ci has done wrong. When a sage acts, he may reform manners and change customs, and his teaching may be applied to the people; it is not merely a matter of suiting his own conduct. In Lu today the rich are few and the poor many. If taking the money is to count as dishonourable, with what will men ransom their fellows? From now on, no one will ransom a man from another state again.”

Zilu saved a man from drowning, and the man thanked him with an ox, which Zilu accepted. Confucius was pleased, and said, “From now on, men in Lu will save many from drowning.” To the common eye Zigong’s refusing the money was the finer thing and Zilu’s taking the ox the lower; but Confucius approved Zilu and disapproved Zigong. From which we know that in a man’s doing of good, one must not look at the present act but at what it leads to; not at a moment but at a long time; not at one man but at the empire. If the present act is good but what follows from it is enough to harm men, then it looks like good and is not. If the present act is not good but what follows from it is enough to help men, then it looks like no good and is. And this is only one department of the matter. There is also the righteousness that is not righteous, the propriety that is not proper, the good faith that is not faithful, the kindness that is not kind: all to be sorted out. (The most modern passage in the book: a good act is to be judged by the costs it sets up for those who come after.)

What is partial and whole? When Lü Wenyi had just resigned the chancellorship and gone home, the whole country looked up to him as to Mount Tai and the Pole Star. A villager, drunk, abused him. Lü did not stir, but said to his servant, “Do not argue with a drunk man,” and shut his door on him. A year later the man committed a capital crime and went to prison. Lü then repented, and said, “If I had made something of it at the time and sent him to the authorities to be punished, a small correction might have been a great warning to him. I wanted only to keep my own heart generous, and instead I nursed his wickedness until it came to this.” This is doing an evil thing with a good heart.

And there is doing a good thing with an evil heart. A certain rich house, in a year of famine, had its grain seized in the market in broad daylight by the starving poor. They complained to the district and the district would do nothing; the poor grew bolder, and so the house seized some of them privately and put them to shame, after which the crowd quieted down — otherwise there would almost have been a riot. So: the good is whole and the evil partial, as everyone knows; but to do an evil thing with a good heart is the partial within the whole, and to do a good thing with an evil heart is the whole within the partial. This must be understood.

What is half and full? The Changes say, “Good that is not accumulated is not enough to make a name; evil that is not accumulated is not enough to destroy a man.” The Documents say, “The crimes of Shang are strung full.” It is like storing things in a vessel: store diligently and it fills; slacken and leave off and it does not. That is one account of it.

There was once a girl who went into a temple wishing to give and having nothing, and with only two coppers on her gave those; and the abbot himself performed the rite of repentance for her. Later she entered the palace and grew rich, and came to the temple with several thousand pieces of gold to give; and the abbot merely set a disciple to dedicate the merit. She asked, “When I gave two coppers, master, you performed the repentance yourself; now that I give thousands you do not dedicate it yourself. Why?” He said, “Then the gift was slight but the heart that gave it altogether true, and nothing less than the old monk’s own repentance could requite such virtue. Now the gift is heavy but the heart less urgent than it was, and it is enough to let another perform the rite for you.” Here a thousand pieces of gold were the half and two coppers the full.

Zhongli conferred the elixir on Patriarch Lü, by which iron could be turned to gold and the world relieved. Lü asked, “Will it change back in the end?” “After five hundred years,” said Zhongli, “it will return to its own nature.” Lü said, “Then it will harm the men of five hundred years hence; I had rather not.” Zhongli said, “To become an immortal one must accumulate three thousand meritorious deeds. By that one word of yours your three thousand are already full.” That is another account of it. (One sentence outweighing three thousand deeds: what is being measured is not the number, but how far ahead the thought reaches.)

Again, if a man does good and his heart does not fasten on the good, then whatever he accomplishes is complete; if his heart fastens on it, then though he labour all his life it comes only to half. It is as when one relieves men with money: within, he does not see himself; without, he does not see the other; and between, he does not see the thing given. This is called the emptiness of the three wheels, and the purity of a single heart; and then a peck of grain may sow measureless good fortune, and one copper may wipe out the guilt of a thousand aeons. But if the thought is not forgotten, then though he give ten thousand pounds of gold his fortune will not be full. That is another account of it.

What is great and small? Wei Zhongda, while holding a post in the library, was summoned to the court below and the presiding officer had the clerks bring up the two registers of his good and evil. When they came, the register of evil filled the courtyard, while that of good was a single scroll no thicker than a chopstick. Scales were called for; and the mass that filled the courtyard proved the lighter, and the chopstick-sized scroll the heavier. Zhongda said, “I am not yet forty; how can I have so many faults?” He was told, “A single unrighteous thought is already one; it need not be acted on.” He asked what was written in the scroll, and was told, “The court once undertook a great work, to build a stone bridge at Sanshan, and you memorialised against it. This is the draft of that memorial.” Zhongda said, “I spoke, but the court did not follow it; it came to nothing. How can it have such weight?” The answer was, “Though the court did not follow it, your one thought was already for the ten thousand people; and had they followed it, the force of the good would have been greater still.” So a purpose that lies with the empire and the state makes good great though it be little; a purpose that lies only with oneself makes it small though it be much.

What is hard and easy? The earlier scholars said that in mastering oneself one should begin at the hardest place. Confucius, discussing benevolence, also said, “first the hard.” One must be like old Shu of Jiangxi, who gave up the fees of two years’ teaching to repay government silver for another man and keep a husband and wife together; or old Zhang of Handan, who gave up ten years’ savings to pay a man’s ransom and so saved his wife and child. These are what is meant by giving where giving is hard. Or like old Jin of Zhenjiang, who though old and sonless could not bring himself to take a neighbour’s young daughter as a concubine and sent her back — which is bearing where bearing is hard; and so the good fortune heaven sent him was heavy too. For men with money and power, to lay up virtue is easy; and to find it easy and not do it is to throw oneself away. For the poor and low, to do good is hard; and to find it hard and do it — that is what is precious.

To help others as occasion offers takes very many forms; stated in outline there are about ten heads. First, doing good together with others. Second, keeping love and reverence in the heart. Third, helping others to what is good in them. Fourth, urging others to do good. Fifth, saving men in extremity. Sixth, founding works of public benefit. Seventh, giving money to make good fortune. Eighth, upholding the true teaching. Ninth, honouring elders and superiors. Tenth, sparing the lives of creatures. (After all the sorting, this is where it comes to hand: ten things that can be begun today.)

What is doing good together with others? Long ago Shun was at Leize, and saw that the fishermen all took the deep pools and the rich shallows while the old and weak fished in the swift current and thin shoals; and he was grieved for them and went and fished there himself. When he saw men quarrelling he hid their faults and said nothing; when he saw a man give way, he praised him aloud and took him for a model. Within a year they were all giving up the deep pools and rich shallows to one another. With Shun’s understanding, could he not have set them right with a single sentence? He would not teach by words but turned them by his own person. Such is the pains of a good workman.

We live in a late age. Do not overbear men with what you are good at; do not put them in the shade with your virtue; do not corner them with your many abilities. Draw in your talents and your wit and seem to have none, seem to be empty. When you see a man’s fault, bear with it and cover it: first, so that he may be able to mend it; second, so that having something to fear he may not run loose. When you see that a man has the least merit worth taking or the smallest good worth recording, turn round at once, leave your own way and follow his; and speak of it warmly and spread it abroad. In all the business of the day, let not one word or one act arise for your own sake: let it all be a rule set up for the world. This is the greatness of the great man who holds the empire to be common ground.

What is keeping love and reverence in the heart? The gentleman and the small man, looked at by their outward tracks, are easily confounded; only at that one point where the heart is kept do good and evil stand utterly apart, as black from white. Therefore it is said: “What makes the gentleman different from other men is what he keeps in his heart.” And what the gentleman keeps is simply a heart that loves and reveres men. Men differ in nearness and distance, in high and low station, in wit and dullness, in worth and worthlessness — a thousand kinds, all uneven; yet all are my own flesh, all one body with me; which of them is not to be revered and loved? To love and revere the many is to love and revere the sages; to reach the purposes of the many is to reach the purposes of the sages. Why? Because the purpose of the sages was always that this age and these men should each find their place. When I join love to reverence and settle the men of an age, I am settling them on the sages’ behalf.

What is helping others to what is good in them? Jade in the rock, thrown away, is a shard; polished, it is a sceptre. Whenever, then, you see a man do one good deed, or see that his purposes are worth taking and his gifts capable of advance, you must draw him on and bring him through: commend and recommend him, or hold him up, or clear him of a slander and take part of the blame — and not stop until he stands on his feet.

On the whole men dislike what is not of their own kind, and in any village the good are few and the not-good many. A good man in the world finds it hard to stand alone. Besides, men of parts have an edge to them and are careless of appearances, and are easily picked at; and so good works often fail and good men are often abused. Only a man of feeling and standing who props him up and shelters him does a merit that is greatest of all.

What is urging others to do good? Born into the human kind, who is without a conscience? But the road of the world is a treadmill, and men are drowned in it very easily. Whenever you are among men, take the convenient moment to tug at them and open their confusion: it is like waking a man from a long night’s dream, or drawing him out of a long-endured torment into the cool. No kindness goes further. Han Yu said, “To urge men for a season, use your mouth; to urge them for a hundred generations, use a book.” Compared with doing good together with others this leaves a track behind it; but it prescribes for the case in hand and has at times a remarkable effect, and is not to be given up. When you have wasted words or lost a man, look to your own judgment. (The Analects: not to speak when one should is to lose the man; to speak when one should not is to waste words.)

What is saving men in extremity? Trouble and downfall come to everyone at times. Meet with it and you should feel it as a sickness in your own body and set about the rescue at once: by a word to right his wrong, or by many means to help him out of his straits. Cui the Master said, “A kindness need not be great; it is enough that it comes when a man is pressed.” Truly the word of a man of feeling!

What is founding works of public benefit? At the least within a village, at the most within a district, wherever there is a benefit to be had it should be founded: dig a channel and lead the water; raise a dyke and keep out the flood; mend a bridge for travellers; give out tea and food for the hungry and thirsty. Persuade men as occasion offers, join forces and build; do not flinch from suspicion, do not shirk the labour or the grumbling.

What is giving money to make good fortune? Of the ten thousand practices of the Buddhist school, giving comes first. And giving is nothing but the one word let go. The man who is through with it lets go within of the six senses and without of the six dusts; there is nothing at all that he does not let go. If you cannot do that, begin by giving of your money. Men of the world take food and clothing for life itself, and so money weighs heaviest with them. If I therefore let it go, within I break my own stinginess and without I relieve another’s need. It is forced at first and easy at last, and nothing so washes away private feeling or clears out the habit of holding on.

What is upholding the true teaching? The teaching is the eye of all living beings for ten thousand generations. Without a true teaching, by what shall we assist heaven and earth? by what bring the ten thousand things to completion? by what escape the dust and slip the bonds? by what order this world or pass beyond it? Therefore wherever you see the temples and images of the sages, or their books and records, they are to be reverenced and put in repair. And as for setting the true teaching forth and repaying the Buddha’s kindness, that above all deserves one’s effort.

What is honouring elders and superiors? A father and elder brothers at home, a ruler and his officers in the state, and all who are advanced in years, in virtue, in station or in understanding, are to be served with care. To serve one’s parents at home with deep love and a mild countenance, a soft voice and a lowered breath, until it becomes second nature, is the root of that harmony by which heaven is reached. Going out to serve one’s ruler: in doing a thing, do not say that the ruler does not know and so please yourself; in punishing a man, do not say that the ruler does not know and so play the tyrant. To serve one’s ruler as one serves heaven is the settled judgment of the ancients, and in these matters hidden virtue is most concerned. Look at houses of loyalty and filial piety: their descendants are never otherwise than long-continued and flourishing. Be careful of it.

What is sparing the lives of creatures? What makes a man a man is this one feeling of pity and no more. What one seeks in seeking benevolence is this; what one lays up in laying up virtue is this. The Rites of Zhou say, “In the first month of spring, do not use females for the sacrifice.” Mencius said the gentleman keeps clear of the kitchen — all to keep whole this feeling of pity in oneself. Hence our forerunners had the rule of four abstentions: not to eat what one has heard killed, not to eat what one has seen killed, not to eat what one has reared oneself, not to eat what has been killed expressly for one. The student who cannot yet give up meat should begin at least with these.

Advance by degrees and the compassionate heart grows. It is not only the taking of life that must be given up: whatever creeps and has a spark of feeling is a living creature. To draw silk one boils the cocoon; to hoe the ground is to kill insects. Think where your food and clothing come from, and it is all killing to keep oneself alive; and so the guilt of wasting and spoiling should be reckoned with that of taking life. As for what the hand injures by accident and the foot treads on unawares, there is no counting them, and against all of these one should take such care as one can. The old poem says, “Loving the mice, he always leaves them rice; pitying the moths, he does not light the lamp.” What kindness! (The base text reads “reckoned with”; most editions read “reckoned as.” That waste should be weighed on the same scale as killing is a line few readers notice.)

Good works are without end and cannot be exhausted in the telling; extend these ten and the ten thousand virtues are all provided for.

IV. What Humility Does謙德之效

The shortest lesson, and the most easily checked. Liaofan does not argue; he counts men — Ding Jingyu in the year xinwei, Feng Kaizhi in dingchou, Zhao Yufeng, Xia Jiansuo, Zhang Weiyan: five men he watched pass or fail with his own eyes. Humility here is not good manners but an observable forecast: what is full has no room, and so “humility leaves ground for being taught, and the taking of good from others has no end.”

The Changes say: “The way of heaven diminishes the full and increases the humble; the way of earth overthrows the full and makes its course toward the humble; spirits and gods harm the full and bless the humble; the way of man hates the full and loves the humble.” And so of all the hexagrams it is Humility alone whose six lines are every one auspicious. The Documents say, “Fullness invites loss; humility receives increase.” Again and again I have gone up to the examinations with others, and every time I have seen a poor scholar on the point of rising there has been a light of humility about him you could take up in your hands. (“A light you could take up” is Liaofan’s way of reading men: not the essay, but that light on the man.)

In the year xinwei we went up together to the metropolitan examination, ten of us from Jiashan; and of these Ding Jingyu (Bin) was the youngest and the most thoroughly humble. I said to Fei Jinpo, “This man will pass this year.” Fei said, “How do you see it?” I said, “Only the humble receive good fortune. Look at the ten of us: is there one so plain and earnest, so unwilling to go before another, as Jingyu? one so respectful and compliant, so careful and modest, as Jingyu? one who takes an insult without answering and hears himself slandered without arguing, as Jingyu does? A man who can be like that — heaven and earth and the spirits themselves will protect him. How should he not rise?” And when the list came out, Ding had indeed passed. (Three questions, each of them a test one can actually apply.)

In the year dingchou I was in the capital and lodged with Feng Kaizhi, and saw how he emptied himself and drew in his countenance, wholly changed from the habits of his youth. Li Jiyan was an upright and honest friend to him and often taxed him with his faults to his face; and I saw him take it with an even mind and never answer a word. I said to him, “Good fortune has a beginning and misfortune has its forerunner. If this heart is truly humble, heaven will certainly help it: you will pass this year.” And so it turned out.

Zhao Yufeng, whose name was Guangyuan, was a man of Guan district in Shandong; he passed the provincial examination as a boy and then failed for years. His father was assistant magistrate at Jiashan and he went with him to his post. He admired Qian Mingwu, and took his own essays to call on him; and Mingwu struck out the whole of them. Zhao not only did not take offence, he was convinced and set about mending them at once. The next year he took his degree. (To have one’s essay struck out entire is the hardest criticism there is. The whole weight of this one lies in the single step between “did not take offence” and “at once.”)

In the year renchen I went up to court and met Xia Jiansuo; and seeing how modest his air was and how low he held himself, the light of his humility struck one. Coming home I told a friend, “When heaven is about to raise a man, before it sends his good fortune it first sends his understanding; and once that understanding comes out, the flighty grow solid of themselves and the unbridled draw themselves in. Jiansuo is mild and good to this degree; heaven has opened him.” And when the list came out he had passed. (“Before the good fortune, the understanding” — humility is not a condition of good fortune but the first visible sign that it is already on its way.)

Zhang Weiyan of Jiangyin was deeply read and a fine writer, and had a name in the world of letters. At the provincial examination at Nanking in the year jiawu he lodged in a temple; and when the list came out and his name was not on it he cursed the examiner roundly for being blind. A Taoist standing by smiled, and Zhang instantly turned his anger on him. The Taoist said, “Your Honour’s essay must certainly be bad.” Zhang, angrier still, said, “You have not seen my essay; how do you know it is bad?” The Taoist said, “I have heard that in writing, a calm and level temper is what counts. Listening to you rail just now, your temper is very far from level; how should the writing be good?” Zhang found himself convinced in spite of himself, and drew near to ask instruction. (The only scene of live combat in the book, and the best thing in it.)

The Taoist said, “Passing depends entirely on fate. If your fate is not to pass, then however fine the essay it is of no use. You must make some change in yourself.” Zhang said, “If it is fate, how can it be changed?” The Taoist said, “The making of fate is heaven’s; the shaping of it is mine. Work hard at good deeds and lay up hidden merit widely: what good fortune can then not be had?” Zhang said, “I am a poor scholar; what can I do?” The Taoist said, “Good deeds and hidden merit are all made in the heart; keep that heart always and the merit is measureless. Take humility, for instance: it costs not a coin. Why do you not look into yourself, instead of cursing the examiner?” (“It costs not a coin” hands the first lesson’s doctrine of shaping one’s fate to the poorest man in the room.)

From then on Zhang held himself in and kept himself down; his good deeds grew day by day and his virtue thickened. In the year dingyou he dreamed that he came to a high hall and was given a volume of the examination list, in which many lines were blank. He asked a bystander, who said, “This is the list for this year’s examination.” He asked, “Why are so many names missing?” The answer was: “In the world below, the lists are audited once in three years, and only those who have laid up merit and are without fault have their names here. Those blanks were men who should have passed, and have been struck off for some recent meanness.” Then the man pointed to a line and said, “For three years you have carried yourself with some care; perhaps you should fill this. Look to yourself.” And at that examination he did in fact pass, a hundred and fifth on the list.

From all this we see that three feet above a man’s head there are certainly spirits, and that moving toward fortune and away from disaster rests absolutely with oneself. One must so keep one’s heart and order one’s conduct as not to offend heaven and earth and the spirits by a hair, and must empty the heart and bend the self so that heaven and earth and the spirits pity one at all times: that is the foundation on which good fortune is received. The man whose breath is full is certainly no vessel to go far; and even if he rises he will have no use of it. Any man of the least discernment will surely not bring himself to narrow his own capacity and shut the door on his own fortune. Besides, humility leaves ground for being taught, and the taking of good from others has no end — which is precisely what no man who would get on can do without. (“Humility leaves ground for being taught” is the book’s most practical definition of the word: humility is room left over.)

The old saying runs: “He who sets his will on fame and rank will surely get fame and rank; he who sets his will on wealth and honour will surely get wealth and honour.” A man’s will is as a tree’s root. Set this will firm, and let every thought be humble and every particle of your dealings be an accommodation to others, and you will move heaven and earth of your own accord, and the making of your fortune will lie with you. Those who seek success in the examinations nowadays have at bottom no true will, but only a mood of the moment: while the mood is on them they seek it, and when the mood passes they stop. Mencius said, “If the king’s love of music is so great as that, the state of Qi is perhaps not far from what it should be.” I say the same of examination fame. (The closing borrows Mencius’ answer to King Xuan: what is lacking is not capacity but a real wish. The book ends on the will — fate is of my own making, and first there must be a self to make it.)