Exhorting to study — apply yourself to learning勉學

From ancient times the enlightened kings and the sage emperors still had to study hard; how much more the common sort! This matter runs all through the Classics and the histories, and I cannot go over it all again. I shall only bring up what is near at hand and pressing, to open your eyes. Among the sons of the gentry there is none who is not taught once he is a few years old. The more advanced reach the Book of Rites and the Chunqiu Zuo zhuan; the less advanced do not miss the Odes and the Analects. By the time of capping and marriage the body and the nature are settling, and this frame that heaven has given must be trained and led with double care. Those who have a set purpose can then grind and polish themselves and take up the family calling; those who have no footing grow slack from this time on and become common men. A man born into the world ought to have a calling. The farmer reckons his ploughing and sowing, the merchant weighs his goods, the craftsman perfects his vessels, the man of skill sinks his thought into his art, the soldier makes himself at home with bow and horse, the man of letters expounds the Classics. Often I see gentlemen who are ashamed to go near farming or trade and think it beneath them to work at a craft. They shoot, and cannot pierce a single plate of armour; they take up the brush, and can barely set down their own names. They eat their fill and get drunk, and sit vacant with nothing to do, and so they spend the day and so they end the year. Some, on the strength of what their house has left them, get a step or half a step of office, and at once think it enough and forget their studies altogether. When a great matter comes, of good fortune or of ill, and the right and wrong of it is weighed, they gape blankly as though sitting in cloud and mist. At banquets public or private, when men talk of old times and make verses, they close their mouths and hang their heads and do nothing but yawn and stretch. A man of discernment looking on beside them wishes he could sink into the earth in their stead. Why grudge a few years of hard study and take shame and disgrace for a whole lifetime?

When the Liang dynasty was at its height, the sons of the noble houses were mostly without learning, so that the proverb ran, "If he can climb into a carriage without falling out, he can be a court compiler; if he can ask how you are keeping, he can be a palace librarian." There was not one who did not perfume his clothes and shave his face and lay on powder and rouge. They rode in long-eaved carriages and wore clogs with high teeth, sat on square cushions patterned like a go board and leaned on bolsters of mottled silk, with their trinkets set out to left and right, and came and went at their leisure, so that to look at them was to see immortals. When they sought a degree in the examination on the Classics, they hired others to answer the papers for them; at the official banquets of the three dukes and nine ministers (三九), they borrowed another man's hand to make their verses. At that time such a man passed for a fine fellow. But after the troubles came, when court and market were made over, and those who weighed men and chose them for office were no longer their old kin, and those who held power at the crossroads were no longer their old faction, they looked for something in themselves and found nothing, and tried to offer something to the age and had nothing of use. They wore coarse cloth and had lost their pearls; the hide was stripped and the bare flesh showed. They stood blank as dead wood and sank away like a stream run dry, and they wandered among the war-horses and died at last in the ditches. At that time they were dull timber indeed. Those who had learning and skill were at ease wherever they went. Since the troubles I have seen many prisoners taken. A man of a hundred generations of low birth, if he could read the Analects and the Xiaojing, was still made a teacher of others; a man of a family that had worn cap and crown (冠冕) for a thousand years, if he did not know writing, was surely ploughing the fields and tending horses. Seeing this, how can a man not press himself on? If he can always keep a few hundred volumes by him, a thousand years may pass and he will not become a low fellow.

If a man makes clear the intent of the Six Classics and ranges over the books of the hundred schools, then even if he cannot add to his virtue or make the customs of his time more solid, it is still one skill by which he can keep himself. He cannot always lean on father and elder brother, and he cannot always hold his village and his country. If one morning he is cast adrift with no one to shelter him, he must look for it in his own person. The proverb says, "A thousand myriad piled up in goods is not so good as a small skill about the person." Of skills, none is easier to learn and more worth having than reading. People of the world, foolish and wise alike, all wish to know many men and to see things widely, and yet will not read; this is like wanting to be full and being too lazy to cook, or wanting to be warm and being too lazy to cut out clothes. As for the man who reads, since the time of Fuxi and Shennong, under the whole compass of the world, how many men has he come to know, how many affairs has he seen? The successes and failures of the people, and what they liked and what they hated, are not worth speaking of; heaven and earth cannot hide it from him, and the spirits cannot keep it from him.

A guest put a hard question to the host: "I have seen men who with strong crossbows and long halberds cut down the guilty and gave the people peace, and so became dukes and marquises. I have seen men skilled in letters and in the work of a clerk, who set their age right and made the state rich, and so became ministers and chancellors. But those whose learning covers ancient and modern and whose talents join the civil and the military, and who yet have no salary or post, so that their wives and children go hungry and cold, cannot be counted. How then is learning worth honouring?" The host answered: "Whether a man's lot is straitened or open is like gold and jade, or like wood and stone; and to cultivate him with learning and skill is like grinding and polishing, or like carving. Gold and jade, when ground, are of themselves finer than the ore and the rough stone; a block of wood or stone, though carved, is of itself ugly. How then can one say that the carving of wood and stone is better than the ore of gold and jade? You must not set the poverty of a man who has learning beside the wealth and rank of a man who has none. Besides, of those who shoulder armour and become soldiers, or bite the brush and become clerks, the ones who die with their names blotted out are like the hairs of an ox, and the ones who stand out like a horn are like the zhi plant. Of those who take up the white scroll and open the yellow one and chant of the Way and sing of virtue, the ones who have only hardship and no gain are like an eclipse of the sun, and the ones who live at ease and win name and profit are like the sow-thistle in autumn. How can they be spoken of in the same breath? And I have heard this too: he who knows at birth is the highest, and he who knows by learning comes next. The reason for learning is only to know much and to be clear-sighted. If a man truly has the talent of heaven and stands out from the herd, so that when he leads an army he is of one method with Sun Wu and Wu Qi without knowing it, and when he takes up government he arrives of himself at the teaching of Guan Zhong and Zichan, then though he has not read books I too shall call him learned. But if you cannot do so, and will not take the footsteps of the ancients for your teacher, you are no better than a man lying with the quilt pulled over his head."

When people see someone doing well among their neighbours and kin, they have their sons look up to him and learn from him, but they do not think to have them learn from the ancients. How blind that is! People of the world see a man mount a horse and put on armour, with a long lance and a strong bow, and say at once, "I could be a general"; they do not know that there is a subtlety in being clear about the way of heaven, in telling the advantages of the ground, in weighing what runs with the times and what runs against them, and in seeing through rise and ruin. They know only how to serve those above and deal with those below, to gather goods and pile up grain, and say at once, "I could be a chancellor"; they do not know that there is a height in revering the spirits and serving the gods, in changing the customs and altering the manners, in tuning the yin and the yang, and in putting forward the worthy and the sage. They know only how to keep private gain out and settle public business early, and say at once, "I could govern the people"; they do not know that there is an art in making oneself sincere so as to be a model to others, in holding the reins as one holds a woven cord, in turning the wind back to put out a fire, and in making phoenixes out of owls. They know only how to hold to the statutes and keep the code, punishing early and releasing late, and say at once, "I could judge cases fairly"; they do not know that there is a discernment in knowing the crime from the shaft of the cart, in dividing the sword to trace the goods, in a false word that lays the cunning bare, and in getting at the truth without asking. And so it goes down to farmers and merchants and craftsmen and traders, to errand men and slaves, to those who fish and those who butcher, to those who feed oxen and those who herd sheep: in every one of these there are men who went before and mastered it, and who can be taken for teachers. Learn widely and seek it out, and there is nothing that will not help you in your work.

The reason for reading and study is at bottom to open the mind and clear the eyes, and so to help conduct. A man who does not know how to care for his parents is meant to look at the ancients, how they went ahead of the wish and watched the face, how they softened the voice and lowered the breath, how they did not shrink from toil so as to bring sweet and tender food; and then, startled and ashamed and afraid, to rise and do the same. A man who does not know how to serve his lord is meant to look at the ancients, how they kept to their office without encroaching, how they gave up their lives when they saw danger, how they never forgot honest remonstrance and so served the altars of the state; and then, moved with pity, to think on himself and wish to be like them. A man proud and extravagant by nature is meant to look at the ancients, how they were respectful and frugal and sparing in their use of things, how they kept themselves low and so shepherded themselves, how they made ritual the root of teaching and reverence the ground of the person; and then, taken aback and losing his hold on himself, to compose his face and hold down his will. A man mean by nature is meant to look at the ancients, how they held right conduct dear and goods cheap, how they had few private wants, how they shunned being full and hated being brimming over, how they helped the destitute and relieved the empty-handed; and then, blushing with shame and regret, to learn to scatter what he has piled up. A man violent and harsh by nature is meant to look at the ancients, how they were careful and put themselves aside, how the teeth break but the tongue remains, how they swallowed insult and hid their hurts, how they honoured the worthy and made room for the many; and then, all his spirit gone out of him, to be as though he could not bear the weight of his own clothes. A man timid and weak by nature is meant to look at the ancients, how they saw through life and left it to fate, how they were strong and upright, how a word once given was surely kept, how they sought blessing without bending; and then to rouse himself and be shaken out of his fear. Go on from here, and the hundred kinds of conduct are all like this. Though a man cannot be made pure, he can be rid of what is too much. What is known through learning reaches everywhere when it is put into use. But the readers of the world can only speak and cannot act. Nothing is heard of their loyalty or their filial duty, and their humanity and right dealing fall short. Besides, when they judge a single lawsuit they do not always get at the right of it; when they govern a district of a thousand households they do not always govern the people; ask them about building a house, and they do not always know that the lintel lies across and the king post stands upright; ask them about the fields, and they do not always know that the panic millet is early and the glutinous millet late. They chant and whistle and joke, and recite their odes and rhapsodies; their business is all leisure and their talent grows the more fanciful, and for the ordering of army and state there is nothing in them to use. That soldiers and common clerks alike jeer at them and run them down comes truly from this.

Learning is only a means of seeking gain. Yet some men read a few dozen volumes and at once think themselves great, and look down on their elders and slight their fellows; and people hate them as they hate an enemy and loathe them as they loathe an owl. To harm yourself with learning like this is worse than not learning at all.

The learners of old learned for themselves, and filled up what was wanting in them; the learners of today learn for others, and can only talk. The learners of old learned for others, and practised the Way to benefit the world; the learners of today learn for themselves, and cultivate their persons to seek advancement. Learning is like planting a tree: in spring you enjoy its blossom, in autumn you gather its fruit. To expound and discuss writings is the blossom of spring; to cultivate the person and make your conduct fruitful is the fruit of autumn.

While a man is small and young his spirit is gathered and keen; after he is grown his thoughts scatter and run loose. So he must be taught early, and the moment must not be lost. When I was seven I learned the Lingguang dian fu by heart, and to this day, though I go over it once in ten years, I have not forgotten it. What I learned by heart after twenty goes to waste if I set it aside for a single month. Yet a man may meet with hard times and lose his best years; even then he should learn late and not throw himself away. Confucius said, "If a man studies the Changes at fifty, he may be without great fault." Emperor Wu of Wei and Yuan Yi grew only more earnest as they grew old; these are men who learned young and were not idle even in old age. Zengzi began to learn at seventy, and his name was heard throughout the empire. Xun Qing came to study at fifty, and was a great scholar even so. Gongsun Hong was over forty before he read the Chunqiu, and by it he rose at last to be chancellor. Zhu Yun too was forty before he began the Changes and the Analects. Huangfu Mi was twenty before he received the Xiaojing and the Analects. All of them ended as great scholars; these are men who strayed early and woke late. People of the world, if they have not studied by the time of capping and marriage, say at once that it is too late, and go on as they are, facing a wall; and this too is only foolish. He who learns while young is like the light of the rising sun; he who learns when old is like a man walking at night with a candle in his hand, and even so he is better off than one who shuts his eyes and sees nothing.

Whether learning flourishes or decays follows what the age holds heavy or light. In the time of Han the worthy and able all made the Way of the sages wide with a single Classic, making clear above the seasons of heaven and covering below the affairs of men, and many reached ministerial rank by it. Since the age grew coarse it has not been so. Men keep to chapter and verse to no purpose and recite only their master's words, and when it is brought to the business of the world there is hardly one thing of use in it. So the sons of the gentry all hold wide reading dear and will not make a single Confucian speciality of it. In the Liang court, from the imperial grandsons down, every boy with his hair still in tufts was first sent into the school, and his bent was watched there; after he took office he went at once to letters and history (文史), and hardly any finished the course. Among officials who did so there were He Yin, Liu Huan, Ming Shanbin, Zhou She, Zhu Yi, Zhou Hongzheng, He Chen, He Ge, Xiao Zizheng and Liu Tao; they had letters and history as well, and did not merely lecture. At Luoyang too I heard of Cui Hao, Zhang Wei and Liu Fang, and at Ye I saw Xing Zicai. These four scholars, though they loved the classical arts, made their name by talent and wide reading as well. Worthies of this kind belong to the first rank. Outside them most are idle men of the countryside, coarse in their speech, foolish and clumsy in their bearing, stubborn with one another and fit for nothing; ask them one word and they answer with several hundred, and press them for the point and often there is none. The proverb at Ye says, "A doctor of learning buys a donkey; there are three sheets of deed, and not the character lü (驢) for donkey in them." To make you take such a man for a teacher would stop a man's breath. Confucius said, "Learn, and a salary lies in it." To toil now at what brings no gain is surely not the family calling. The books of the sages are there to set up teaching. Be clear about the text of the Classics and roughly at home in the sense of the commentaries, and always have something gained for your words and your conduct, and that is enough to make a man. Why must the words "Zhongni ju" (仲尼居) have two sheets of exposition, and where after all does it matter whether it was the private chamber (燕寢) or the lecture hall? What gain is there in winning by such things? Time is to be grudged; liken it to water flowing away. A man should read widely in what is essential and so bring his work to something. If he can make both fine together, I have nothing to say against it.

The common run of Confucian scholars do not range over many books; outside the Classics and the apocrypha there is only the yishu (義疏), the subcommentary. When I first came to Ye I kept company with Cui Wenyan of Boling, and once spoke of a passage in the collected works of Wang Can that took issue with Zheng Xuan on the Shangshu. Cui carried it to the other scholars, and had barely opened his mouth when he was pushed aside at once: "A literary collection has only poems and rhapsodies and inscriptions and dirges in it. How should it discuss matters of the Classics? And among the earlier scholars we have never heard of any Wang Can." Cui laughed and withdrew, and in the end never showed them Wang Can's collection. When Wei Shou was in the Bureau of Deliberation he discussed a matter of the ancestral temple with the doctors of learning and cited the Han shu for his authority. The doctors laughed and said, "We have never heard that the Han shu can prove a point of classical learning." Wei Shou grew angry and said no more, but took the life of Wei Xuancheng, threw it down and got up. The doctors spent a whole night searching it through together, and when day came they came and apologized: "We did not think Wei Xuancheng had learning like this."

The books of Laozi and Zhuangzi are for keeping the true whole and nourishing the nature, and for refusing to let things burden the self. So the one hid his name as the archivist under the pillar (柱下史) and in the end trod the shifting sands (流沙); the other hid his traces in the lacquer garden (漆園) and at last refused to be chancellor of Chu. These were men who went their own way, and no more than that. He Yan and Wang Bi handed on the mystic teaching and vied with one another in praising it, and men clung to them like shadows and bent before them like grass, all holding that the transforming work of Shennong and the Yellow Emperor lay in their own persons, and casting the work of the Duke of Zhou and Confucius outside their reckoning. Yet He Yan, styled Pingshu, was put to death for siding with Cao Shuang, and so was caught in the net of deadly power. Wang Bi, styled Fusi, was hated for laughing at people too much, and so fell into the pit of loving to win. Shan Tao, styled Juyuan, drew mockery for piling up wealth, and so turned his back on the text that says much hoarding brings heavy loss. Xiahou Xuan was killed for his talent and his repute, and so had nothing of the lesson of Zhili Shu and of the gnarled tree (擁腫). Xun Can, styled Fengqian, lost his wife and died of a wounded heart, which is not the feeling of the man who drummed on a tub. Wang Yan, styled Yifu, mourned his son and could not master his grief, which is other than the wisdom of Dongmen Wu. Ji Kang, styled Shuye, pushed the world away and brought ruin on himself; how should he be of the company that dims its own light and shares the dust? Guo Xiang, styled Zixuan, shook the times and took all power to himself; how should that be the manner of putting the self behind and leaving the self outside? Ruan Ji, styled Sizong, sank into wine and wandered in a daze, which goes against the parable that bids men warn one another on a dangerous road. Xie Kun, styled Youyu, was dismissed for taking bribes, which breaks the teaching that a man should throw away the fish he has to spare. These men were the very leaders, the ones the mystic teaching looks back to. As for the rest, shackled in the dust and the dirt and fallen on their faces under name and profit, how could they all be told? One may take from it only the pure talk and the elegant argument, the splitting of the mysterious and the parting of the fine, the going and returning of guest and host, which please the mind and delight the ear; it is not what saves the age or makes the customs of a people. By the time of the Liang this fashion rose again, and the Zhuangzi, the Laozi and the Book of Changes were together called the Three Mysteries (三玄). Emperor Wu (武皇) and Emperor Jianwen (簡文) lectured on them and discussed them in person. Zhou Hongzheng upheld the great teaching, and his influence ran through the capital, with more than a thousand students; it was a splendid thing indeed. Emperor Yuan, while he was in Jiangzhou and Jingzhou, took to it again and studied it, and called students in and kept them and taught them himself, forgetting sleep and food and joining night to morning; and when he was worn out and full of care, he would relieve himself with a lecture. I too sat then in the lowest place and heard his words myself, but my nature was dull from the first, and it was not to my taste.

When Emperor Xiaozhao of Qi was nursing Empress Dowager Lou in her illness, his face was worn and he cut down his clothes and his food. When Xu Zhicai burned moxa at two points on her, the emperor clenched his fist to take the pain in her stead, until his nails went into his palm and the blood filled his hand. Afterwards she recovered, and the emperor soon fell ill and died; and in his last decree he said it was his grief that he would not see the business of her tomb. His inborn filial feeling was such as that, and yet he knew so little of what may not be said; and this came truly of having no learning. Had he seen how the ancients blamed a man for wishing his mother would die soon and weeping over it, he would not have spoken so. Filial duty is the head of the hundred kinds of conduct, and still it must be dressed with learning; how much more everything else!

Emperor Yuan of Liang once told me: "Long ago at Kuaiji, when I was only twelve, I already loved to study. At that time I had the scab as well, so that my hand could not make a fist and my knee could not bend. I hung a kudzu curtain in a quiet study to keep the flies off and sat alone, with the sweet wine of Shanyin in a silver bowl, and took a little now and then to ease the pain; and I read the histories as I pleased, twenty rolls a day. Having had no teacher, sometimes I did not know a character and sometimes I could not make out a phrase; but I held it dear of myself, and never knew weariness." An emperor's son, with all his rank, and a child, with all a child's leisure, could still do so; how much more the common scholars who hope to make something of themselves?

Among the ancients who studied hard there were those who held an awl and those who threw an axe, those who read by the light of snow and those who gathered fireflies, those who carried a Classic while they hoed and those who bound up slips while they herded; these too were diligent and earnest. In the time of Liang, Liu Qi of Pengcheng, grandson of Liu Bo the governor of Jiaozhou, lost his father early and his house was poor, so that lamps and candles were hard to come by; he would always buy reeds and break them into lengths of a foot and set them alight to read by at night. When Emperor Xiaoyuan first went out to Kuaiji he chose his staff with care, and Liu Qi for his talent was made state attendant and record keeper, and was treated with rare honour; he ended as a grand master of the gold seal and the purple ribbon. Zhu Zhan of Yiyang, whose family had lived for generations at Jiangling, later came out to Yangdu. He loved study, but his house was poor and he had nothing to live on, and when he had not cooked for several days he would sometimes swallow paper to fill his belly. In the cold he had neither felt nor quilt, and slept holding his dog. The dog too was hungry and empty, and would get up and go out to steal food, and would not come when called, so that the sad sound of it moved the neighbours; yet he did not give up his studies, and in the end he became a scholar of the academy and rose in office to be administrator of records to the general who guards the south, and was honoured by Emperor Xiaoyuan. This is not a thing that can be done, but he too was a man who studied hard. Zang Fengshi of Dongguan, when he was a little over twenty, wished to read Ban Gu's Han shu, and it galled him that he could not keep a borrowed copy long; so he went to his brother-in-law Liu Huan and begged the blank ends of visiting cards and letter paper, and copied out a whole text with his own hand. In the army office they bowed to his resolve, and in the end he was known for the Han shu.

In Qi there was a eunuch, an inner attendant named Tian Pengluan, a man of the Man people by birth. At fourteen or fifteen, when he first became a gatekeeper, he already knew enough to love study, and kept a book in his sleeve and recited it morning and night. His place was low and they worked him hard, but he would watch for a moment's gap and go about asking questions. Every time he came to the Hall of the Forest of Letters he was panting and streaming with sweat, and had no leisure for a word beyond his questions about books. When he came on the stories of the constancy and right dealing of the ancients, he never failed to be moved and to murmur them over for a long while. I was very fond of him and opened the way for him and urged him on with double care. Later he was rewarded and favoured and given the name Jingxuan, and rose to be palace attendant with his own establishment. When the Last Ruler fled to Qingzhou he sent him out to the west to watch what was happening, and he was taken by the Zhou army. They asked him where the ruler of Qi was, and he deceived them: "He has gone already, and by my reckoning he must be over the border." They doubted him and would not believe it, and beat him to make him yield; but every time they broke one of his limbs his words and his face grew fiercer, and in the end all four limbs were cut through and he died. A child of the Man and the Yi could still make loyalty out of learning; the generals and ministers of Qi were not the equals of Jingxuan's slave.

After Ye was pacified I was moved inside the Pass. Silu once said to me: "There is no salary or post at court and no store of goods at home, and I ought to put out my strength to care for you. But I am always pressed to be earnest, and while I toil at the Classics and the histories, how can I be at peace as a son?" I told him: "A son should set his heart on care, and a father should make learning his teaching. If I had you give up study and go after goods to make my clothes and my food plentiful, how could the food be sweet, how could the clothes be warm? If you work at the Way of the former kings and carry on the calling of the house, then goosefoot broth and a ragged hemp coat are what I want for myself."

The Shangshu says, "He who loves to ask grows rich." The Book of Rites says, "He who studies alone and has no friends will be narrow and hear little." For men must grind against one another and strike light from one another. I have seen many who shut the door and read, taking their own mind for a master and holding themselves right, and who then go wrong and come to grief in a crowded company. The Guliang zhuan says that when Prince You grappled with Ju Na, those about him called out, "Menglao!" Menglao (孟勞) was the name of a treasured sword of Lu; it is in the Guangya too. Not long ago, when I was in Qi, Jiang Zhongyue said, "Menglao was one of the prince's attendants, surnamed Meng and named Lao, a strong man whom the state prized," and argued it hard with me. Xing Zhi, then governor of Qinghe and a great scholar of the day, helped me to prove it, and he gave in with a red face. Again, the Sanfu juelu says, "Emperor Ling wrote on a pillar of the hall: 'Stately indeed is Zhang, the Tian lad of Jingzhao.'" This draws on the Analects and matches it in four words, and points at Tian Feng, a man of Jingzhao. A certain man of talent said, "At that time Zhang of Jingzhao and the Tian lad were both stately men"; and when he heard what I said he was greatly startled at first, and afterwards was ashamed and repented of it. A man of rank in the south read a faulty text of the commentary to the Shu du fu, and took the gloss "dunchi (蹲鴟) is the taro" for the character sheep (羊). When someone sent him mutton, he answered in a letter, "Thank you for the kindness of your dunchi." The whole court was startled and could not make out the sense of it, and only long afterwards, by following the traces, did they learn how it had come about. In the days of the house of Yuan, when I was in the capital Luoyang, a high minister of talent and learning had newly got the Shi ji yin, which was full of errors and had the spelling of the character xu (頊) wrong. Xu should be spelled from xu (許) and lu (錄), but it was written wrongly as xu (許) and yuan (緣); so he told the officers of the court, "We have all along been reading it wrongly as Zhuanxu; it should be read Zhuanxuan." As this man had a high name already, everyone believed it and followed him; and a year later another great scholar took it up and went into it hard, and then at last they knew that it was a mistake. The appraisal of Wang Mang in the Han shu says, "A purple colour and a frog's croak, an odd remainder in an intercalary place (閏位)" — meaning that he threw the true into confusion with the false. Once, long ago, I was talking of books with others, and the talk came round to the look of Wang Mang; and a fine scholar who set himself up for a historian and stood very high said, "Wang Mang not only had the eyes of an owl and the jaws of a tiger; he had a purple face and the croak of a frog as well." Again, the Treatise on Rites and Music says, "Supply the imperial kitchen with dongmajiu (挏馬酒)." Li Qi's note says, "It is wine made from mare's milk; it is made by churning." Both characters have the hand radical. Chongdong (揰挏) means to strike and pound and shake it; and the making of laojiu (酪酒) today is the same. That same scholar took it that when the paulownia was planted, the mare's-milk wine brewed by the imperial kitchen came ripe. His narrowness went as far as that. Yang Su of Taishan was also spoken of as a man of learning, and he read Pan Yue's line "the ruozhi jujube of Zhou Wen (弱枝之棗)" as the staff, zhang (杖); and in the Shiben, "Rongcheng made the calendar, li (歷)," he read li as the millstone, mo (磨).

When you talk or make a piece of writing and draw on old things, you must have them by the eye; do not trust what you take in by the ear. In the lanes of the south the gentry sometimes do not study, and being ashamed to seem coarse and plain, they pick things up on the road and pass them on and force an ornament on their speech. They call zhengzhi (征質) Zhou and Zheng, and cholera Bolu; going up to Jingzhou they must call it Shaanxi, and going down to Yangdu they say they are off to the sea commandery (海郡); speaking of eating they say hukou (餬口), and of money they say kongfang (孔方); ask them of moving house and it is Chuqiu, discuss a marriage and it is yaner (宴爾); come to a Wang and every one of them is Zhongxuan, speak of a Liu and every one is Gonggan. There are a hundred or two hundred such, handed on and taken up from one another, and when you ask the reason not one of them knows it, and they are put in the wrong place as often as not. Master Zhuang has the saying about rising like a magpie when the moment comes, and so Xie Tiao's poem says, "The magpie rises and climbs the terrace of Wu." A cousin of mine made a poem on the seventh night: "Tonight the magpies of the terrace of Wu go too, to fill up the river of heaven." The Luofu shan ji says, "Looking down on the level ground, the trees are like shepherd's purse." So Dai Gao's poem says, "The trees of Chang'an are like shepherd's purse." And a man at Ye made a poem on trees that said, "Far off I gaze on the shepherd's purse of Chang'an." I have also seen boastful extravagance called kuapi (誇毗), and the aged spoken of as rich in springs and autumns. These are all the faults of learning by ear.

Characters are the root of the old books. Most of the students of the world do not know characters. Those who read the Five Classics hold Xu Miao right and Xu Shen wrong; those who practise the rhapsodies trust Chu Quan and pass over Lü Chen; those who are clear on the Shi ji study Xu Guang and Zou Dansheng alone and drop the seal and the great seal scripts; those who study the Han shu take pleasure in Ying Shao and Su Lin and make light of the Cangjie and the Erya. They do not know that the sounds of the books are the branches and the leaves, and the lesser learning (小學) is the stock and the line. They will even prize the glosses of Fu Qian and Zhang Yi when they see them, and think nothing of the Tongsu wen and the Guangya when they get them. If turning toward and turning away go like that within one man's hand, how much more between different men of different ages?

A learner holds it dear to have heard widely. Of commanderies and states, mountains and rivers, offices and surnames, clothes and food, vessels and institutions, men wish to trace all of them to the root and get at their origin; but when they come to characters they pay no heed at all, so that even their own surnames and names go wrong, and where they are not wrong they still do not know the reason for them. Lately a man named his sons so that, while the brothers all had characters with the mountain radical (山), one was named Zhi (峙); while the brothers all had characters with the hand radical (手), one was named Ji (機); while the brothers all had characters with the water radical (水), one was named Ning (凝). Among famous scholars and great men of learning such cases are very many. If there were someone who knew that my own bell was out of tune, how laughable it would be.

I once went with the ruler of Qi to Bingzhou, and coming in through the Jingxing Pass into Shang'ai county, some tens of li to the east, there was a village called Lielü (獵閭村). Later the officials drew their horse fodder beside the city of Kangqiu (亢仇城), more than a hundred li east of Jinyang. Nobody knew what these two places had been, and I searched widely in old books and new and could learn nothing. Only when I looked into the Zilin and the Yunji did I learn that Lielü was the old Lie□〔足改谷〕 yuju (餘聚), and Kangqiu the old □〔谷曼〕□〔谷九〕 ting (亭), both belonging to Shang'ai. At that time Wang Shao of Taiyuan wished to compile notes and records (記注) of the villages and towns, and he heard of these two names and was greatly pleased.

When I first read in the Zhuangzi, "the 螝 has two heads," and in the Hanfeizi, "there is an insect called the 螝, one body with two mouths, which fight over food and bite one another until they kill one another," I was quite at a loss what the sound of this character was, and asked everyone I met, and not one could explain it. Looking into it, the Erya and other books call the silkworm pupa 螝, and that is not a greedy and harmful creature with two heads and two mouths. Later I saw the Gujin zigu, and found that this too was the old character hui (虺). What had been stopped up for years cleared like a lifting fog.

I once travelled to Zhaozhou and saw a small stream north of the city of Boren, and even the local people did not know its name. Later I read the stele of Xu Zheng at the west gate of the city, which said, "The flow of the □〔水百〕 points east," and nobody knew it. I looked into the Shuowen, and this character is the old form of po (魄), and □〔水百〕 is the look of shallow water. This stream has had no name since the Han, and was called only by the look of its shallowness; so perhaps □〔水百〕 was taken for its name?

In the letters of the world men often write wuwu (勿勿), and they take it from one another and write it so without knowing where it comes from, and some talk idly and say it is a broken form of huhu (忽忽). Looking into it, the Shuowen says, "Wu (勿) is the banner set up in the districts and villages. It is the shape of the staff and the three streamers, and it is for urging the people to their work. So a man in haste and a hurry is called wuwu."

When I was in Yizhou I was sitting with several others, and just as the sky cleared and the sun shone I saw a small point of light on the ground, and asked those beside me, "What is that?" A Shu boy went and looked and answered, "It is a doubi (豆逼)." Those sitting there looked at one another in surprise and did not know what he meant. I had it brought, and it was a small bean. I asked the scholars of Shu at length, and found that they call a grain bi (逼), and at the time no one could explain it. I said, "In the Sancang and the Shuowen this character is written with bai (白) over bi (匕), and both gloss it as a grain, li (粒); the Tongsu wen spells it from fang (方) and li (力)." They were all delighted and understood.

Minchu's brother-in-law Dou Rutong came from Hezhou with a blue bird that he had got, and he tamed it and made a pet of it and was fond of it, and the whole district called it a he (鶡). I said, "The he comes from Shangdang, and I have seen it several times. Its colour is all yellow and black, with no mottling. So the rhapsody on the he by the Prince Si of Chen says, 'It spreads its strong feathers of black and yellow.'" I looked into the Shuowen for a test, and it said, "The □〔介鳥〕 sparrow is like the he but blue, and comes from among the Qiang." The Yunji gives its sound as jie (介). This doubt was cleared at a stroke.

In the time of Liang there was one Cai Lang who tabooed the name Chun (純); and having never touched learning, he came to call the water shield, chun (蓴), lukui (露葵). The crowd who face a wall copied it from one another. In the Chengsheng years a gentleman was sent as envoy to Qi, and Li Shu, the receptionist of Qi, asked the Liang envoy, "Have you lukui in the south?" He answered, "Lukui is the water shield, and it comes from the water country. What you are eating now is only the green mallow." Li Shu had learning too, but he could not gauge the depth of the other man, and hearing it of a sudden he had no way to look into it.

Liu Ling of Pengcheng, the uncle by marriage of Silu and the others, was once sitting with me, and his sons were in attendance. I asked Ruxing and Minxing, "How many characters are there that sound the same as the name of the Adviser (諮議)? Can you name them all?" They answered, "We have not gone into it. Please instruct us." I said, "With a case like this, if you have not looked into it beforehand you will come on it and not know it, and ask the wrong person, and be taken in by some good-for-nothing; it is not an easy matter." So I told them, and there were some fifty characters. The Lius sighed and said, "We had no idea there were so many." Had they gone on not knowing, that too would have been a strange thing.

How can the collating of books be an easy thing? Only with Yang Xiong and Liu Xiang could the office be spoken of at all. Until you have seen the books of the empire through, you may not lay on the orpiment (雌黃) as you please. One text may hold a thing wrong and another hold it right; or the root may be the same and the ends differ; or both texts may be wanting. You must not believe one corner of it and no more.