Sparing your doings — cut down the things you take on省事

The inscription on the metal man says, "Do not speak much; much speech brings much failure. Do not take on much; much doing brings much trouble." How complete this warning is. What runs well is stripped of its wings; what flies well has its toes cut down; what has horns has no upper teeth; what is full in the hind legs has no forefeet. The way of Heaven does not let a creature hold everything together. A man of old said, "To do many things and do little of it well is not as good as holding to one. The shishu rat (鼫鼠) has five abilities and masters not one craft." In recent times there were two men, clear and quick of mind, but their nature was to take up many things at once, and they made no name at all. Their classics were not enough to answer a question, their histories not enough for a discussion, their writing had nothing worth handing down in a collection, their brushwork was not fit to be kept and loved. In divination they hit three out of six, in medicine they cured five in ten, in music they stood below several dozen men, in archery they ranked somewhere among a thousand. The stars, painting, chess and dice, the Xianbei tongue and the Hu script (胡書), boiling walnut oil, refining tin into silver — of all such things they got the rough outline only, and were thorough in none. What a pity. With minds so bright, had they cut away these side paths, they would surely have been exquisite.

Sending up a document to lay out affairs began in the Warring States, and by the two Han the fashion had spread wider still. Trace it to its body and form. To attack the long and the short of the ruler is the party of remonstrance. To expose the gains and faults of the officials is the sort that brings lawsuits. To set out the profit and harm of the state is the company that answers policy questions. To give and take out of private feeling is the crowd of roving persuaders. All four roads together sell sincerity to seek a post and peddle words to beg a salary. Some bring not a thread of benefit and only hardship beyond reckoning. Some are lucky and move the ruler and are taken up in their time, and they first receive rewards beyond price and in the end fall into a killing no one foresaw. Yan Zhu, Zhu Maichen, Wuqiu Shouwang, Zhufu Yan — of that kind there are very many. What a good historian sets down takes only their one stroke of wild and stubborn spirit, and their talk of what governing got right and wrong. It is not what a gentleman who keeps the measure of the law does. In the world as it is now, those who hold jade in the breast and grasp orchid and cassia are all ashamed to do it. Those who stand at the gate and go up to the palace to present documents and speak of plans are for the most part empty and thin, boasting high of themselves, with no great frame of statecraft, all of it chaff and husk and small matters. Out of ten articles there is not one worth taking. Even where it fits the business of the day, it has already leaked out from someone who saw it first. The trouble is not that men do not know; it is that they know and do not act. Sometimes their crooked private dealing is uncovered and they must face one another and answer and prove, and the road of the matter winds back on itself until they come to fear blame instead. The ruler, guarding his name and his teaching before the world, may cover them and keep them. These are men of mere luck, and not fit to stand shoulder to shoulder with.

Those who remonstrate do it to set right the ruler's faults, and they must stand in a place where speech is allowed them. There they should do all that correcting and aiding asks, and must not shirk and steal their ease, hanging the head and stopping the ears. But serving has its proper way, and thought should not go beyond one's post. To meddle in what is not one's charge makes a man an offender. So the Biao ji says, "To serve a ruler and remonstrate from far off is flattery; to be near and not remonstrate is to hold the seat and steal its profit." And the Lunyu says, "To remonstrate before you are trusted — men take it as slander of themselves."

A gentleman should keep the way and honor virtue, store up his worth and wait for his time. If rank and salary do not rise, that rests truly with the mandate of Heaven. To force the search, running and contending without a glance at shame, weighing his talents against another's and measuring out his merits, hardening his face and raising his voice, resenting the east and raging at the west; some seize on a flaw in the chief minister and squeeze a reward out of it, some make a din in the eyes and ears of the age to get themselves chosen and sent out. To win office this way and call it talent and strength — how does it differ from stealing food to be full and stealing clothes to be warm? When the world sees a man get office by restless contending, it says at once, "If you do not seek, what will you get?" It does not know that when the turn of fortune comes it arrives unsought. When it sees a man quiet and withdrawn who has not met his chance, it says at once, "If you do not act, how will you succeed?" It does not know that when wind and cloud do not help, seeking is in vain and brings nothing. Those who did not seek and got it of themselves, and those who sought and did not get it — how could anyone count them all?

In the last age of Qi many attached themselves to the consort families with goods and money, and stirred up a clamor of pleading through women. Those appointed governors and magistrates had shining seals and cords and blazing carriages and horses. The glory reached all nine degrees of kin, and they took honor for a season. But those in power came to hate them and set watchers on them. What is got by profit is endangered by profit. Stained a little by the dust of the road, they fell out with strict rectitude. The pit was very deep and the wound was not yet healed, and even those who escaped death — there was not one who did not ruin his house. To bite one's own navel after that, what good is it? From the south to the north I have never once spoken with the men of the age about my standing. I did not rise high, and I have no blame for it either.

Wangzi Jin said, "Help at the cooking and you get a taste; help in a fight and you get hurt." This says: take part in what is good, leave what is evil, and do not join a man's unrighteous business. Whatever harms others, have no part in it. Yet when a cornered bird comes into the breast, a humane man pities it. How much more when a man ready to die comes over to me — shall I cast him off? Wu Yun trusting himself to the fishing boat, Ji Bu going into the covered cart, Kong Rong hiding Zhang Jian, Sun Song concealing Zhao Qi — these the earlier ages held precious, and these I do myself. If I am found guilty for it, I will take it gladly and close my eyes. As for Guo Jie avenging another man's feud in his place, or Guan Fu in his headlong rage demanding land, that is the way of the wandering bravoes and not what a gentleman does. And a man whose conduct is rebellious and disorderly, who has offended ruler or parent, is not worth pitying either. When kin and friends are pressed by danger, a man should grudge neither his household goods nor his own strength. But to hatch schemes sideways, and to plead where there is no reason, is not my teaching. The followers of Mo Di the world calls hot-bellied; the company of Yang Zhu the world calls cold-gutted. The gut must not be cold and the belly must not be hot. Let humaneness and right be the measure and the form of it.

Earlier, when I was in the Xiuwen ling bureau, scholars of Shandong and the grand astrologer of Guanzhong were quarreling over the calendar, more than ten men in all, wrangling on for years. The inner secretariat sent the papers down to the deliberating officers to settle. I held to this argument. "By and large what the scholars quarrel over is only the two houses of the Sifen and the Jianfen. The heart of calendar and star work can be measured by the shadow of the gnomon. Test it now by the equinoxes and solstices (分至) and by the eclipses of sun and moon, and the Sifen is coarse and the Jianfen is fine. The coarse side says that the orders of government are lenient or harsh and that this makes the courses full or shrunken, so the fault is not in the reckoning. The fine side says that sun and moon have their slow and their fast, and that sought by method their degrees can be known beforehand, so there is neither calamity nor omen. Use the coarse and it hides deceit and cannot be trusted. Use the fine and it leaves all to number and goes against the classics. Besides, what the deliberating officers know cannot be finer than what the disputants know. To cut what is deep with what is shallow — who would submit to that? This is not what the statutes put in our charge. I beg that we not take it on." High and low in the whole bureau all thought this right. There was one rites officer who was ashamed to yield in this way and pressed hard to keep hold of it, forcing an examination on himself. His loom and shuttle were thin and he had no way to take the measure, so he went round asking the disputants again, peering for their long and short. Morning and evening they gathered and deliberated, through cold and heat he wore himself out, and from the back of spring into winter he still gave nothing to either side. Resentment and mockery grew, and he withdrew red-faced, and in the end was pressed hard by the inner secretariat. This is the disgrace of loving a name.