A Letter Sent to O Semun (吳世文) of the Eastern Pavilion, Discussing the Tides寄吳東閣世文論潮水書
月日。良醞丞同正李某。謹再拜奉書于東閣大丈先生座下。僕不揆頑騃。自未冠時。已脫略同輩。喜與先生長者遊。然未有博大眞儒如先生輩者而得與之遊。日聞所不聞也。先生長我無慮三十餘年。則雖子畜之弟畜之尙可。而乃許以忘年。僕安敢當之。日昨。枉車騎顧僕於蓬蓽之中。索僕近所著詩文。方垂覽之際。從容謂之曰。吾嘗著潮水論。未曾示人。子好學者也。異日過我。當以見示。僕聞之。自以爲今之能文博古老儒宿學。不爲不多。而獨以僕爲可敎。將示以箱中之祕寶。如僕者宜萬萬榮且感也。迨數日造謁而請之。則翻然改曰。吾之論。不足觀也。子亦著若論若說。窮釋潮之所自。然後吾亦示之也。而卒不爲之借觀。僕初不知先生之有此論。以先生先及之。故不憚道遠。趨造於門墻。而反不許觀。甚恨甚恨。噫。僕涉學日淺。新進小生也。何足知潮之所以進退盈縮之理哉。如知之。又何必要公之論而痛欲見耶。夫鳥獸草木常生常化之理。陰陽奇耦之數。寒暑往來之變。與夫天地所以玄黃。日月所以盈昃。其道茫昧。宜若不可測知。然經傳子史。講之之詳。故凡老於儒者。雖未能洞然大曉。亦無有不得其彷彿者。而僕尙曚然昧然者。徒以年少識劣。讀書未力故爾。況潮水之源。雖古人猶或罕言。僕是何者。敢以區區之識。紛然辨列。使當世之士撫掌大笑耶。然而先生有以及此者。吾知之矣。此必料僕之決不能著書論潮。先設所難。杜塞來徑。欲勿出其論耳。意者豈以僕爲狂瞽無識。而不欲使之見耶。苟如是。昨之許以見示。特誑我也戲我也。豈篤信君子與人勿欺之意乎。不然。僕豈昨日爲可敎之人。而今日忽狂瞽無識耶。抑或以爲世無知者。而姑傳于後。將以俟來者之知耶。苟如是。先生忍不令同時作者共甘滋液。而獨使異世之士。得前人所未得嘗希世之味。而咀嚼甘芳。飫於口飽於腹耶。是大不然。想先生必不爾也。然則未識先生之志之何如也。若終祕嗇而不出焉。則非吾分所當得。是吾不復有冀矣。但仰問一言。要識其旨歸耳。伏惟先生聽之。先生立論。必有根據。據何書證何人而言耶。若以水經爲據。則水經已有其說。何更有先生之說乎。若以盧肇爲證。則其賦已詳之矣。先生之論。必不能更及也。抑聞釋氏有論。釋氏則因說法而證引耳。非必特地爲海潮而表量剖析也。況以釋氏爲準。則儒家之短也。儒先釋生。通天地曰儒。儒必待釋氏然後言天地耶。是亦非所以爲證也。其餘古人所云地游應海。介人呼吸。陽侯靈胥。鼓怒所作。則尤無所可取也。以先生之宏識博學。當別有所論述。傳播士林。有以聳動衆聽。知世有博物君子宜矣。而何深閉固拒若是之甚耶。僕嘗以水經肇賦。私折衷焉。則水經所謂鰌魚出入有候。故潮之進退有期。此則似爲賤近。雖僕亦未知的信也。盧歙州獨判然決疑。以潮之進退。因乎日其盈其縮。與月同體。因自設十四問。隨而釋之。窮理盡性。妙入毫芒。其法與易象渾天吻合。吾以此爲確論。竊謂後雖有論者。殆未能過此。及聞先生有所論著。汲汲然求見之滋切。如渴者之思飮。痒者之待爬。而未嘗須臾弛念也。伏望閣下不惜祕蘊。還以一言見賜。指其所以證據之意。使小子拂聾披瞽。粲然觀黼黻之文。鏘然聞韶濩之音。則此亦大君子所以諭掖後進之一端也。不宣。某再拜。
On a certain day of a certain month, Yi so-and-so, Supernumerary Assistant of the Office of Fine Wines (良醞丞同正), reverently bows twice and submits this letter to the seat of his elder of the Eastern Pavilion (東閣).
I, unable to reckon my own dullness and folly, have from before I wore the cap already gone outside my own age-mates and liked to keep company with teachers and elders. Yet never had I met a true scholar so broad and great as yourself and kept company with him and heard daily what I had not heard before. You are above me by thirty-odd years at a rough count, so that it would still be fitting for you to rear me as a son or take me in as a younger brother; and yet you grant that we forget the difference of years — how am I to bear such a thing?
The other day you bent your carriage and horses to come and seek me out among the mugwort and the scrub, and asked to see the poems and writings I had lately made. Just while you were looking them over you said to me quietly: "I once composed a Discourse on the Tides (潮水論), but I have never yet shown it to anyone. You are a man who loves learning; if you come to me another day, I shall certainly show it to you." Hearing those words, I thought to myself: there are not few old scholars skilled in letters and broad in antiquity, and men long in study, in these days; and yet you held me alone worth teaching and meant to show me the hidden treasure in your box. For one such as myself this is ten thousand times an honor and ten thousand times a kindness.
A few days later I came to call and asked for it, and you at once changed your words and said: "My writing is not worth seeing. You too should compose something, a discourse or a treatise, and unravel to the end where the tide comes from. After that I shall show you mine." And in the end you did not lend it to me to see. At first I did not know that you had this writing. It was you who first brought it up, and so, not minding how far the road was, I hurried to your gate; and then you did not permit me to see it. It is a bitter thing, a bitter thing indeed.
Ah — I am a young man newly come forward, shallow in the days I have been at my studies. How should I be able to know the principle of the tide's advancing and retreating, its waxing and waning? If I did know it, then for what reason should I seek your writing and long so painfully to see it? Now the principle by which birds and beasts and grasses and trees are ever born and ever changed, the reckoning of odd and even in yin and yang, the turning by which cold and heat come and go, and the reason that heaven is black and earth yellow, and the reason the sun and moon wax and wane — the way of these seems so far off that it cannot be measured and known. Yet the classics and the commentaries, the philosophers and the histories, have set these forth in detail, and so among men grown old as scholars there is none who, though he may not have awakened to them brightly and greatly, has failed to get at least something like them. That I am still blurred and dark in these things is simply because I am young in years and shallow in knowledge and have not labored at my reading. How much more the source of the tides, of which even the men of old spoke but rarely. What am I, that I should dare to take my trifling knowledge and set out a disordered argument and make the scholars of this age clap their hands and laugh aloud?
And yet I know why you brought up such a thing. You must surely have reckoned that I could never compose a writing discoursing on the tides, and so set down the hard thing first to block the road by which I came, meaning not to bring that writing out. Or do you perhaps think me a mad blind man who knows nothing, and so not wish to show it? If that is so, then your promise the other day to show it was only to deceive me and make sport of me — and how should that be the purpose of a trustworthy and sincere gentleman who does not deceive others? And if that is not so, how is it that yesterday I was a man worth teaching, and today I have suddenly become a mad blind man who knows nothing?
Or do you perhaps think that there is no one in this world who would know its worth, and so mean for the present to wait for one yet to come who will know it? If that is so, then do you refuse to let the writers of your own time taste the sweet broth together with you, meaning that only the scholars of another age shall get that rare flavor which the men before them did not get, and chew the sweet and the fragrant till it overflows their mouths and fills their bellies? This is greatly not so, and I think you will surely not be such a man. If it is so, then I cannot tell what your purpose may be. Should you hide it and hoard it to the end and not bring it out, then it is not what my portion should rightly obtain, and I shall hope for it no more. I only wish to look up and ask one word, because I would know where your purpose tends. I pray you to hear me.
If you have set up a discourse, there must surely be a ground for it. Upon what text did you rely, and what man did you cite in your argument? If you took the Classic of Waters (水經) for your ground, then those words are already in the Classic of Waters, and how should there be again a word of your own? And if you took Lu Zhao (盧肇) for your witness, then he has already spoken of it in detail in his rhapsody, and your discourse will surely not reach beyond that.
I hear, too, that there is a discourse of it in the Buddhist books as well. But the Buddhists only drew it in as a witness while expounding the Law; they did not deliberately take the flooding of the sea water and measure and split it and make it clear. How much more, if the Buddhists are made the standard, that is a lack in the Confucians. The Confucians came first and the Buddhists after; and he who comprehends heaven and earth is called a Confucian (儒) — must the Confucians then wait upon the Buddhists before they speak of heaven and earth? This too is not a thing to take for witness. As for the rest, what the men of old said — that "the earth floats and answers to the sea," that "the shelled creatures draw breath," that "Yanghou (陽侯) and Yeongseo (靈胥) in their anger swell it up and raise it" — these are less to be taken still.
With your broad knowledge and wide learning, it would be right that you should have something separately composed and should spread it abroad among the scholars, to startle the ears of the many and let the world know that there is a gentleman who knows things widely. Why then do you shut it so deep and bar it so fast as this?
I once took the Classic of Waters and Lu Zhao's rhapsody and quietly compared them and sought a middle way between them. What the Classic of Waters says — that "since the great fish have their season for going out and coming in, the tide has its times for advancing and retreating" — seems low and shallow, and even I do not know whether it can be firmly believed. Only Lu Zhao of Xizhou (歙州) has plainly cut the doubt apart. He said that the tide's advancing and retreating comes of the sun, and that its waxing and waning is one body with the moon. And so he set himself fourteen questions and unraveled them one by one, exhausting the principle and exhausting the nature of it, his subtlety entering to the tip of a hair; and his method accords exactly with the images of the Changes (易) and the reckoning of the armillary heaven (渾天). I hold this for a sure discourse, and quietly think that even if there be one who discourses upon it hereafter, he will likely not pass beyond this.
Then, hearing that you had something composed, my heart in seeking to see it grew the more earnest, and like a thirsty man thinking of drink and an itching man waiting to be scratched, I have not set my mind at rest for a moment. I reverently pray that Your Excellency will not hoard what you have hidden, but will rather bestow one word upon me and point out the purpose of what you took for your witness. If you brush out the deafness of my young ears and open my closed eyes, so that I may see a writing brightly figured and hear the clear ringing of the Shao (韶) and the Huo (濩), this too will be one of the works by which a great gentleman teaches and leads those who come after.
I cannot set it all out here. So-and-so bows twice.