Shizhi — Where Knowledge Comes From實知篇

The Confucian scholars, discussing the sage, hold that he knows a thousand years ahead and ten thousand affairs behind, that he has the brightness of seeing alone and the sharpness of hearing alone, that he names a thing as soon as it comes, that he knows of himself without learning and understands of himself without asking. So to call a man a sage is to make him divine, like the knowing of good and ill in the yarrow and the tortoise, where the yarrow stalk is called divine and the tortoise is called numinous. The worthy man is lower in talent and cannot reach so far, and poorer in knowledge and cannot reckon it out, and so he is called worthy. Now where the names differ the realities are unlike, and where the substance is the same the naming is even. Argued by the name of sage, we know that the sage stands far out and is not the same as the worthy.

When Confucius was about to die he left behind a book of prophecy that said, "I do not know what one man this is who calls himself the First Emperor of Qin, who will climb my hall and squat on my couch and turn my clothes upside down, and who will come to Shaqiu and die there." Afterwards the king of Qin swallowed up the world together and took the title of First Emperor, and on his progress he came to Lu and looked at the house of Confucius, and then he came to Shaqiu and fell sick on the road and died. It said again, "Dong Zhongshu will throw my writings into disorder." Afterwards Dong Zhongshu, chancellor of Jiangdu, discussed and pondered the Chunqiu and made his traditions and records. The book said again, "The one who will bring Qin to ruin is Hu." Afterwards the Second Emperor, Huhai, did in the end bring the world to ruin. Argued from these three, this is the working of the sage knowing ten thousand ages behind him. Confucius at his birth did not know his father, for it seems his mother hid it from him, and he blew on the pitch pipes and knew of himself that he was of the line of the Zi clan, the great officers of Song under Yin. He did not look into charts and books and he did not hear it from men; he blew on the pitch pipes and thought closely and knew his own line of himself, and this is the proof of the sage knowing a thousand years ahead of him.

I answer: all this is empty. Consider that the words of the divine and the strange are all in the prophecy records, and that what they set forth all copies the charts and books. "The one who will bring Qin to ruin is Hu" is a line of the Hetu. Either Confucius drew it out in order and added to it so as to set forth the divine and the strange, or later men wrote it down falsely so as to make the proof plain. The High Emperor enfeoffed the king of Wu, and as he sent him off he patted his back and said, "Fifty years after Han there will be a rebel in the southeast. Can it be you?"

By the time of Emperor Jing, Pi joined with the seven states and plotted rebellion against Han. The man who set up this saying perhaps watched the vapors and looked at the signs and made out that there would be a rebellion, but did not know the name of the man. Gaozu saw the boldness of Pi and said it was he. Reasoning from this, when Confucius saw the First Emperor and Zhongshu, perhaps he said no more than that there would be one who would look at his house and one who would disorder his writings, and later men, seeing that the First Emperor entered his house and that Zhongshu read his writings, added to his words and set down the names of the men. If Confucius was divine and saw the First Emperor and Zhongshu out of the void, then he ought also to have known in silence that he was himself of the line of the Zi clan, the heirs of Yin, and he would have had no need to blow the pitch pipes to settle it for himself. Confucius could not fix his own surname without blowing the pitch pipes, and when it comes to his seeing the First Emperor and looking on Zhongshu, that too was of a kind with the blowing of the pipes. Consider the true affairs of the First Emperor: the First Emperor did not come to Lu, so how could he have climbed the hall of Confucius and squatted on the couch of Confucius and turned the clothes of Confucius upside down? In the tenth month of the thirty-seventh year of the First Emperor, on the day guichou, he went out on his travels and came to Yunmeng, and from afar he sacrificed to Yu Shun at Jiuyi. He floated down the river and looked at Jike and crossed Meizhu and passed Danyang. He came to Qiantang and drew near the Zhe River, but the waves were bad, so he went a hundred and twenty li to the west and crossed at Shanzhong and climbed Kuaiji, where he sacrificed to the Great Yu and set up a stone and cut a hymn upon it and sacrificed from afar toward the southern sea. On his way back he passed by Jiangsheng and went along beside the sea and north to Langye. From Langye he went north to Pang and Chengshan, and from there to Zhifu, and then he followed the sea westward, and at the ford of Pingyuan he fell sick, and he died at the Pingtai terrace in Shaqiu. Since he did not come to Lu, what did the prophecy records see that they say the First Emperor came to Lu? If his coming to Lu cannot be known, then the words they give as Confucius saying, "I do not know what one man this is," cannot be used either. And if the words "I do not know what one man this is" cannot be used, then the saying "Dong Zhongshu will throw my writings into disorder" cannot be believed either. As for what has been done, records in writing only differ from the words of common men; where they are not the writing of Heaven and earth, they all follow what went before and rest on what is old, and they have something they take their shape from. Where there is nothing heard and nothing seen, there is nothing to take shape from. In every case where the sage sees calamity and blessing, he too measures the beginnings and reasons by kinds, traces the start and sees the end, discusses the court hall from the lanes, and by what is bright examines what is dark. The prophecy books with their secret writing see far into what is not yet so, and in emptiness and darkness look beforehand at what does not yet exist; what they hear reaches far and what they see is only a moment, and they are lofty and outlandish and strange and divine, as if they were not what a common mouth could say.

To copy the shapes and kinds of affairs and so see calamity, and to reason back from the proofs of the past and so deal with affairs to come, the worthy man can also do, and not the sage alone. When the Duke of Zhou governed Lu, the Grand Duke knew that in later ages there would be the trouble of being pared away and weakened; when the Grand Duke governed Qi, the Duke of Zhou saw that in later ages there would be the calamity of seizing and killing. They saw the utmost of law and its arts, and they saw what stands before ruin and disorder. When King Zhou made ivory chopsticks Jizi found fault with it, and when Lu buried the dead with wooden figures Confucius sighed over it; from the ivory chopsticks they saw the trouble of the dragon's liver, and in the wooden figures they saw the calamity of burying the living with the dead. The Grand Duke and the Duke of Zhou both saw what was not yet so, and Jizi and Confucius both saw what did not yet exist, and in the ground on which they saw what was on its way the worthy and the sage are the same. The lord of Lu was old and the heir was weak, and the woman of Cishi leaned against a pillar and whistled; from the sign of age and weakness she saw the omen of defeat and disorder. If the knowledge of a woman can still reason by kinds and see what is on its way, how much more the sage and the gentleman, whose talent is high and whose knowledge is bright! In the tenth year of the First Emperor of Qin, the Dowager Xia, mother of King Zhuangxiang, died. The queen of King Xiaowen was called the Dowager Huayang, and she was buried with King Wen at Shouling; King Zhuangxiang, the son of the Dowager Xia, was buried at Zhiyang. So the Dowager Xia was buried apart at Duling, and she said, "To the east I look on my son, and to the west I look on my husband. A hundred years from now there will surely be a town of ten thousand houses beside me."

Afterwards it was all as she had said. If reasoning by kinds and seeing what is on its way must be taken for sagehood, then the woman of Cishi and the Dowager Xia were sages. In the tenth year of King Zhao of Qin, Chulizi died and was buried east of the Zhangtai terrace south of the Wei, and he said, "A hundred years from now there will surely be palaces of the Son of Heaven holding my tomb between them."

When Han arose, the Changle Palace stood east of it and the Weiyang Palace west of it, and the armory came right up against his tomb, and in the end it was as he had said. This is the working of knowing beforehand and the proof of seeing what is on its way. If sagehood is proved by this, then Chulizi was a sage. If he was not a sage, then knowing beforehand and seeing what is on its way is not enough to show a sage, and in that case Chulizi's seeing that palaces of the Son of Heaven would hold his tomb between them was like Xin You's knowing that Yichuan would fall to the Rong. Long ago Xin You passed through Yichuan and saw men sacrificing with their hair loose, and he said, "Before a hundred years are out, this will surely be the Rong!"

A hundred years later Jin moved the Rong of Luhun into Yichuan, and in the end it was as he had said. Xin You's knowing that it would fall to the Rong was his seeing the omen of the loosened hair. Chulizi's seeing that palaces of the Son of Heaven would hold his tomb between them was his seeing the broad, level footing there. When Han Xin buried his mother he too went about looking for high open land, and he had it so that ten thousand houses could be set beside it, and afterwards ten thousand houses did in the end stand beside her tomb. So Chulizi's seeing that the broad, level soil held the omen of palaces and terraces was like Han Xin's looking on high open land and seeing a terrace of ten thousand houses. In the seeing of those who know beforehand and in affairs that are on their way, there is no sharpness of sight that reaches everywhere and hearing that pierces everything; in every case they examine omens and look into traces and reason back from the kinds of affairs. In the time of the Spring and Autumn, when the ministers and great officers met one another, they watched the changes in gesture and listened to the oddness in talk, and where it was good they made plain the blessing of a lucky sign, and where it was bad they made out the calamity of an ill-omened one. In making blessings plain and making out calamities and planning far ahead for what is not yet so, they had no divine and strange knowledge, but went in every case by the kinds of omens. Argued out in the present, then, what can be known is what thought and reflection can see, and what cannot be known cannot be known without learning and asking. To know of oneself without learning and to understand of oneself without asking has never been among the things done in old times or now. What can be known, if only one thinks closely on it, is no trouble however great it may be; what cannot be known is never easy however small it may be, though one wear out the mind with learning and asking. So even the man of knowledge and ability does not come through without learning and does not know without asking.

An objection: Xiang Tuo at the age of seven taught Confucius, and seeing that at seven he had not yet entered the lesser school and yet taught Confucius, it was his nature that knew of itself. Confucius said, "To know it from birth is highest. To know it by learning comes next."

Now to say that one knows it from birth and to say nothing of learning and asking is to speak of the like of Xiang Tuo. In the time of Wang Mang, Yin Fang of Bohai at the age of twenty-one had no teacher and no friend to learn from, yet his nature was wise and open and quick, and he was bright and well versed in the six arts. Chunyu Cang, governor of the Wei capital, reported: "Fang has not learned, yet when he gets a writing he can read it and recite it, and when he discusses meanings he draws on the text of the Five Classics, and his writing and his talk meet the minds of men fully when affairs are debated."

The emperor summoned Fang and had him shoot at flying insects, and in his counsels and his shooting there was nothing he did not know, and the world called him a sage. Here was a man who had no teacher and no friend to learn from and yet was bright and well versed in the six arts, who had never learned writing and yet could read a text when he got it, and this is a sage. He was able of himself without learning and well versed of himself without a teacher. If this is not divine, what is it?

I answer: though he had no teacher and no friend to learn from, still he had already asked and received something; though he had not learned writing, he had already played with brush and ink. When a child is first born and its ears and eyes first open, then even if it has the nature of a sage, how can it have knowledge? If Xiang Tuo was seven, then at three or four he was already taking in the words of men. If Yin Fang was twenty-one, then at fourteen or fifteen he had already heard and seen much. Let a man's nature be quick and his talent rich: if in thinking alone he has nothing to rest on, and does not look on omens and signs, and does not see the proofs of kinds, can the sage turn his thought back to a hundred ages from now and know whether there will be horses bearing oxen, and oxen bearing donkeys, and peach trees bearing plums, and plum trees bearing apricots? Can the sage see a subject who will kill his lord, or a son who will kill his father, or a man humane as Yan Yuan, or filial as Zeng Shen, or bold as Meng Ben (孟賁) and Xia Yu (夏育), or keen in speech as Ci (賜) and Zai Yu (宰予)?? Confucius said, "If there is one who follows Zhou, it can be known even a hundred ages off."

He said again, "Those born after us are to be feared. How do we know that those who come will fall short of the men of today?"

Discussing taking away and adding, he said "can be known"; speaking of those born after, he said "how do we know." Those born after are hard to make out, and taking away and adding are easy to make plain. Even this is a far thing, and not what listening can examine. Set one man to stand east of a wall and have him make a sound, and set the sage to listen to him west of the wall: can he know whether the man is dark or fair, short or tall, what village he is from, and what surname and style name he came out with? In the ditch there is a corpse adrift, and in the marsh there are dry bones; the hair and the head are worn away and gone, and the flesh has rotted off. Set the sage to question them: can he know whether the man was a farmer or a trader, old or young, and for what crime he was put to death?

It is not that the sage is without knowledge; it is that his knowledge has no way to know. Where knowledge has no way to know, there is no knowing without asking. Not being able to know is what the worthy and the sage alike count as their affliction.

An objection: Zhan He was sitting and his disciple was waiting on him when an ox lowed outside the gate. The disciple said, "That is a black ox, and its hooves are white." Zhan He said, "So it is. It is a black ox, and its hooves have been made white." He had a man go and look, and it was indeed a black ox with cloth wrapped about its hooves. Zhan He was a worthy man, and yet he could hear a sound and know its color. Shall the knowledge of a sage, on the other hand, be unable to know as much?

I answer: he could know that it was a black ox and that its hooves were made white, but could he know whose ox it was? Or for what business its hooves were made white? Now the arts and numbers see only one end of a thing and cannot exhaust what it really is. Though a man look closely into a single affair, question him about it from every side and at once he cannot know it all. Why is this? Because without seeing with the eye and asking with the mouth one cannot know it all.

In the twenty-ninth year of Duke Xi of Lu, Ge Lu of Jie came to court and lodged on the heights of Changyan, and he heard an ox low and said, "This ox has borne three victims, and all of them have been used already." Someone asked, "How do you know it?" He said, "Its voice says so." The man asked the owner of the ox, and in the end it was as he had said. This too was the use of arts and numbers, and not what knowledge could see. Yang Wengzhong of Guanghan could hear the sounds of birds and beasts. He was riding a lame horse into the country, and out in the fields there was a one-eyed horse put out to graze, a few li away, and the two of them heard each other's cries. Wengzhong said to his driver, "That horse out at grass is blind in one eye." His driver said, "How do you know it?" He said, "It scolds this horse in the shafts for being lame, and this horse scolds it in return for being one-eyed." His driver did not believe him and went to look, and the horse was one-eyed after all. Wengzhong's knowing the sound of a horse is like Zhan He and Ge Lu of Jie listening to an ox low. They leaned on art and trusted to number, and it fell in with their meaning; they did not see and hear through everything, nor look far off and cast their eyes about to examine it. Now if there is an art for listening to sounds, then there are numbers for examining colors. When the arts and numbers are reasoned out and put to use, it looks as if the man had heard and seen beforehand, and when the crowd does not understand it they call him divine and sagely. It is like Confucius seeing a beast and naming it a seong, or the Grand Historian seeing Zhang Liang and saying he had the form of a woman. Consider that Confucius had never seen a seong, yet when it came he could name it at once, and that the Grand Historian was of a different age from Zhang Liang, yet saw his form with his own eyes. Let the crowd hear of this and they will say it was divine and knew beforehand. But Confucius named the seong because he had heard the Song of Zhaoren, and the Grand Historian saw Zhang Liang because he looked at the painting in the Xuan Room.

They see in secret and take note in silence, and the use they make of thought is deep and hidden. The crowd is loose and careless and takes note of little, and when it sees the worthy and the sage name a thing it calls them divine. Reasoning from this, Zhan He's seeing the black ox with white hooves is of this same kind. If he did not go by the arts and numbers, then he had heard and seen it outside beforehand. The workmen who now divine and guess at affairs lean on the arts and numbers as they stand, and where the arts and numbers do not hit the mark they gather in the affairs of men, and the man who adds the affairs of men to the arts and numbers and uses them so is no different from a spirit. The followers of Zhan He are of a kind with those who now divine and guess at affairs. If it is held that the followers of Zhan He could know it by nature and did not use the arts and numbers, then those who nest in the trees know the wind beforehand and those who live in caves know the rain beforehand, and as for bright knowledge come early to its growth, Xiang Tuo and Yin Fang are perhaps of that sort.

An objection: the Yellow Emperor was divine and numinous from birth and could speak while still a small child. Di Ku spoke his own name from birth. With nothing yet heard or seen outside, to be able to speak as soon as one is born and to say one's own name, is this not the working of the divine and numinous and the proof of knowing from birth?

I answer: the Yellow Emperor spoke from birth, yet his mother carried him twenty months before she bore him, and if we reckon the months he had already been two years in his mother's body. Di Ku could speak his own name, but he could not speak the names of other men, so though he had one thing he could do, he could not go through them all. What is called being divine and knowing from birth, does it mean being able to speak one's own name at birth? It means being able to know a thing without receiving it, and no one has yet been found who can be seen to do so. Though the Yellow Emperor and Di Ku had proofs of the divine and numinous about them, they too were talents that came early to their growth. As there are talents that come early to their growth, there are also those that come late, and even before a man goes to a teacher there is asking in the household and learning in the inner rooms. Men see them grown while still young and come early to their growth, and they praise them beyond measure. They say Xiang Tuo was seven; he must have been ten. They say he taught Confucius; it must have been Confucius who questioned him. They say the Yellow Emperor and Di Ku could speak from birth; that too was some months after. They say Yin Fang was twenty-one; that too was nearer thirty. They say he had no teacher and no friend to learn from and had not learned writing; that too was travelling to study and practicing at home. In the common world praise goes beyond the reality, and the tearing down goes worse still. The common world hands down that Yan Yuan at eighteen climbed Mount Tai and looked out and saw a white horse tethered outside the Chang Gate of Wu. Settle it and look into the truth: Yan Yuan was thirty, he did not climb Mount Tai, and he did not look out at the Chang Gate of Wu. The praising of Xiang Tuo and the extolling of Yin Fang are of a kind with this of Yan Yuan.

Men's talents have their high and their low, and the knowing of things comes by learning; learn a thing and then you know it, and if you do not ask you do not recognize it. Zigong said, "Where did our master not learn? And what one constant teacher did he have?" Confucius said, "At fifteen I set my mind on learning." The Five Emperors and the Three Kings all had teachers they followed. Someone says: this was because they wished to be a rule for men. I answer: close thinking too can be a rule for men. That it must be by learning is because affairs are hard to know out of the void, and so the talent of the worthy and the sage can stand. What is called divine is to know without learning. What is called sagely is to wait upon learning and so become a sage. Since the sage learns, we know that he is not divine. Between Heaven and earth, among the kinds that hold blood, there is none that knows by nature.

The jeosan knows what is past and the magpie knows what is to come, and this they have received from the nature Heaven gave them; it is so of itself. If the sage is taken to be like the jeosan, then the jeosan and its kind are birds and beasts. Children's rhymes know without learning, and they may be called divine and knowing beforehand. If the sage is taken to be like a children's rhyme, then children's rhymes are an ill omen. Does the world hold its sages and spirits to be shamans?

Ghosts and spirits use the mouth of the shaman to tell men. If the sage is taken to be like a shaman, then the man who acts as shaman is an ill omen too. If he is of one breath with ill omens, then he is of another kind than the sage. And if shaman and sage are of different kinds, then the sage cannot be divine. If he cannot be divine, then he belongs to the party of the worthy. And if they are of one party, then what they know can be no different. Where a difference does come in, it comes in the entering upon the Way. The sage is quick and the worthy is slow; the worthy has much talent and the sage has much knowledge. What they know is the same work, but more and less differ in measure; the road they go is one road, but their pace outruns one another.

That some affairs are hard to know and some easy to understand is a thing on which the worthy and the sage alike bend their thought. As for the turning about of ornament and plainness, the repeating of the three teachings, the calendars that follow one upon another, and the taking away and adding that follow one upon another, these the worthy and the sage know alike. The water and fire of old are the water and fire of today. The sounds and colors of today are the sounds and colors of ages to come. Of birds and beasts and grasses and trees, and of what the people love and hate, we see the old by what is present and know what is coming by what is here. A thousand years before and ten thousand ages after are no different. In looking back at high antiquity and searching into the ages to come, in the kinds of ornament and plainness and the sorts of water and fire, the worthy and the sage go together. In seeing omens and hearing signs and drawing out calamity and blessing, the worthy and the sage go together. In seeing a strange thing and naming it with no doubt or bewilderment, the worthy and the sage go together. Affairs that can be known the worthy and the sage know alike; affairs that cannot be known the sage too cannot know. How is this made plain? Suppose the sage sits idle and knows beforehand that it will rain: if by nature he is able in one thing and knows a far road, his openings do not reach everywhere, and it is not enough to argue from. What is meant by knowing beforehand and being complete by nature is to know the natures of all things and to see the whole of what is needful in a thousand ways. If he knows one and does not go through to the second, or is well versed on the left and does not see the right, being partial and mixed and not pure, and not examining the whole of it, he is not what is called a sage. And if he must still be called a sage, then this makes plain that a sage has nothing strange about him. If the followers of Zhan He are sages, then the party of Confucius is called sage as well, and so the sage is no different from the worthy and the worthy falls nothing short of the sage. If the worthy and the sage are both able, what is the sage called strange for beside the worthy? And if both alike take up and use the arts and numbers, why does the worthy fall short of the sage?

The truth is that sage and worthy cannot know by nature, but must trust to ear and eye to settle what is real. In their trusting to ear and eye, affairs that can be known they settle as soon as they think on them, and affairs that cannot be known come clear only when they wait and ask. Of the affairs of the world and the things of the age, where a thing can be known by thinking, even a foolish man can open his mind to it; where a thing cannot be known by thinking, the highest sage cannot look into it. Confucius said, "I once went a whole day without eating and a whole night without sleeping in order to think, and there was no profit in it; it was not so good as learning."

That there are affairs in the world that cannot be known is like there being knots that cannot be untied. Er Shuo was good at untying knots, and there was no knot he could not untie. Where there is a knot that cannot be untied, Er Shuo cannot untie it either.

It is not that Er Shuo cannot untie them; it is that there are knots that cannot be untied. When he comes to untie such a knot, he uses what he cannot do. The sage knows affairs, and among affairs there is none he cannot know. Where there is an affair that cannot be known, the sage cannot know it; it is not that the sage cannot know, but that there are affairs that cannot be known. When he comes to know such an affair, he uses what he does not know. So affairs that are hard to know are what learning and asking can reach, and affairs that cannot be known cannot be understood though one ask about them and learn them.