黄省曾录

Asked: 'How can one phrase, thoughts without crookedness, cover the three hundred poems?'

The Master said: 'Only the three hundred? The Six Classics are compassed by this one phrase; all the words of sages and worthies through all time likewise. What more need be said? It is the work that settles all at a stroke.'

Asked about the mind of the Way and the human mind.

The Master said: 'Following nature as the Way is the mind of the Way; stir in some human intent, and it is the human mind. The mind of the Way is soundless and scentless — hence subtle; walk by the human mind, and there are many an insecure step — hence perilous.'

Asked: 'Those below the mean are not to be told the highest — the dull make no headway even when told; not telling them, is that right?'

The Master said: 'It is not that the sage never tells them. His heart grieves only that all cannot become sages. Endowments differ; teaching may not skip grades. Tell the below-mean of nature and the Mandate, and they cannot take it in — they too must be ground and polished up slowly.'

A friend asked: 'I read and cannot remember — what to do?'

The Master said: 'Only understand — why remember? Even understanding is second-best; only illumine your own substance. Merely remembering, one does not understand; merely understanding, one does not illumine one's own substance.'

Asked: 'What passes is like this — does it speak of one's own heart and nature, quick and alive?'

The Master said: 'It does. Only with the work of extending innate knowledge at every hour is it quick and alive, like the stream; break off a moment, and it no longer matches heaven and earth. This is learning's farthest point: even the sage is no more than this.'

Someone asked about the chapter on the resolute and the humane.

The Master said: 'Only because the world prizes its life too highly, asking not whether death is due, twisting to preserve itself, is heavenly principle thrown away. With heart steeled against principle, what would it not do? Off the principle, a man differs nothing from beast: steal a hundred lives of years, and he has been beast a hundred years. Learners must see this clearly. Bi Gan and Long Feng saw it clearly — hence they could perfect their humaneness.'

Asked: 'Shusun Wushu slandered Confucius — how is even a great sage not free of slander?'

The Master said: 'Slander comes from without; how should even a sage escape? A man's worth is all in self-cultivation. Truly a sage or worthy, and though all slander him, it does not touch him — a passing cloud cannot dim the sun's light. But be one whose reverence is all surface, unsteady and unclean, and though no man speaks, his evil will out one day. Hence Mencius: blame from those demanding perfection, praise unhoped for. Blame and praise are outside — how avoid them? Only ask how one's self-cultivation stands.'

Liu Junliang meant to sit still in the mountains.

The Master said: 'Seek stillness out of disgust with outward things, and you breed an air of pride and sloth; not disgusted with outward things, then to nurture the mind in quiet — that is well.'

Wang Ruzhong and Huang Xingzeng sat in attendance.

The Master, fan in hand, said: 'Use the fans.'

Xingzeng rose: 'We dare not.'

Said the Master: 'The sage's learning is no such trussed-up misery, no pose of solemn moralist.'

Ruzhong said: 'The chapter of Confucius and Zeng Dian declaring their aims shows it a little.'

'It does. See what breadth and tolerance in the sage's air: the master asks the disciples their aims; the three answer in trim formality. Zeng Dian, airy, not deigning to see the three, thrums his zither — what wildness! And his answer, ignoring the question, all wild talk. Before Yichuan he would have been rated already. The sage instead approves him — what an air! The sage's teaching does not bind men into one mold: the wild he perfects through their wildness, the cautious through their caution. How should men's gifts be made one?'

The Master said to Lu Yuanjing: 'In youth you too would gloss the Five Classics, your will set on breadth. But the sage in teaching feared only that men be not simple and direct: all his rules were simple and direct. Seen by today's hunger for breadth, the sage's teaching might look mistaken.'

The Master said: 'Confucius never acted without knowing; Yan Hui, doing ill, never failed to know it — this is the true bloodline of the sagely learning.'

He Tingren, Huang Zhengzhi, Li Houbi, Ruzhong and Dehong sat in attendance.

The Master looked at them: 'Your learning does not advance only because the will is unset.'

Houbi rose: 'I too would set my will.'

'Hard to say unset — only it is not yet the resolve to become a sage.'

'I would set the resolve to become a sage.'

'Truly resolved to sagehood, nothing on innate knowledge remains undone. Let but a thread of other intent hang about it, and it is not yet the resolve to become a sage.'

Hearing the first of it I was inwardly unconvinced; at this last, unawares I broke out in a cold sweat.

The Master said: 'Innate knowledge is the numinous sprite of creation. This sprite begets heaven and earth, makes ghosts and gods — all issues from it, truly without peer among things. Restore it whole, nothing lacking, and one dances for joy unawares — what joy between heaven and earth could take its place?'

A friend, gaining some sight in quiet sitting, hurried to ask the Master.

He answered: 'At Chuzhou once, seeing the students mostly at intellectual glossing, profitless, I set them for the time to quiet sitting; for a while they glimpsed bright scenes, quick profit showed. In time grew the sickness of loving stillness, dreading movement, sinking arid — or chasing subtle interpretation to dazzle listeners. Hence of late I say only: extend innate knowledge. Innate knowledge clear, taste it in quiet or temper it on affairs as you will — its substance was never moving or still. That is the head of learning. This watchword, from Chuzhou to today, I have tested many times: only the three words extend innate knowledge are without disease. Only he who has broken his own arm, say the physicians, can read another's ailment.'

A friend asked: 'I would have innate knowledge run unbroken; yet meeting affairs I cannot attend to it, and busied with affairs it seems gone. What is best?'

The Master said: 'Innate knowledge not yet truly known — the inner and outer still parted. The work brooks no haste. Know the head of innate knowledge aright and work plainly, and it will thread through of itself. There, inner and outer are both forgot — where then should mind and affair not meet?'

He also said: 'Not threading this true spring, how should the work grow solid and shining? Thread it, and it is not fetched by wit or gloss: the breast's dross must melt wholly, not a hair's adhesion left.'

The Master said: 'What heaven mandates is nature — the mandate is nature. Following nature is the Way — nature is the Way. Cultivating the Way is teaching — the Way is teaching.'

Asked how the Way is teaching, he said: 'The Way is innate knowledge, whole and entire from the first: right it returns as right, wrong as wrong. Follow it in all right and wrong — nowhere does it err: this innate knowledge is your own bright master.'

Asked: 'Is the unseen and unheard said of the substance, vigilance and fear of the work?'

The Master said: 'Here you must trust that the substance was from the first both unseen-and-unheard and vigilant-and-fearful; vigilance adds not a thread upon the unseen. Truly seen, even to say vigilance is the substance and the unseen the work will serve.'

Asked about comprehending the way of day and night.

The Master said: 'Innate knowledge knew the day and knows the night.'

Asked again: 'In deep sleep it seems not to know.'

'Not knowing — how does one call and it answers?'

'If innate knowledge ever knows, whence deep sleep?'

'Rest at dusk is the constant law of creation. At night heaven and earth blur, form and color sink; man's ears and eyes take in nothing, every aperture closes — that is innate knowledge gathered and made one. Heaven and earth open, the things spring forth into view, the apertures open — that is its wondrous working flowing forth. Thus the human heart is one body with heaven and earth, streaming with them above and below. Today's men know not how to rest: their nights are either dead sleep or wild dreams.'

'How is the work applied in sleep?'

'Know the day and you know the night. By day innate knowledge meets all without friction; by night it gathers and unites — dreams are its forerunners.'

He also said: 'Innate knowledge stirring in the night breath is its very substance, unmixed with thing-desire. Let the learner, amid the day's crowding affairs, keep ever as in the night breath — that is comprehending the way of day and night.'

The Master said: 'The immortals speak of emptiness — could the sage add one hair of solid to it? The Buddhists speak of nothingness — could the sage add one hair of being? Only, the immortals' emptiness comes from cherishing life, the Buddhists' nothingness from escaping the sea of birth-and-death — each layered a meaning upon the substance, no longer its own bare emptiness and nothingness, and so a bar upon the substance. The sage simply gives innate knowledge back its own color, setting on it not a thread of intent. Innate knowledge's emptiness is heaven's great void; its nothingness, the void's formlessness. Sun, moon, wind, thunder, mountains, rivers, men, things — all with face and form — work and flow within the formless void, never a bar to heaven. The sage simply follows innate knowledge's working: heaven, earth and all things are within its working and flowing — when did anything arise outside it to bar the way?'

Someone asked: 'The Buddhists too nourish the mind — why can they still not govern the world?'

The Master said: 'Our Confucian nourishing of the mind never leaves things: following heaven's rule of itself is the work. The Buddhists would utterly cut off things, taking the mind for illusion, sinking by degrees into void and silence, as if nothing to do with the world — hence they cannot govern it.'

Someone asked about heterodoxy.

The Master said: 'What shares in ploughman and ploughwife is shared virtue; what differs from ploughman and ploughwife is heterodoxy.'

The Master said: 'Between Mencius's unmoved mind and Gaozi's the difference is a hairspread. Gaozi worked at not-being-moved; Mencius went straight to the root where the mind never moves. The mind's substance never moves; it moves only when conduct misses rightness. Mencius, regardless of moving or not, simply accumulated rightness: with all conduct right, the mind has nowhere to move. Gaozi, willing only stillness, gripped the mind and choked its unending root of life — not merely useless, but harmful. Mencius's accumulating rightness filled him without lack, free and easy, quick and alive: that is the flood-like qi.'

He also said: 'Mencius traced the disease to viewing nature as neither good nor not-good. So stated, no great error; but Gaozi clung to the view, and there was a nature neither-good-nor-not within; good and evil were then read from the stirring of things, and a thing without — seeing two sides, he went astray. Neither good nor not-good: nature is thus from the first. Rightly wakened to, this one phrase exhausts it, with no seam of inner and outer. Gaozi saw a nature within and a thing without: therein his sight of nature fell short.'

Zhu Bensi asked: 'Man has the empty and numinous, hence innate knowledge. Have grass, trees, tiles and stones innate knowledge too?'

The Master said: 'Man's innate knowledge is the innate knowledge of grass, trees, tiles and stones; without man's innate knowledge they would not be grass, trees, tiles and stones. Not they alone: without man's innate knowledge, heaven and earth would not be heaven and earth. Heaven, earth and the ten thousand things are one body with man; the finest point of their opening is the one spark of numinous brightness in the human heart. Wind, rain, dew, thunder, sun, moon, stars, birds, beasts, grass, trees, mountains, rivers, earth and stone are one body with man. Hence the grains and beasts can nourish him and medicines and minerals can cure him: one breath in common, and so they interpenetrate.'

The Master was touring South Town.

A friend pointed to flowering trees on the cliff and asked: 'You say there is nothing outside the mind — yet these flowers open and fall by themselves deep in the mountains: what have they to do with my mind?'

The Master said: 'Before you looked at them, these flowers and your mind alike were in stillness; you come and look at them, and their colors at once show clear. Then you know they are not outside your mind.'

Asked: 'The great person is one body with all things — why then does the Great Learning speak of thick and thin?'

The Master said: 'Because the principle itself has thick and thin. The body being one, to shield head and eyes with hands and feet is not slighting hands and feet: the principle is thus. Beasts and plants are loved alike, yet feeding beasts with plants is borne; men and beasts are loved alike, yet slaughtering beasts to feed parents, serve the sacrifice and feast guests is borne; dearest kin and the passerby are loved alike, yet with a basket of rice between life and death for both, saving kin and not the stranger is borne: the principle is thus. Only between my own self and dearest kin no thick or thin may be drawn — for loving the people and cherishing things all issue from here; bearable there, nothing would be unbearable. The Great Learning's thick and thin is innate knowledge's own natural ordering, past overstepping: that is called rightness; following the ordering, propriety; knowing it, wisdom; holding it first and last, good faith.'

He also said: 'The eye has no substance of its own: the colors of all things are its substance. The ear none: the sounds of all things. The nose none: the scents of all things. The mouth none: the flavors of all things. The mind none: the right and wrong of heaven-and-earth's and all things' responses and stirrings.'

Asked about undivided by early death or long life.

The Master said: 'When the work has shed well-nigh all sound and gain, all craving, yet one thread of the thought of life-and-death still hangs, the whole is not yet fused through. That thought is brought in with the very root of one's embodied life, hence hard to remove. See through it here, pass through, and the mind's whole substance flows unblocked — the learning of fulfilling nature and arriving at the Mandate.'

A friend asked: 'To search out in quiet sitting every root of love of fame, lust and greed and sweep it clean — is that not cutting flesh to make a sore?'

The Master said gravely: 'This is my prescription for healing men; it truly digs out the root. Men of the greatest powers have still used it ten years and more on. If you will not use it, lay it aside — but do not spoil my prescription!'

The friend apologized with shame.

After a moment: 'This notion was not yours; some of us who half-know must have framed it and misled you.'

All present were startled.

A friend asked about the work not being to the point.

The Master said: 'I have said the whole of learning's work in one sentence; how is it today the further told, the farther it strays, never touching root!'

'Extension of innate knowledge I have heard — yet it must be explained.'

'Knowing extension, what need of explaining? Innate knowledge is plain of itself: simply work in earnest. Unwilling to work, spinning words, one spins only deeper into fog.'

'I seek precisely the how of extending.'

'That too you must seek yourself; I have no other device. A Chan master of old, asked for the Law, only lifted his horsetail whisk. One day his disciples hid the whisk to try him. Finding it gone, he lifted his empty hand just the same. This innate knowledge of mine is the whisk of expounding: drop it, and what is there to lift?'

Soon after, another friend asked for the essential of the work.

The Master looked about: 'Where is my whisk?'

All present broke into laughter.

Someone asked about the utmost-sincere knowing beforehand.

The Master said: 'Sincerity is solid principle — one innate knowledge alone. Its solid principle's wondrous working flowing is spirit; its first stirring is the spring of change. Sincerity, spirit, spring — the sage. The sage sets no store by foreknowledge. Fortune and misfortune come; even the sage is not exempt — the sage only knows the spring and threads through change. Innate knowledge has no before-or-after: know the spring at hand, and all is settled at once. A heart of foreknowing is a private heart, carrying intent to dodge harm and court gain. Shao Yong's insisting on foreknowledge is, at bottom, the profit-heart not yet spent.'

The Master said: 'Knowing nothing yet nothing unknown — the substance is thus from the first. The sun never intends to shine, yet nothing is unlit: neither-intending-shine-yet-all-shone is the sun's substance. Innate knowledge originally knows not; now you would have it know; originally nothing unknown, now you doubt it — only trust falls short.'

The Master said: 'Only the sage under heaven is able to be clear-eared, bright-eyed, penetrating of thought — how mysterious it once seemed! Seen now, it is every man's own. The ear was hearing, the eye sight, the thought penetration, from the first: the sage is only able — and the able is innate knowledge. That the crowd cannot is only its failure to extend knowledge. How plain, how simple.'

Asked: 'Confucius's far-reaching thought, the Duke of Zhou's night-into-day thinking — how do they differ from forestalling and clinging?'

The Master said: 'Far thought is not drifting boundless speculation: it is preserving this heavenly principle. Principle in the human mind runs through all ages, without end or beginning. Principle is innate knowledge: ten thousand thoughts only extend it. The more thought, the finer and brighter it shines; think thinly, drift with affairs, and true knowledge goes coarse. To hang boundless musing upon affairs and call it far thought lets praise-and-blame, gain-and-loss, human desire slip in — that is forestalling and clinging. The Duke's thinking through the night was only the work of vigilance over the unseen and fear over the unheard; rightly seen, its air differs of itself from forestalling.'

Asked: 'One day mastering self and returning to propriety, the whole world returns to humaneness — Zhu read it as the fruit. How?'

The Master said: 'Sage and worthy learning is for one's own self: the work is the weight, not the fruit. The humane take the ten thousand things as their body; failure to be one body is only self not yet forgotten. Humaneness' body whole, the world all returns to my humaneness — the eight wilds within my gates; the world all given, and the humaneness therein. As no resentment in the state, none in the family — only one's own non-resenting, like no grudging heaven, no blaming men; yet state and family free of resentment toward me is also therein — only the weight lies elsewhere.'

Asked: 'Mencius's skill and strength figure for sagehood and wisdom — Zhu said the three had strength to spare but skill wanting. How?'

The Master said: 'The three had strength and skill alike. Skill and strength are no two things: skill lies just where strength is applied; strength without skill is strength thrown away. The three were like archers: one shooting afoot, one from horseback, one at far range — reaching the mark is strength, hitting it is skill; but the afoot could not ride, the rider not shoot far — each his gift, the difference of endowment's measure. Confucius excelled at all three. Yet his harmony reached Liu Xiahui's and could go no further, his purity Boyi's, his devotedness Yi Yin's — when did he add a hair? Say the three had strength to spare but skill wanting, and their strength outstrips Confucius himself. Skill-and-strength only unfolds the sense of sagehood and wisdom: know what that substance is, and all is plain.'

'Prior to heaven, yet heaven does not contradict him — heaven is innate knowledge. After heaven, he follows heaven's seasons — innate knowledge is heaven.'

'Innate knowledge is only the sense of right and wrong; right and wrong are only liking and disliking. Liking and disliking suffice to exhaust right and wrong; right and wrong suffice to exhaust the myriad affairs and changes.'

He added: 'These two words, right and wrong, are the great compass and square; the finesse lies with the man.'

'The sage's knowing is the sun in a clear sky; the worthy's, the sun behind drifting clouds; the dull man's, the sun in haze. Dim or bright, the telling of black from white is one. Even in dark night black and white are shadowily seen — the sun's last light not yet spent. The work of hard-learned learning too starts only from that point of light, examining finely onward.'

Asked: 'Knowing is the sun, desire the cloud; yet clouds too belong to heaven's breath — is desire not also native to the human heart?'

The Master said: 'Joy, anger, sorrow, fear, love, hate, desire — the seven feelings — all belong to the heart of right; only know innate knowledge clearly. As with sunlight: you cannot point to one fixed place and say it is there and nowhere else; every seam of brightness is where the sunlight is. Though clouds wall it in on every side, forms and colors are still told apart in the great void — the light unquenched; one may not, because clouds veil the sun, bid heaven breed no clouds. The seven feelings flowing in their natural course are all innate knowledge's working — force no division into good and evil; only let there be no clinging. The feelings once clung to are all called desire, all veil innate knowledge. Yet the instant clinging arises, innate knowledge feels it of itself; felt, the veil lifts and the substance is restored. See through this, and the work is simple, direct, transparent.'

Asked: 'The sage's born-knowing, acting-at-ease is natural — what work is there?'

The Master said: 'The two words knowing and acting are themselves the work, differing only in depth and ease. Innate knowledge is bright and bright. In filial piety, the born-knowing simply follow it and fulfill filialness solidly; the learning-knowing keep ever waking watch, bent on following it; the hardship-knowing, deeply sealed and locked, though they would follow it, are blocked by private desire, and cannot — they must put in a hundredfold where others give one, a thousandfold where others give ten, before they can follow this true knowledge to the full. The sage, born-knowing, acting-at-ease, yet does not presume; he is willing to do the hardship-knowing work. The hardship-knowing who aspire to leap straight into the born-knowing's ease — how could they succeed?'

Asked: 'Joy is the mind's substance — at great bereavement, amid weeping, is the joy still there?'

The Master said: 'One must weep one's fill and then be joyful; unwept, no joy. Though weeping, where the heart is at rest is the joy — the substance never stirred.'

Asked: 'Innate knowledge is one — why then did King Wen's Tuan, the Duke of Zhou's lines, Confucius's commentaries each see the Changes differently?'

The Master said: 'How could the sages be held by dead molds? The great point issuing from the same innate knowledge — what harm in each speaking his own? As a garden of bamboo: shared joint and node is the great sameness; insist every joint match in height and girth, and you have no hand of creation. You need only cultivate innate knowledge: it being one, differences do no harm. Refuse the work, and you have not yet sprouted a shoot — where will you debate joints and nodes?'

A father and son of the district, at law with each other, came pleading to the Master; the attendants would have barred them, but he heard them out. Before the tale was done, father and son fell on each other's necks weeping and went their way.

Chai Mingzhi later asked: 'What did you say, that they repented so fast?'

The Master said: 'I said Shun was the world's most unfilial son, and Gusou the world's most loving father.'

Mingzhi was startled and asked for the sense.

'Shun ever deemed himself most unfilial — hence he could be filial; Gusou ever deemed himself most loving — hence he could not love. Gusou kept only in mind that he had raised Shun from infancy: why does he not delight me now? — not knowing his heart had been turned by the second wife, still calling himself loving, and so daily less able. Shun thought only how his father loved him in raising him: loved no more today, it must be that I have not fulfilled filialness. Dwelling daily on where filialness fell short, he grew daily more filial. When Gusou was at last moved and yielded, it was only the recovery of the heart's originally loving substance. Hence after ages call Shun the great filial son of all time — and Gusou was made a loving father.'

The Master said: 'When a plain countryman came asking, Confucius held no ready knowledge in advance; his heart was bare. He only took the man's own right-and-wrong of the two ends and cut it clean with him, and the countryman's mind was lit. The right-and-wrong the countryman knew himself was his own heaven-given rule: sage-bright as Confucius was, what hair could he add or shave? The man only could not trust himself; the Master's one cutting exhausted all there was. Had Confucius kept any store of knowledge while speaking with him, he would have failed to exhaust the man's innate knowledge, and the Way's substance would have been two.'

The Master said: 'The old gloss on steadily he mended, yet fell not into great villainy says Xiang had already advanced toward rightness, short only of great evil. But after Shun was called to office, Xiang plotted his death day after day — what villainy greater! Shun simply mended himself, curing his brother by his own steaming virtue, never confronting his evil head-on. Masking faults is the wicked man's normal state: point at his wrongs, and you only whip the wickedness up. That at first Shun provoked Xiang to kill him — his own haste for his brother's good — was Shun's fault. Living through it, he learned the work lies in oneself, not in blaming others — hence he could reach harmony. This is where Shun stirred his mind and steeled his nature, adding to what he could not do. The ancients' words were lived through first — hence they ring true; handed down, they fit all human feeling. Who but the one who lived it could find his way to its bitter cares?'

The Master said: 'The ancient music has long been lost; yet today's players are still near its sense.'

None understood; they asked.

'The nine movements of the Shao were Shun's one play; the nine changes of the Wu, King Wu's play. The sage's whole life of deeds was sown into the music — hence the virtuous, hearing, knew his perfect goodness and beauty, or beauty short of perfect goodness. Later music-making fashions tunes only, nothing to do with the people's ways — how could it transform and better them? To return the folk to simplicity and honesty, take today's players, cut the lewd and wild airs, keep only the tales of loyal ministers and filial sons, plain to the dullest hearer, stirring their innate knowledge unawares — that would serve the moral air; and then the ancient music might step by step return.'

I said: 'Seeking the primal tone, I can never find it — I fear the ancient music can hardly return.'

'Where would you seek the primal tone?'

'The ancients' pipes waiting on the breath — perhaps that was the way.'

'To seek the primal tone among reed ashes and millet grains is fishing the moon from the water's floor. The primal tone is to be sought only on your own heart.'

'How on the heart?'

'The ancients, to govern, first brought men's hearts to peace, then made music. As when we sing the poems here: your heart's breath at peace, the hearers rise gladdened of themselves — that is the beginning of the primal tone. The Documents says the poem speaks the will: will is music's root; song prolongs the words: song is music-making's root; sound follows the prolonging, the pitch-pipes harmonize the sound: the pipes seek only harmony, and harmony is the root of the pipes. When was it sought outside?'

'What did the ancients intend by waiting on the breath?'

'They made music from a body of centered harmony: my own harmony accords of itself with heaven-and-earth's breath. Waiting on the breath of heaven and earth, attuning the phoenix's note — only to test whether my breath was indeed in harmony: that is business after the pitches were fixed, not what fixed them. To wait on the ash-pipes you must fix the solstice; but at the solstice midnight even that may err — where then will you find the exact?'

The Master said: 'Learning wants another's touch to transform it — but best of all is dissolving it oneself: one stroke and all is settled. Otherwise, how much can another's touching do?'

'Confucius's sweep of spirit was vast: every emperor's enterprise he dealt with one by one — yet all came from the heart. A great tree with its thousand branches: the cultivating was done at the root, and this grew of itself; the root was never made by working on branches. Learners who would study Confucius, working not on the heart but hurrying after his sweep — have set the matter upside down.'

'A man at fault mostly labors on the fault — patching the broken jar; its end is always masking the fault.'

'Today's men at table, no other task in sight, are inwardly harried and restless — the heart so used to bustle it cannot be gathered in.'

'Zither and books the learner cannot be without: with a task to dwell in, the heart does not stray.'

The Master sighed: 'Men under heaven who know learning, yet cannot break these few sicknesses, are not yet good at sharing with others.'

Chongyi said: 'The sickness is only loving the heights and unable to forget oneself.'

Asked: 'Innate knowledge is centered and harmonious of itself — whence excess and shortfall?'

The Master said: 'To know where the excess and shortfall lie — that is center and harmony.'

'What you hate in those above — that is innate knowledge; do not use it on those below — that is extending knowledge.'

The Master said: 'The wit of Su Qin and Zhang Yi too was stuff for a sage. The deeds and writings of later ages — many a hero and famous name — only learned the old stock of Yi and Qin. Their art read men's hearts to the quick; no shaft missed the joint, hence their persuasions could not be overthrown. They too had glimpsed the wondrous working of innate knowledge — they only used it for the not-good.'

Someone asked about the not-yet-aroused and the already-aroused.

The Master said: 'Only because later scholars split them in speech must I say head-on that there is no not-yet and no already, and let men think it out themselves. Say there is a not-yet and already, and hearers fall back into the later scholars' view. Truly seeing that there is none, one may say there is — for there is one after all.'

Asked: 'Before arousal never lacking harmony; after, never lacking due measure. As a bell: unstuck, one cannot say it is nothing; struck, one cannot say it is something — yet the struck and unstruck remain.'

The Master said: 'Unstruck, it was ever heaven-startling, earth-shaking; struck, it is only silent heaven, still earth.'

Asked: 'The ancients differed on nature — which is the settled doctrine?'

The Master said: 'Nature has no fixed substance; its doctrines none either. Some speak from the substance, some from the working, some from the source, some from the degenerate flow. All said, one nature only — the sights differ merely in depth. Cling to one side and you err. Nature's substance is of itself neither good nor evil; in its working it can turn good or evil; in its degenerate flow it is fixedly good or fixedly evil. Like the eye: a joyful eye, an angry eye; the straight gaze is seeing, the sidelong is peering — one eye all the same. See the angry eye and say there never was a joyful one; the seeing eye and deny the peering one — each is clinging to one side, plainly wrong. Mencius spoke of nature straight from the source, in outline; Xunzi's nature-evil spoke from the degenerate flow — not wholly mistaken, only unrefined in sight. The crowd simply lose the mind's substance.'

'So Mencius' source-speech sets the work at the source, clear through; Xunzi's sets it repairing the tail-waters — laborious.'

'It is so.'

The Master said: 'The finer the work, the less room for words — the harder to state the principle. Fix the mind on the subtle, and the whole work is mired and veiled.'

'Yang Cihu had his sight — only it fixed again upon the soundless and scentless.'

'Within a single day a man passes through all the worlds of history — only he does not see it. In the clear night breath, nothing seen nor heard, nothing thought nor done, pale and even in the breast — that is the world of Fuxi. At dawn, spirit clear and breath bright, serene and ordered — the world of Yao and Shun. Before noon, courtesies interweaving, all in due array — the world of the three dynasties. After noon, spirit dimming, comings and goings jostling — the world of Springs and Autumns and Warring States. Deepening dusk, all things at rest, the scene desolate — the world of men gone, things spent. Let the learner trust innate knowledge through, unruffled by the breath's motions, and he lives ever as a man from before Fuxi.'

Xue Shangqian, Zou Qianzhi, Ma Zicui and Wang Ruzhi sat in attendance, and, speaking of how the world's slander had multiplied since the Master quelled the Prince of Ning, each gave his reason: one said his deeds and station rose daily, and envy with them; one said his learning shone daily, and the champions of the Song masters multiplied; one said the followers of the true cause had grown since Nanjing, and with them the vehemence of opposition.

The Master said: 'All true — yet the thing I know in myself, none of you has touched.'

They begged to hear.

'Before Nanjing there was still something of the village-worthy in me. Now I trust this innate knowledge's true right and true wrong; I go straight on, nothing kept back. Only now have I attained the breast of the wild-at-heart — let all the world say my deeds fall short of my words.'

Shangqian rose: 'To trust through to this — that is the sage's true bloodline.'

The Master tempered men, and a single sentence could cut deepest. One day Wang Ruzhi returned from an outing.

'What did you see?' asked the Master.

'I saw the whole street full of sages.'

'You see a street full of sages — to the street, it is you who are the sage.'

Another day Dong Luoshi came back and said: 'Today I saw a strange thing.'

'Strange how?'

'The whole street full of sages.'

'That is an everyday matter — what is strange in it?'

Ruzhi's corners were not yet worn round; Luoshi had wakened as in a flash — the same question, answers opposed: each turned back to push the speaker forward.

Dehong, with Huang Zhengzhi, Zhang Shuqian and Ruzhong, back from the examinations in the bingxu year, told the Master of lecturing on the road, believed by some, not by others.

The Master said: 'Carrying a sage along to lecture — the sight of a sage coming puts everyone to flight: how lecture so! You must play the plain ploughman and ploughwife before you can lecture with men.'

I added that nowadays to judge men's quality was easiest.

'How so?'

'With Mount Tai before them, whoever does not look up must be eyeless.'

The Master said: 'Mount Tai is not so large as level ground. What is there to see in level ground?'

One sentence, and the yearlong disease of outward-looking height was cut through; all present were struck with awe.

In the spring of guiwei, Zou Qianzhi came to Yue to study; after some days the Master saw him off at Fufeng. That evening, with Xiyuan and other friends, he moved his boat to lodge at Yanshou Temple; sitting by candlelight he sighed long, saying: 'River waves and misty willows — the old friend is suddenly a hundred li away!'

A friend asked why he yearned so after Qianzhi.

The Master said: 'Zengzi's able, yet asking of the unable; having much, yet asking of those with little; having as though lacking, full as though empty, offended yet not contending — of such as Qianzhi one may say: near indeed.'

In the ninth month of the dinghai year, the Master, recalled to service, was setting out for Si'en and Tianzhou. On the eve of departure Dehong and Ruzhong discussed learning.

Ruzhong cited the Master's teaching: 'Neither good nor evil is the substance of the mind; both good and evil are the stirrings of intention; knowing good and evil is innate knowledge; doing good and removing evil is the investigation of things.'

Dehong asked what it meant.

Ruzhong said: 'I fear it is not the final word. If the mind's substance is neither good nor evil, then intention too is intention neither good nor evil, knowing too knowing neither good nor evil, things too things neither good nor evil. Say intention has good and evil, and in the end the mind's substance has good and evil in it.'

Dehong said: 'The mind's substance is what heaven mandates as nature, originally neither good nor evil; but men have a practiced mind, and good and evil appear upon intention. Investigation, extension, sincerity, rectitude, cultivation — this is precisely the work of restoring that substance. Were there originally no good and evil, the work would not need saying.'

That evening, attending at Tianquan Bridge, they each laid the matter before the Master.

He said: 'I am on the point of setting out — just right that you should come to break this open. Your two views fit each for use; do not each cling to one side. In receiving men I have from the first had these two ways: those of sharp root enter straight in at the source — the mind's substance is bright and unhampered, the very equilibrium before arousal; for such, one awakening to the substance is itself the work, self and others, inner and outer, all pierced at once. Those of the second sort cannot escape the practiced mind; the substance is veiled; so I first teach them to do good and remove evil in solid earnest upon intention; when the work ripens and the dross is all gone, the substance too is bright to the full. Ruzhong's view is my way for the sharp-rooted; Dehong's, my law for the others. Take each other into use, and men above and below the mean may all be led into the Way; cling each to a side, and men are lost before your eyes, and the Way's substance left unmet on either part.'

He went on: 'Henceforth, in discussing learning with friends, by no means lose this purport of mine: neither good nor evil is the substance of the mind; good and evil are the stirrings of intention; knowing good and evil is innate knowledge; doing good and removing evil is the investigation of things. Point men as each requires by these words, and no sickness follows — this is the work running from top to bottom. The sharp-rooted are rare in any age: awakening the substance's work wholly through — Yan Hui or Cheng Hao durst not claim it; how lightly expect it of men? Men have a practiced mind: teach them not to work in solid earnest at good and evil upon innate knowledge, but only to dream in mid-air of a substance, all doing unreal, and they rear only a hollow stillness — a sickness not small, to be broken open early.'

That day Dehong and Ruzhong both woke somewhat.

When the Master first returned to Yue, the friends who came were few; thereafter learners from every quarter pressed in daily. After the guiwei year, house stood packed against house about him; in temples like Tianfei and Guangxiang, each room commonly fed several dozen from one pot, with no lying places at night — men taking the mats in turn, song running from dusk to dawn. South Town, Yu's Cave, the caves of Yangming — every temple far and near that foot could reach lodged the fellows of the way. At each lecture the listeners ringing him round, fore and aft, left and right, were rarely fewer than several hundred; farewells and welcomes left no empty day in the month; some attended whole years through whose very names he could not all remember.

At every parting he would sigh: 'Though you go, you go not out of heaven and earth; sharing this resolve, we may well forget the outward form.'

The students, leaving the lecture, never failed to leap and cry out with delight. I once heard the seniors of the school say: 'Before Nanjing the following was many, yet never as now in Yue — the lecturing long and trust grown broad, yes; but the Master's own learning advancing daily, and the quickening he called forth unlike any other.'