When in an ancient text we stumble on what looks like a modern idea, we are always faced with the question whether thinkers within different conceptual schemes can be saying the same thing. It is pointless to exclaim in wonder ‘So they knew that thousands of years ago!’, but stimulating to explore these unexpected points of contact as critical places where ancient thinkers reveal both their nearness and their remoteness from ourselves.
Here we assemble four examples.
A story about Lieh-tzŭ talking to a skull (as Chuang-tzŭ himself does elsewhere)40 leads on to a remarkable passage which describes how all living things, including man, develop out of each other and ultimately from primeval germs in the water. This may or may not be the continuation of Lieh-tzŭ’s address to the skull. (Our translation assumes that it is.) In any case its background is the Taoist thesis that death does not matter since personal identity is illusory; my birth and death are no more than moments in the universal process of transformation.
This passage, repeated with modifications in chapter 1 of Lieh-tzŭ (c. AD 300), has long attracted the attention of Western readers as an early example of evolutionary thinking. Certainly the Taoist agrees with Darwin on some of the issues on which Westerners found him most challenging; he thinks of species as mutable and metamorphosing into or generating each other, sets no limits to their fluidity, and includes man himself in the process. Within the Taoist scheme of things none of this is strange or shocking, as it was to nineteenth-century Christians. Further, he has the new, simple and beautiful thought that one might, by stringing together observed metamorphoses of plants and insects, and reported prodigies such as human children being born of horses, show how a man could evolve from the simplest forms of life. But he sees this only as a striking illustration of the continuity of man with the rest of nature, with a bearing on the problem of reconciliation with death; he is not trying to explain the origin of species.
The chain from the primordial germs to man has some breaks in the standard text of Chuang-tzŭ, but they are certainly due to textual mutilation. In the present translation we fill them from the Lieh-tzŭ parallel (which has only one break, stuffed with metamorphoses from other sources), and from the Chuang-tzŭ passage as quoted in chapter 887 of the tenth-century encyclopedia T’ai-p’ing yü-lan (which fills this gap as well). But it is not a true evolutionary chain. What matters for the Taoist is not the chronological sequence but the possibility at any time of one thing turning into or generating another. Thus he has two lines of descent from the yang-hsi, and two leading to the yi-lu.41
The identification of much of the fauna and flora, including some for which I have ventured English equivalents, remains problematic. But the one word which is crucial to the understanding of the whole is chi, here translated ‘germ’. Chi is a word applied generally to the ultimate source of movement, growth or change in a thing or situation. In a machine it is ‘the thing which makes it go’ (we use this equivalent on p. 186 below), for example the trigger of a crossbow. When Chuang-tzŭ asks whether the cycles of the heavenly bodies have something which ‘triggers them off’,42 he is using the same Chinese word.
Lieh-tzŭ on a journey took a meal by the roadside, and saw a hundred-year-old skull. He plucked a stalk and said, pointing at it,
‘Only you and I know that you have never died, have never lived. Is it really you who are miserable, I who am happy?
‘In seed there is a germ. When it gets to water it becomes the water-plantain, when it gets to the border between water and land it becomes the “frog’s coat”, when it breeds on dry land it becomes the plantain. When the plantain gets to rich soil it becomes the “crow’s foot”. The root of the “crow’s foot” becomes ground-beetles, its leaves become butterflies. The butterfly in a short while metamorphoses into an insect which breeds under the stove and looks as though it has sloughed its skin, named the ch’ü-to. The ch’ü-to after 1,000 days becomes a bird named the kan-yü-ku. The saliva of the kan-yü-ku becomes the ssŭ-mi, which becomes the vinegar animalcule yi-lu.
‘The animalcule yi-lu goes on being born from the animalcule huang-k’uang, which goes on being born from the chiu-yu, which goes on being born from the gnat, which goes on being born from the firefly, which goes on being born from the yang-hsi. The yang-hsi staying alongside a bamboo which for a long time has not sprouted gives birth to the ch’ing-ning, which gives birth to the leopard, which gives birth to the horse, which gives birth to man. Man in due course goes back into the germs. The myriad things all come out from the germs, all go into the germs.’ (Chuang-tzŭ, chapter 18)
In a passage known only by quotation, said to be from the Inner chapters,43 Chuang-tzŭ (if he is indeed the author) plays boldly with the noun wu, ‘thing’, using it verbally as ‘to thing’ (make into or treat as a thing), to mark off as a thing separate from other things and from oneself. He is writing about the Way:
‘It is shapeless, therefore shapes everything; it is thingless, therefore things everything. The unthinged is able to thing things, the unshaped is able to shape shapes. Therefore the shaper of shapes and thinger of things is not a shape and is not a thing. Is it not after all a delusion to go looking among shapes and things for what is neither shape nor thing?’
We have elsewhere translated the phrase wu wu, ‘thinging things’, expanding it to ‘treating things as things’ or ‘making things into things’.44 In one of the passages it is not the Way but the sage who ‘things things and is not thinged by things’, and the marking off is primarily of other things from himself. He sees all things as external to him, and refuses to let them turn him into one more thing dragged along by its involvements with the rest:
‘If you treat things as things and are not made into a thing by things, how can you be tied by involvements?’45
Like Hegel’s ‘alienation’, which it calls to mind, this very abstract idea has a practical application. When Taoists contrast things with self, they are generally thinking in the first place of property. As will be seen from the passage below, the sage is able to recognise his possessions as mere things, external and dispensable, and to ‘exist alone’ in perfect detachment from them. Others, however, turn themselves into things by becoming identified with their possessions, cannot exist without them. The Confucian Hsün-tzŭ similarly speaks of the superiority of the gentleman to the farmer, merchant or craftsman who, expert in one thing, is identified with his profession:
‘Whoever is expert in a thing is by means of the thing made into a thing; whoever is expert in the Way treats every thing as a thing.’ (Hsün-tzŭ, chapter 21)
When Chinese speak of being ‘thinged’, and Marxists and others in the West of ‘alienation’ (equally difficult and slippery terms originating in metaphysics), to what extent have we the right to say they are expressing the same idea?
Alas for the ignorance of owners of lands! To own a land is to own a great thing, and the owner of a great thing cannot treat as a thing. In treating as things one is not made into a thing, that is how one treats things as things. If it is clear to you that ‘what makes things things is not a thing’, you can do better than merely reign over the hundred clans of the empire!
Go in, go out of the Six-way-oriented,
Go roaming over the Nine Regions.
Depart without anything, come without anything,
It is this that is meant by ‘exist without anything.’
The man who exists without anything – his is the rank which is to be judged supreme. (Chuang-tzŭ, chapter 11)
Chuang-tzŭ’s kind of Taoist, with his assumption of decline from a primeval state of perfection, and antipathy to such civilised artificialities as morality, logic and organised government, might be expected to look askance at the rather hectic pace of technological progress in the first centuries after the belated start of the Iron Age in China in the sixth century BC. However, although Taoist writers in Chuang-tzŭ show no gratitude for technological advances, ignoring Sui-jen’s discovery of fire, Fu-hsi’s of hunting and Shen-nung’s of agriculture even when mentioning them as sages, they seldom positively disapprove. The ‘Primitivist’ writer is unrepresentative, as we imply by giving him that name. He does speak of such cunning devices as stringed arrows, basket-nets and pitfalls as disordering the fish, birds and animals, and may even be showing some awareness of ecological damage when he says that we ‘dissipate the quintessences in the mountains and rivers’ and ‘interrupt the round of the four seasons’.46
However, even the Primitivist uses technological examples primarily as metaphors; he objects to people wanting to manipulate human nature as the potter moulds clay rather than to the potter himself. Such remarks as ‘damaging the unhewn block to make vessels is the crime of the craftsman’47 can hardly be taken literally. His criticisms centre not on practically useful devices but on moralism, ritualism, logical disputation, arts and luxuries.
But there is one famous episode in the Outer chapters in which a hermit coldly rejects a labour-saving device proposed by a disciple of Confucius. His objection is not to social or ecological effects but to the deliberate calculation of benefit and harm, disruptive of Taoist spontaneity, which motivates the search for new inventions. It would evidently be pointless to reply that in tilling and irrigating he is himself benefiting from past discoveries; these are already customary exercises which do not start off that weighing of prospects which divorces the reasoning man from nature.
The story concludes with a comment by Confucius which many understand as qualifying the criticism of technology. They read an ambiguous sentence, as ‘He [the hermit] perceives one side of the matter but does not know about the other’; but in chapter 7 of Huai-nan-tzŭ (c. 120 BC) the sentence reappears in a plainer context, where it can only be understood as ‘He perceives the oneness of everything, does not know about duality in it’. Our translation follows the second alternative. It explains why the hermit is said to preserve the tradition of Hun-t’un, the mythical emperor who in the very last episode of the Inner chapters represents the primal blob out of which the myriad things have not yet begun to divide.
Tzŭ-kung travelled south to Ch’u, turned back towards Chin, and while passing along the south bank of the Han river saw an old man looking after his vegetable garden. He had dug out a passage down into the well, from which he emerged with a pitcher in his arms to water the soil. Splash, splash! it was costing him a lot of effort with the poorest of results to show for it.
‘Suppose you had a contrivance’, said Tzŭ-lung, ‘which in one day would irrigate a hundred fields. You would have plentiful results to show for very little effort; wouldn’t you prefer that?’
The gardener lifted his head and looked at him.
‘How does it work?’
‘The thing which makes it go is a piece of wood chiselled to make it heavier at the back end than at the front. It pulls up the water as though you were plucking it straight out of the well, as fast as bubbles in a boiling pot. It’s called a well-sweep.’
The gardener made an angry face and said with a sneer:
‘I heard from my teacher that whoever has contrivances with tricks to make them go is sure to have activities with tricks to make them go. Whoever has activities with tricks to make them go is sure to have a heart with tricks to make things go. If a heart with tricks to make things go is lodged inside your breast, the pure and simple will not be at your disposal. If the pure and simple is not at your disposal, the daemonic and vital will be unsettled. Anyone in whom the daemonic and vital is unsettled, the Way will not sustain. It isn’t that I don’t know, it’s that I would be ashamed to make it.’
Tzŭ-kung, too embarrassed to meet his eye, looked down at the ground without answering.
After a while the gardener said:
‘What sort would you be?’
‘A disciple of Confucius.’
‘Aren’t you those people who make themselves so learned to get to be like the sages, go in for fancy talk so that they can look down on the crowd, and sing sadly to their lonely zithers to attract attention from the world? If you would forget about your daemonic energies and let your bodies fall away from you, there might be hope for you. When you can’t put even your own selves in order, what time have you to waste on putting the world in order? Go away, don’t interrupt my work.’
Tzŭ-kung was shocked out of countenance, in too much of a dither to pull himself together. He had travelled another thirty miles before he recovered.
‘That man just now,’ said a disciple, ‘what would he be, sir? Why was it that when you saw him you looked so upset, you weren’t yourself for the rest of the day?’
‘I used to think there was just one man in all the world, I never knew there was anyone like that. I heard the Master say “In enterprises seek the practicable, in results the successful; to show the most results for the least effort is the Way of the Sage.” Now it turns out to be otherwise. Abide by the Way and the Power stays whole, where the Power stays whole the body stays whole, where the body stays whole the daemon stays whole; and the daemon staying whole is the Way of the Sage. Leaving life to take its course, he moves on side by side with the people, and does not know his destination, unthinking, perfect in innocence! Results, profit, tricks to make things go, cunning, must be absent from the heart of such a man. Such a man goes only where he himself intends, does nothing which is not from his own heart. Even if the whole world praises him, and he wins acceptance for his opinions, he is too proud to notice: even if the whole world blames him, and he is alone in his opinions, he is too indifferent to care. One for whom there is neither gain nor loss in the world’s praise or blame may be pronounced a ‘man in whom Power is whole’! It is we ourselves who deserve to be called drifters of the wind and waves.’
When he was back in Lu he told Confucius about it.
‘He is a follower and practitioner of the tradition of the House of Hun-t’un,’ said Confucius. ‘He perceives the oneness of everything, does not know about duality in it; he orders it as inward, does not order it as outward. Someone who by illumination enters into simplicity, by Doing Nothing reverts to the unhewn, who identifies himself with his nature and protects his daemon, as he roams among the vulgar, is he really so astonishing to you? In any case, when it comes to the tradition of the House of Hun-t’un, how would you and I be adequate to understand it?’ (Chuang-tzŭ, chapter 12)
4 IT ISN’T HIS FAULT, IT’S SOCIETY
That crime is inevitable unless people are decently fed was widely understood in ancient China. The Confucian Mencius, Chuang-tzŭ’s contemporary, observed that banditry increases with bad harvests, and declared that a ruler who merely punishes crime, without taking steps to ensure an adequate food supply, is setting a trap for his own people.48 But the next episode is unusual in tracing the origin of crime directly to the institution of rank and property (not, as the Primitivist does, simply to the institution of codified morality, cf. pp. 207–10 below), and also for its intensity of moral passion, unexpected in a Taoist.
Po Chü had been studying under Old Tan.
‘Let me go and see something of the world,’ he said.
‘Enough of that! Anywhere in the world it’s the same as here.’
But he persisted.
‘Where will you start?’ said Old Tan.
‘I shall start from Ch’i.’
Arriving in Ch’i, he saw the corpse of a criminal exposed in the marketplace. He pushed it over onto its back, took off his court robe and shrouded it. Crying out to Heaven he bewailed it:
‘Alas, alas! The whole world shares a great calamity, and you are the one to suffer it ahead of us. They say, “Let no one rob, let no one murder.” But it was only after grades of esteem were instituted that men noticed they had grievances, only after property was accumulated that they noticed things to quarrel over. Now that we have instituted what stirs up grievances and accumulated what stirs up quarrels, and so impoverished and distressed their lives that they never have time to rest, how can we be surprised if it ends in this?
‘Of old those who were lords of men ascribed successes to the people and took failures on themselves, thought the credit for someone’s honesty belonged to the people and the discredit for someone’s crookedness belonged to themselves. Therefore if a single body was disfigured by punishment they retired and blamed themselves. Nowadays it is otherwise. They keep things more secret yet fault you for being unaware, make difficulties greater yet condemn you for hanging back, make responsibilities heavier yet punish you for being unequal to them, set the destination farther off yet execute you for failing to arrive. When the people are at the end of their wits and their strength, the next stage is to lie; every day there is more lying, how can knights or people do without lying? If their strength is insufficient they lie, if their wit is insufficient they bully, if their property is insufficient they rob. For the deeds of the thief and the robber, whom shall we call to account?’ (Chuang-tzŭ, chapter 25)