Luxuriant Gems of the Spring and Autumn

This is the essence of the year. If you [seek to] regulate1 your heart but do not scrutinize the [months in which] hot emanations and cold condensations predominate, when using [your heart to carry out policies], you will invariably defy Heaven. People who have defied Heaven, even if industrious, will not be successful. Actually, it is during [the period] from the first month to the tenth month when Heaven completes its achievements. If you calculate during this period the preponderance [of days] occupied by yin and yang, [you will find] whether warm or cold days are more numerous. If you determine the time when something is first engendered to its maturation, [you will find] whether dew or frost is more abundant. The result will be that from the middle of spring until autumn, the qi is warm and harmonious. Only when the ninth month of autumn arrives does yin begin to be more abundant than yang. At this time, Heaven emanates cold and sends down frost. The emanation of cold and the sending down of frost is what Heaven confers on living things so that they are inevitably completed. Thus the ninth month is the month in which the achievements of Heaven are nearly completed, and in the tenth month everything is completed. Therefore if you examine Heaven’s traces and calculate its substance, [you will find that] the cold days are quite few and, furthermore, that only after Heaven’s achievements are completed is yin finally sent forth in great quantity. In the completion of Heaven’s achievements, Lesser Yin participates while Greater Yin does not participate.

The void is simply the earth; it does not extend to things. Once Heaven’s achievements have been completed and before things have begun to be generated again, it is suitable for the Greater Yin to emerge. Even though we speak of yin, Greater Yang also helps Greater Yin alter its position, although Greater Yin does not know from where it has received assistance. Therefore when a sagely king occupies the superior position,

Yu’s flood and Tang’s drought³ were not due to the constant regularities [of Heaven]. [Both] happened to encounter an untoward alteration of seasonal qi in which yin and yang lost their proper balance. Yao looked upon the common people as if they were his sons, and the people looked upon Yao as if he were their father and mother. The Documents states: “After twenty-eight years, [Yao] died. The people mourned him for three years as if he had been their parent, and within the Four Seas [i.e., everywhere], the playing of musical instruments ceased for three years.”⁴ For three years, yang qi was suppressed by yin qi, so yin qi increased substantially. This is why Yu is known for [encountering] a flood.

We have emended the title following Su Yu, CQFLYZ 347. This chapter consists of two unrelated essays that originally must have circulated independently. The first essay takes up yin-yang cosmology and explains the movements and activities of yin and yang as they pass through the yearly cycle. The second essay attempts to reconcile two contradictory ideas. If anomalies are to be interpreted as Heaven’s response to the misdeeds of the ruler and a sign of Heaven’s discontent with the ruler’s actions, this calls into question the reputation of two of the greatest culture heroes of the Confucian tradition, Tang and Yu, whose legends link them with two major natural calamities, a great drought and a great flood, respectively (for which, see note 3). The author attempts to reconcile that contradiction by introducing the concept of shi zao zhi bian 適遭之變, an expression that seems to denote human destiny that is transformed—from auspicious to inauspicious—because of an “untoward alteration of seasonal qi.” This category of destiny explains why virtuous people may suffer such inauspicious occurrences as floods and droughts. (The subject of “changeable destiny” also appears in chapter 13.3.) Su Yu (CQFLYZ 348–49) notes that this idea is also taken up in the Bohutong (chapter 16, “Calamities and Extraordinary Events”), in the following passage: “When Yao was visited by the great flood and Tang by the great drought was it also a reproach [from Heaven]? When Yao was visited by the great flood and Tang by the great drought, it was an accident caused by fate” (Tjan Tjoe Som, trans., Po Hu T’ung: The Comprehensive Discussions in the White Tiger Hall [Leiden: Brill, 1952], 2:490). The Wenzi also contains a short passage dealing with this same subject: “Your humble servant has heard that when evil is practiced, anomalies occur as a response, but when goodness is practiced and anomalies occur, it is a consequence of a sudden encounter with fate. They are not caused by [one who] governs” (quoted in Su Yu, CQFLYZ 349).

3. According to Chinese tradition, King Yu the Great, founder of the Xia dynasty, encountered a massive flood, and King Tang, founder of the Shang dynasty, encountered a catastrophic drought. How, then, was the author to explain that natural disasters, generally taken as a sign of misrule, occurred during the dynasty-founding reigns of two of the greatest sages in Chinese history? The answer, as we shall see, lay with the actions of their respective predecessors Yao and Jie, the first a great sage and the other a dreadful villain. The abundance of yin produced by the sadness felt by the common people at Yao’s death, and the abundance of yang produced by the joy felt by the common people when Jie was deposed and Tang became ruler, gave rise to the subsequent flood and drought in the reigns of Yu and Tang.