In the same chapter, Hsiin Tzu says: The sacrificial rites are the expres-sion of man s affectionate longing. They represent the height of piety and faithfulness, of love and respect. They represent also the completion of pro-priety and refinement. Their meaning cannot be fully understood except by the sages. The sages understand their meaning. Superior men enjoy their practice. They become the routine of the officer. They become the custom of the people. Superior men consider them to be the activity of man, while or-dinary people consider them as something that has to do with spirits and ghosts....They exist to render the same service to the dead as to the living, to render the same service to the lost as to the existing. What they serve has neither shape nor even a shadow, yet they are the completion of culture and refinement. With this interpretation, the meaning of the mourning and sacri-ficial rites becomes completely poetic, not religious.
There are other kinds of sacrifice besides those offered to ancestors. These Hsiin Tzu interprets from the same point of view. Tn his chapter titled "Trea-tise on Nature," one passage reads: "Why is it that it rains after people have offered sacrifice for rain? Hsiin Tzu said:'There is no reason for that. It is the same as if there had been rain without praying for it. When there is an eclipse of the sun and the moon, we make demonstrations to save them. When rain is deficient, we pray for it. And when there are important affairs, we divine before we reach any decision. We do these things not because we can thereby get what we want. They are simply a sort of decorum. The su-perior man considers them as a sort of decorum, while ordinary people con-sider them as having supernatural force. One will be happy if one considers them as a sort of decorum; one will not, if one considers them as having su-
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pernatural force."' (Ch. 17.)
We pray for rain, and divine before we make any important decision, be-cause we want to express our anxiety. That is all. If we were to take prayer as really being able to move the gods, or divination as really being able to make predictions about the future, this would result in superstition with all its consequences.
Hsiin Tzu is also the author of a Treatise on Music, in which he writes: Man cannot be without joy, and wheii there is joy, it must have a physical embodiment. When this embodiment does not conform to the right principle, there will be disorder. The early kings hated this disorder, and so they estab-lished the music of the Ya and ung Ltwo of the divisions of the Book of Odes ] to guide it. They caused its music to be joyful and not degenerate, and its beauty to be distinct and not limited. They caused it in its indirect and direct appeals, its complexity and simplicity, its frugality and richness, its rests and notes, to stir up the goodness in men s minds and to prevent evil feelings from gaining any foothold. This is the manner in which the early kings established music. " (Ch. 2.0.) Thus music, for Hsiin Tzu, functions as an instrument for moral education. This has been the prevailing Confucianist view of music.
Logical Theories
In the Hsiln-tzu there is a chapter titled "On the Rectification of Names." This subject is an old one in Confucianism. The term itself was originated by Confucius, as we have seen in chapter four. He said: "Let the ruler be ruler, the subject be subject; let the father be father and the son be son." (Analects, XII, 11.) Likewise Mencius said: "To be without the relationship of ruler and of father is to be like the beasts. (Mencius, IVb, 90 Because the interests of these two thinkers were purely ethical, their application of the rectification of names was likewise confined primarily to the sphere of ethics. Hsiin Tzu, however, lived in an age when the School of Names was flourish-ing. Hence his theory of the rectification of names possesses logical as well as ethical interest.
In his chapter, "On the Rectification of Names," Hsiin Tzu first describes his epistemological theory, which is similar to that of the later Mohists. He writes: "That in man by which he knows is L called the faculty ofj knowing. That in [the faculty of] knowing which corresponds [to external things] is called knowledge." (Ch. 2X) The faculty of knowing consists of two parts. One is what he calls the natural senses, such as those of the ears and eyes. The other is the mind itself. The natural senses receive impressions, and the mind interprets and gives meaning to them. Hsiin Tzu writes: "The mind gives meaning to impressions. It gives meaning to impressions, and on-ly then, by means of the ear, can sound be known; by means of the eye, can forms be known....When the five senses note something but cannot classify it,
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and the mind tries to identify it but fails to give it meaning, then one can only say that there is no knowledge.' (Ibid.)
As to the origin and use of names, Hsiln Tzu says: "Names were made in order to denote actualities, on the one hand so as to make evident the dis-tinctions between superior and inferior [in society], and on the other hand to distinguish similarities and differences. (Ibid.) That is to say, names were originated partly for ethical and partly for logical reasons.
As to the logical use of names, he says: 'Names are given to things. When things are alike, they are named alike; when different, they are named dif-ferently....The one who knows that different actualities have different names, and who therefore never refers to different actualities otherwise than by dif-ferent names, will not experience any confusion. Likewise he who refers to the same actualities should never use any other but the same names. (Ibid.)
Regarding the logical classification of names, he writes further: Although things are innumerable, there are times when we wish to speak of them all in general, so we call them 'things.' 'Things' is the most general term. We press on and generalize; we generalize arid generalize still more, until there is nothing more general. Then only we stop. There are times when we wish lo speak of one aspect, so we say birds and beasts. Birds and beasts is the great classifying term. We press on and classify. We classify and classify still more, until there is no more classification to be made, and then we stop." (Ibid.) Thus Hsiin Tzu distinguishes two kinds of names, the general and the classifying. The general name is the product of the synthetic process of our reasoning, while the classifying name is that of its analytic process.
All names are man-made. When they were in the process of invention, there was no reason why an actuality should be designated by one particular name rather than another. The animal that came to be known as ' dog, for example, might equally well have been called "cat" instead. Once, however, certain names came through convention to be applied to certain actualities, they could be attached to these and none other. As Hsiin Tzu explains: "There are no names necessarily appropriate themselves. Names were named by convention. But when the convention having been established, it has be-come customary, this is called an appropriate name." (Ibid)
He also writes: "Should a true King arise, he must certainly follow the an-cient terms and make the new ones. (Ibid) Thus the invention of new names and determination of their meanings is a function of the ruler and his government. Hsiin Tzu says: "When the kings had regulated names, the names were fixed and actualities distinguished. Their principles were thus able to be carried out, and their will could be known. They thus carefully led the people to unity. Therefore, the making of unauthorized distinctions between words, and the making of new words, so as thus to confuse the cor-rect nomenclature, cause the people to be in doubt, and bring much litiga-tion, was called great wickedness. It was a crime like that of using false cre-dentials or false measures. (Ibid.)
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Fallacies of Other Schools
Hsiin Tzu considered most of the arguments of the School of Names and the later Mohists to be based upon logical sophistries and so fallacious. He grouped them into three classes of fallacies.
The first is what he calls 'the fallacy of corrupting names with names." (Ibid.) In this class, he includes the Mohist argument that "to kill a robber is not to kill a man. Tins is because, according to Hsiin Tzu, the very fact of being a robber implies being a man, since by extension the category which bears the name "man includes the category which has the name "robber." When one speaks of a robber, therefore, one means by this a being who is at the same time a man.
The second class Hsiin Tzu calls "the fallacy of corrupting names with ac-tualities." (Ibid.) In this group he includes the argument that "mountains and abysses are on the same level, which is a rephrasing by Hsiin Tzu of Hui Shih's argument that "mountains and marshes are on the same level." Actu-alities, being concrete, are individual cases, while names, being abstract, represent general categories or rules. When one tries to disprove general rules by individual exceptions, the result is a corruption of the name by the actuality. Thus a particular abyss that happens to be located on a high mountain may indeed be on the same level as a particular mountain that happens to be on low land. But one cannot infer from this exceptional in-stance that all abysses are on the same level with all mountains.
The third class is what Hsiin Tzu calls "the fallacy of corrupting actuali-ties with names. (Ibid.) Here he includes the Mohist argument that "ox-and-horse are not horse, an argument which is the same in kind as Kung—sun Lung's statement that "a white horse is not a horse." If one examines the name of ox-and-horse, one sees that it is indeed not equivalent to that of the name horse. Yet as a matter of fact some of the creatures belonging to the group known as "ox-and-horse" are, as actualities, indeed horses.
Hsiin Tzu then concludes that the rise of all these fallacies is due to the fact that no sage-king exists. Were there to be such a sage-king, he would use his political authority to unify the minds of the people, and lead them to the true way of life in which there is no place or need for disputation and argument.
Hsiin Tzu here reflects the spirit of the troubled age of his time. It was an age in which men longed desperately for a political unification which would bring these troubles to an end. Such a unification, though in actual fact one of China only, was regarded, by these people, as equivalent to a unification of the whole world.
Among Hsiin Tzu s disciples, the two most famous were Li Ssu and Han Fei Tzu, both of whom were to have a great influence on Chinese history. Li Ssu later became Prime Minister of the First Emperor of the Ch'in dynasty, the man who finally forcibly unified China in 2.21 B.C. Together with his
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master, he labored not only for a political but an ideological unification as well, a movement which culminated in the Burning of the Books in 213 B.C. The other disciple, Han Fei Tzu, became a leading figure in the Legalist school which supplied the theoretical justification for this political and ideological unification. The ideas of this school will be described in the next chapter.
2.50. THE REALISTIC WING OF CONFUCIANISM: HSUN TZU
CHAPTER 14
HAN FEI TZU AND THE LEGALIST SCHOOL
1 HE feudalistic society of the early Chou dynasty operated according to two principles: one was that of the li (rituals, ceremonies, rules of conduct, mores); the other was that of the hsing (penalties, punishments). The li formed the unwritten code of honor governing the conduct of the aristocrats, who were known as chiin tzu (a term literally meaning son of a prince, princely man, or gentleman); the hsing, on the contrary, applied only to the people of ordinary birth who were known as shu jen (common men) or hsiao jen (small men). This is the meaning of the saying in the Li Chi (Book of Rites): "The li do not go down to the common people; the hsing do not go up to the ministers." (Ch. 10.)
Social Background of the Legalists
This was possible because the structure of Chinese feudalistic society was comparatively simple. Kings, princes, and feudal lords were all related to each other either by blood or by marriage. In theory the princes of each state were subordinate to the king, and the feudal lords within these states were in turn subordinate to their prince. But in actual fact, these nobles, having long inherited their rights from their ancestors, came in the course of lime to re-gard these rights as existing independently of their theoretical allegiance to their superiors. Thus the many states that belonged to the hegemony theoret-ically controlled by the central Chou King were in actual fact semi-indepen-dent, and within each of these states there were likewise many semi-inde-pendent "houses of lesser nobles. Being relatives, these various feudatories maintained social and diplomatic contacts, and transacted business, if any, according to their unwritten code of gentleman s agreements. That is to say, their conduct was governed by li.
The kings and princes at the top had no direct dealings with the common people. They left such matters to the lesser feudal lords, each of whom ruled the common people living within his own fief. Since such fiefs were usually
252. HAN FEI TZU AND THE LEGALIST SCHOOL
not large, their populations were limited. Hence the nobles were able in considerable measure lo rule the people under them on a personal basis. Punishments were applied to keep their subjects obedient. Thus we find that in early Chinese feudalistic society, relationships, both high and low, were maintained on a basis of personal influence and personal contact.
The distintcgration of this type of society in the later centuries of the Chou dynasty brought with it far-reaching social and political changes. The social distinctions between the class of princely men on the one hand and small men on the other were no longer so absolutely demarcated. Already in the time of Confucius, we sec how aristocrats somelimes lost their land and ti-tles, and how members of the common people, either by talent or good luck, succeeded in becoming socially and politically prominent. The old fixity of social classes was breaking down. Likewise, as time wore on, the territories of the larger states became ever larger through aggression and conquest. In order to carry on warfare or prepare for war, these states needed a strong government, thai is, a government with a high concentration of power. As a consequence, the structure as well as ihe functions of government became ever more complex than formerly.
