The river flowed on unhurried, tracing its way alongside the crude embankment; near the levee and the fields, houses and small threshing grounds had begun to appear here and there, groves of trees planted among them. Not far off, along the road leading toward the market, travelers passed by, occasionally glancing this way. Ning Yi led He Wen toward a small compound near the riverbank.
“…Using commerce and warfare to drive the development of natural philosophy, using the advance of productive strength to give the people of this realm the chance to begin reading—that’s certainly the first step we must take. And the final destination of this path is to see the common people come to grasp reason and logic, to make up for what top-down reform alone can never accomplish, so that oversight from the bottom up can absorb the accumulated vested interests and negative factors that any society inevitably produces. There is, of course, a great deal of road left to travel before we get there.”
Ning Yi smiled as he spoke. “My wife, Liu Xigua, is a great believer in returning power to the individual. She’s been trying to get the people of the Overlord Blade Battalion to determine their own fates through self-directed choice and rational voting. Of course, after all this time, it’s still fair to say the whole thing remains only in its earliest, sprouting stage. The people of the Overlord Blade Battalion trust her, and go along with whatever she tries—but even she herself has no real confidence that this kind of self-determination will lead to good outcomes; the results could just as easily go the other way. I’m not particularly enthusiastic about self-directed voting at this stage myself, and we argue about it often. When she runs out of arguments, she resorts to hitting me… though of course she can’t actually beat me in a fight. Still, it’s not exactly good for household harmony.”
Ning Yi’s tone was lighthearted, and He Wen found himself smiling as well—having spent three years in the Black Banner, he understood well enough just what kind of fighting skill that particular lady of the Overlord Blade Battalion, Liu Xigua, actually possessed.
“The real key to enabling people to make the right choices isn’t reading, and it isn’t even knowledge itself. A man could recite every scrap of knowledge in the world by heart and still not necessarily be capable of making a sound choice. The key to sound decision-making lies in logic. Confucianism—or really, any body of learning—in its early stages of development, could never explain every principle to every single person, and so it relied more on establishing conventional, taken-for-granted concepts instead. Be a good person. Uphold morality. ‘When righteousness is lost, there is ritual propriety. Ritual, indeed, is the wearing thin of loyalty and good faith, and the beginning of chaos.’ Goodness, morality—are these matters of ritual, or of righteousness…?”
As Ning Yi spoke, He Wen’s expression had already begun to darken. “Mr. Ning, this is going too far into heresy! Morality is the very foundation on which a person stands—without morality, how would a man differ from a beast!”
“And why must we be different from beasts!?” Ning Yi shot him a sharp look. “Suppose I decide today to be a beast, not a man—will lightning strike me down from the heavens for it? Why must a man be good, why must he hold to morality—you all say it as though it were simply self-evident, beyond question! This is the final question standing before true logic! If morality really were self-evident, inherent in us from birth, why would it need to be taught and learned at all, why would it need to be sought through ritual propriety?”
He Wen’s expression darkened further, his brow furrowing deeply; he came to a stop where he stood. “Well then—I would very much like to hear Mr. Ning’s answer to that!” Having come into the Black Banner army, he knew well enough that mere eloquence would never be enough to win Ning Yi over, and after three years in his company, he had, in truth, come to hold the man in a certain degree of admiration as well. This time, he had no great appetite for a war of words. As Ning Yi himself had said, however impressive Confucianism might be, it had, after all, run into real problems—and no matter how eloquently He Wen might extol its greatness, none of it would ever touch the core of what Ning Yi was actually arguing. He Wen knew he was soon to leave, and had meant simply to understand what was on Ning Yi’s mind before he went, without much appetite left for argument for its own sake. And yet this particular question—why be good, why hold to morality at all—had struck at something close to the very core of what he believed, and now, in turn, his own resolve hardened.
Ning Yi turned back, standing there, and spoke slowly, word by word. “The ultimate purpose of being good, of upholding morality, is that doing so protects everyone’s long-term interests, and prevents the whole cycle of mutual benefit from collapsing.”
He Wen fell silent for a moment, then gave a cold laugh. “So in this world, there is nothing but self-interest, in the end.”
“Since Mr. He seems wary of the word ‘interest,’ let’s use ‘need’ instead, if you prefer. As people move through this world, their needs aren’t only for money—there’s also peace of mind, and the fulfillment of one’s own sense of worth. Ever since ancient people first came together to form societies, the very essence of cooperation has always been the satisfaction of humanity’s many different needs. Some needs are short-term, some long-term, and in order for cooperation between people to endure over the long run, those you would call sages worked out, over time, the various principles that people needed to follow in dealing with one another. As things developed further, people gradually came to recognize more and more of these conventional rules that needed to be observed—what we call morality.”
“Confucianism, in its earlier history, could never reach every single person with a full explanation of these principles, and so it presented them instead as things not to be debated, simply to be followed. For thousands of years, people truly came to feel these things needed no discussion at all. But the problem this creates is this: if one day I decide I no longer want to be a good person, no longer wish to hold to morality, will heaven come down to punish me for it? I might even gain more, in the short term, by abandoning it. And little by little, I come to believe that benevolence, righteousness, morality—all of it is nothing but empty illusion.”
Having said this, Ning Yi turned and walked ahead. “The morality of the past taught countless people to be good. Fine—now being good has become an unquestioned given, and the moment an ordinary person catches even the slightest whiff of something ‘bad,’ they immediately reject the whole thing outright. It’s just as I said before—when two interest groups stand opposed to one another, each calling the other wicked, each accusing the other of chasing money, can an ordinary person really be expected to make the best possible choice between them? Say a paper mill’s pollution comes to light, and someone speaks up to warn that it will lead to serious trouble—and we say, this man is a villain, so of course whatever a villain says must be worthless too, no need to think about it any further. Just as I said before, an ordinary person whose basic understanding of the world is wrong to this degree—whether the choices they make turn out right or wrong becomes, in the end, entirely a matter of chance.”
“Once we’re able to ask this question at all—once the relationship between morality and being a good person is made to depend on each individual’s own reasoning, rather than simply being handed down—then of course people become capable of making better choices. Under present conditions, whatever allows a society’s shared benefit to keep circulating for longer, more sustainably, is simply the better choice. At the very least, they won’t be so easily confused by that kind of all-or-nothing nonsense.”
As he spoke, the two of them walked into the compound by the riverbank. He Wen knew this particular compound belonged to the Jishan chamber of commerce, though he had never visited it before. Stepping inside, he found it an ordinary three-courtyard compound; several people who looked like accountants moved about outside, and there seemed to be a meeting room in the courtyard, along with several working offices.
Ning Yi pointed toward the meeting room. “We’ve held several discussions in there, about the principles of game theory as they apply to market development. One of the core ideas of game theory is this: in a market made up of countless individuals, when everyone is able to consider the good of the industry as a whole, the average value everyone gains is at its highest. Society works the same way—when everyone within a society does their best to uphold morality, the benefit each individual person can gain is, in fact, at its greatest. Later on, we hope to be able to prove this understanding through mathematical methods—it’s substantial enough, I think, to serve as a foundational theory for an entire society.”
As Ning Yi said this, He Wen still hadn’t quite managed to follow him fully, but saw him shake his head again regardless. “Still, a society’s development tends not to follow the truly optimal system, but rather a second-best one. For now, we can only treat it as an illustrative theory—it’s not an easy thing to actually achieve, Mr. He. This way, if you please…” What sounded, in this last remark, almost like Ning Yi talking to himself, seemed not even meant for He Wen to fully follow.
They passed through the central courtyard and into the innermost one, where the afternoon sunlight fell quietly. This courtyard was quiet, with hardly anyone about. Ning Yi opened the door of the middle building, revealing a room lined with bookshelves; in the center, three desks had been pushed together, with several stacks of manuscript paper weighed down with stone paperweights, and brushes, ink, and inkstones set off to one side—clearly a working space of some kind.
“Sit wherever you like. Not many people come through here. Since I came back last autumn, whenever I visit Jishan, I call in a few trusted young people with sharp minds, and have them think through and write out some examination questions…”
Ning Yi gestured toward the manuscript paper on the desk, and He Wen picked it up to look it over.
“As I said, I don’t trust the choices ordinary people make right now, because they don’t understand logic—so we need to cultivate logic in them. The Confucian ideal of the gentleman, and what we now call democracy, both ultimately aim at the same thing: enabling people to govern themselves. All learning, in the end, arrives at the same destination by different roads. The most glorious thing in this world is the light of human nature itself. What my wife Liu Xigua envisions is a future in which the people can, of their own accord, choose the ruler they want—or set the ruler aside entirely and choose the chancellor they want instead. Which, in the end, hardly matters; those are only details. What truly matters is how we get there.”
“So—an examination.” Ning Yi raised a hand. “What you’re holding is the passport to citizenship… or rather, its discarded drafts, its earliest rough forms. The questions we’re drafting need to be relatively complex, dialectical, and able to point, with reasonable accuracy, toward the underlying patterns by which society actually functions. I won’t pretend that simply shouting slogans makes someone a good person—we have no use for someone that simple-mindedly good taking part in running the nation. What we need are people who understand the complex laws governing how the world works, who won’t grow discouraged, won’t fall into extremes, people who can find the middle path amid these questions… Of course, that’s not something we can achieve right away.”
He Wen leafed through the papers, and came across a passage describing “pollution.” Ning Yi turned and walked toward the doorway, gazing out at the light beyond. “If we truly can defeat the Jurchens, if the realm can be stabilized, we’ll build countless factories to meet people’s needs, let them learn to read, and eventually, let them begin voting. What exactly they’re voting on doesn’t matter much—but before any vote, they must pass an examination first. The questions—let’s say ten of them, for now—will be exactly this kind of question, pointing toward complexity. Anyone who can’t answer them will have no right to vote as a citizen.”
He tilted his head to glance at He Wen. “This examination can be discussed, even studied together in advance—people could be allowed to see the questions a full year before the exam itself, and argue over them the whole time. That way, the very first generation to take it, so long as they can write numbers at all, will have the chance to gain the rights of citizenship, to have their voice heard in the affairs of the state. And every five or ten years after that, we can swap out a few of the questions to reflect how society has developed, so that everyone in society comes to understand just how complex these questions really are, comes to grasp, as best they can, the basic model by which a nation actually operates—letting it seep into every classroom in every school, into every corner of the culture, until it becomes the very foundation of the nation itself.”
“And these questions—they’ll need to be refined and refined again, argued over countless times, distilled from the collective wisdom and cultural insight of everyone involved…”
He Wen gripped the papers tightly, looked up, and said through clenched teeth: “Questions like these will lead everyone to speak only of self-interest. They will throw morality and ritual propriety entirely out of balance. They will become the seed of chaos and ruin!”
“Yes, of course it will cause chaos,” Ning Yi nodded. “Confucian society is built on a foundation of sentiment, reason, and law, and that foundation has already sunk deep into every person’s heart. But a true society of Great Unity must be built on reason and law as its base, with sentiment playing only a supporting role. If everyone speaks only of their own short-term, narrow self-interest, chaos will certainly spiral out of control—but if every one of these questions points instead toward long-term interest, then its core will in fact be reason, law, and sentiment together! The ‘Four Peoples,’ ‘equality,’ ‘natural philosophy,’ ‘the spirit of contract’—what they all share in common is that they’re built on a foundation of reason, where every measure of gain and loss can be clearly analyzed. Mr. He, defeating the sentiment, reason, and law lodged in every single person’s heart—that is my true purpose.”
“It will throw the realm into chaos, it will surely throw the realm into chaos…” He Wen said in a low, heavy voice. “It’s obvious enough—why would you still—”
“Of course it will cause chaos.” Ning Yi nodded again. “If I fail, then all that’s lost is a state that might have lasted a hundred or two hundred years before changing hands anyway—hardly something to mourn. But this longing for self-governance among the people will be carved into the heart of every single person, and Confucianism’s castration of the human spirit will never again be complete. It will keep flaring up, again and again, like scattered sparks catching fire, and if the people’s desire for self-determination is to be built on a foundation of reason, then whether I succeed or fail, I will still have laid down the starting point for real transformation. And so long as the study of natural philosophy survives, this transformation will never be a castle built on empty air.”
“Every past generation, when it came to reform, always worked from the top down. And to work from the top down inevitably means one faction turning against another. Only when the interests of the people themselves are tied directly to their own hands—when they can genuinely and effectively defend their own rights—can the true ideal of the gentleman who associates without forming cliques actually come to pass. At that point, as an official trying to accomplish something, the people will lend you their strength; they will become part of your righteous cause of their own accord, lending you their strength to defend their own interests, without demanding excessive reward in return. But all of this only becomes possible once a critical mass of the population has come to understand reason.”
He took a breath. “He Wen, that you can see clearly through all this complexity and chaos is, of course, a good thing. But is the Confucian path really still worth walking? Beyond these mountains, what you’ll find waiting for you is an ever-larger dead end. Confucius spoke of repaying grievance with uprightness, of ruler as ruler, minister as minister, father as father, son as son; he criticized Zilu for accepting an ox as a gift; he said that if everyone understood reason, if everyone spoke with reason, the world would grow better. For nearly two thousand years, out of sheer necessity, we’ve made do with expedients born of insufficient productive capacity. Natural philosophy will drive that productive capacity forward, and offer, at last, the possibility of no longer needing such expedients. It’s time to turn back onto the right path.”
“My students are quite capable when it comes to practical knowledge, but still lacking when it comes to the deeper kind of learning. These questions they’ve drafted aren’t very good yet. Someday, once the Jurchens are defeated, I could gather every great scholar and learned man in the realm to help discuss and draft them properly—but we might as well start the work now regardless. There are already some Confucian scholars within the Chinese Army working on this, mostly at Hedeng, but that’s certainly not enough. It will take ten, twenty years of refinement. I’m asking for ten good questions. If you can work this out for yourself, you’re welcome to stay and help draft them. And if you can’t quite work it out, but still wish to stay, for Jingmei’s sake, you’re welcome to do your utmost instead to argue against them, to debate and refute every one of the people drafting these questions, as thoroughly as you can.”
“And if neither of those possibilities appeals to you,” Ning Yi paused, “then go home. I wish you luck finding the true Confucian path.”
He Wen held the papers up, shaking them slightly in the air, his gaze severe. Ning Yi smiled. “Before you leave, I imagine you wanted to know what exactly I’ve been scheming all this time. Well, I’ve told you honestly enough—think it over carefully. And if you ever want to prove me wrong, you’re always welcome to come and try.” Having said this, someone was already signaling from the doorway that he was needed at his next meeting. “I still have matters to attend to, so I’ll take my leave now. If it’s at all possible… be good to Jingmei.”
Ning Yi left the room. Outside, members of the Chinese Army were already waiting for He Wen. The afternoon sunlight streamed in through the door and the lattice windows, dust dancing in the light, as he sat on a stool in the room, flipping through those rough, awkwardly worded questions. Because of the complexity Ning Yi demanded, these questions tended to read as dense and difficult, often bearing the marks of repeated corrections; among the manuscript pages were also some abandoned drafts, unfinished lines of text:
“…From the basic tenets of natural philosophy, and from observation of the world and society in which humankind lives, we may derive this fundamental principle: within the society in which humanity dwells, every conscious, deliberate transformation arises from the actions of each and every person who makes up that society. Guided by this fundamental principle, in pursuit of the fairness and justice that human society can genuinely, practically achieve and collectively seek, we hold that every person is born possessing the following legitimate and lawful rights: first, the right to survival…”
The passage seemed to have been written down on impulse, the handwriting hurried and messy—perhaps because it read like so much dense, awkward nonsense, whoever had written it had simply abandoned it partway through. He Wen skimmed through this and the other discarded drafts as well, his mind a jumbled mess. These things, it was plain to see, could bring about a catastrophe of tremendous scale. He set the papers down, and found himself thinking that Confucianism might truly be destroyed by all this…
Walking out of the compound, he returned to the school, gathered up his belongings, and decided he would not continue teaching there any longer. That evening, as he walked home carrying his books, someone lunged out from the side and struck him hard across the face. Skilled as He Wen was in the martial arts, his mind was in such disarray at that moment that he only managed a weak block, and was knocked flat to the ground.