XVII. One Cold Season and One Hot Season: Opposite Seasons Together Complete the Year

Cold and heat are opposites, and yet together they complete a single year. Without cold, the gathering-in and storing cannot be accomplished; without heat, growth and nurturing are insufficient. If a person judges by bodily comfort alone, he will either resent the bitter cold or suffer from the fierce heat; but seen from the whole of ceaseless generation, each has its own office. Heaven and Earth do not take momentary comfort as their sole measure, but take, as their great measure, whether the myriad things can complete their growth, nurturing, gathering, and storing.

This is especially helpful for understanding fortune and misfortune. Some present suffering may be a necessary passage toward forming virtue and accomplishing a matter; some present pleasure may have ruin lying hidden within it. Cold is not necessarily misfortune, nor is heat necessarily fortune; one must look at the season one is in and the long-term function. Remonstrance, unpleasant to the ear, is like the cold, and yet it can check one's faults; flattery, pleasant to the ear, is like warmth, and yet it may nurture arrogance over time. Labor is hard, and yet it can support a family and complete one's work; boundless idle pleasure instead dissipates one's resolve and spirit. Hence the Yi does not judge fortune and misfortune directly by suffering and pleasure, but by whether an action accords with the season and completes things.

That there is one cold season and one hot season also shows that opposites do not occupy the same position at the same time, but come and go in succession. Harmony does not mean forcing summer heat in the depths of winter, nor forcing severe cold in the height of summer. Each season has its own dominant force, while the other lies hidden, waiting its turn to come. So it is with the firm and the yielding in human affairs: at the time for decisive action, firmness takes the lead; at the time for nurturing, yielding takes the lead. Only when principal and subordinate are clearly distinguished does one avoid confusion. So-called centrality (zhong) does not mean always taking an exact numerical half, but being cold when it is time to be cold and hot when it is time to be hot, each without excess or deficiency.

The seasonal awareness embodied in texts like the Monthly Ordinances (Yueling) was extremely concrete in pre-Qin life. Spring plowing, summer weeding, autumn harvest, winter storing; sacrifice, hunting, and corvée labor -- all had to take the season into account. If the people's farming season was seized upon, even a governmental order with lofty-sounding justification would still harm life. Master Meng's condemnation of making the people unable to plow and weed in order to support their parents places benevolent governance precisely on the ground of seasonal order. Benevolence is not vague good intention, but not disturbing the people's livelihood and not going against its rhythm.

The coming and going of cold and heat also teaches a person to bear flourishing and decline. One in the heat of summer, knowing cold is coming, prepares in advance to gather and store; one in the cold of winter, knowing spring is coming, does not despair at the present desolation. An age of order must prepare against disorder; an age of disorder must preserve the Way of order. In times of abundance, know frugality; in times of poverty, hold to one's resolve. The Most High said, "A thing that reaches its prime grows old," warning precisely that what reaches its height must decline, and one must not rely on strength alone. Master Zhuang regarded life and death as he did the four seasons, likewise settling grief and joy within the great transformation. The Confucian tradition does not, on this account, make light of the feelings attending life and death, and yet likewise demands that a person, amid grief and joy, know the Mandate of Heaven and fully carry out human relations.

For learning, cold and heat are also like manifestation and obscurity. Some people advance in virtue swiftly, their reputation growing day by day -- this is the season of summer's growth; some people are trapped in frustrated circumstance, quietly accumulating in silence -- this is the season of winter's storing. If one loves only prominence, one will act rashly when it is time to lie hidden; if one abandons oneself out of prolonged obscurity, one likewise loses the spring to come. The endurance of the worthy lies not in perpetual smooth success, but in the ability to hold to the Way through both cold and heat alike. When his ambition is realized, he extends his goodness to all under Heaven; when it is not, he cultivates himself and is made manifest to the world.