XXXVI. Virtue and Achievement Advancing Together: Avoiding the Split Between Inner Sagehood and Outward Achievement

The learning of the noble person in the pre-Qin context rarely separates the cultivation of the heart and nature entirely from the affairs of the world. Serving one's parents, befriending others, dwelling in one's community, engaging in governance, offering sacrifice, and undertaking military campaigns are all places where virtue is manifested. A person who, in solitude, feels himself perfectly good, and yet in shared affairs behaves corruptly at every turn, cannot be said to have formed virtue; a person whose outward achievement is brilliant, and yet who oppresses the people through deceit and force, likewise cannot be said to possess the achievement of the worthy.

Qian's knowing of the great beginning leans toward the clarity of virtue; Kun's bringing things to completion leans toward the substance of achievement. Being easy to know produces closeness, letting virtue endure; being easy to follow produces merit, letting achievement grow great. The whole chapter, in its tightly ordered sequence, links the inner and the outer together. Virtue is not the ornament of achievement, and achievement is not the reward of virtue. Virtue determines the direction of an undertaking; the undertaking realizes the social meaning of virtue.

The danger of virtue without achievement is that self-restraint turns into self-enclosure. Fearing the complexity of worldly affairs and unwilling to take on responsibility, one professes purity while, in fact, letting the unrighteous occupy positions of power. Though the Most High valued non-action, he did not approve of abandoning the world; his non-action is action free of private, reckless intent, so as to achieve leaving nothing undone. Master Zhuang held thoughts of avoiding harm and preserving one's whole life, and also held a profound wariness of the corruption of power -- and this should not be simply invoked to justify indolence.

The danger of achievement without virtue is that utility swallows direction. The ability to enrich the state and strengthen its army, if it turns the people into mere tools; the ability to argue persuasively and win debates, if it destroys all trust in covenants; the ability to accumulate wealth, if it ruins mountains and marshes and seizes the farming season -- all of these may produce momentary achievement, but not the achievement of the worthy. The pre-Qin School of Law and techniques of statecraft provided tools of governance, while the Confucian and Daoist classics continually asked what kind of world such tools ought to serve. If Qian's beginning is deviant, the stronger Kun's capability, the deeper the calamity.

True advancement of virtue and achievement together so often begins from small things. Completing an entrusted task on time is achievement; not deceiving the person who entrusted it is virtue. Teaching one's children ritual propriety is achievement; being reverent toward one's own parents is virtue. Governing and repairing water conservancy is achievement; not using the project to enrich oneself privately is virtue. Every action has both an inner motive and an outer result at once, and cannot be split into two unrelated worlds.

Virtue and achievement also protect each other. Virtue keeps a person, upon achieving success, from growing arrogant, from claiming possession, from excess; achievement keeps virtue from sinking into self-satisfied complacency, continually subjecting it to the test of reality. When an undertaking meets setback, virtue keeps a person from changing direction; when virtue is in doubt, actual responsibility carried out in turn helps a person know himself. The rubbing of Qian and Kun against one another is precisely the structure of a complete personality.