XIX. Ceaseless Generation Is Not an Increase in Number, but the Continuation of the Generations

The forming of male and female points toward ceaseless generation (shengsheng). Ceaseless generation is not merely an increase in the number of lives, but the transmission, across generations, of morality, ritual custom, skill, and memory. Parents bear and raise their children, and also teach them language and ritual propriety; the teacher transmits the Way and imparts learning, and later students in turn make their own discoveries; the ancient sage-kings established ritual propriety, and later ages adjusted it according to the time. Each generation both receives what already exists and initiates something for those who come after, so that every person stands, at once, in the position of both Qian and Kun.

Seen from the parents' side, generation is not possession. A child is born of its parents, and yet is not a mere instrument of the parents' private desire. To nurture and teach a child is to help him become fully himself as a person. If one demands only that a child replicate one's own inclinations, and does not allow him to establish himself according to righteousness, one turns the completion of a thing into the manufacture of a thing. Kun's bringing things to completion means letting each thing complete its own nature, not pressing the myriad things into a single mold. The earth generates the hundred grains, each with its own flavor and use; the household raises people, and should likewise let each one's talent and nature develop fittingly.

Seen from the children's side, receiving is likewise not passive enjoyment. One's very body, hair, and skin are received from one's parents; language and ritual custom are received from household and state; and having received these, one bears the responsibility of inheriting and refining them further. Filial devotion lies not only in support and provision, but in skillfully continuing the will of one's forebears and skillfully carrying forward their undertakings; if one's forebears erred, one must still remonstrate gently and correct the matter. Inheritance is not preserving old traces exactly as they are, but letting what accords with righteousness within them continue to grow, and letting what does not accord with righteousness cease to be passed on.

The Book of Documents' record that the Mandate of Heaven has no constancy, and that the rise and fall of dynasties is bound up with virtue and achievement, is likewise a kind of warning across the generations. What the ancestors accumulated in virtue cannot be permanently possessed on the strength of bloodline alone if their descendants turn tyrannical. The achievement of the ancient sage-kings was a beginning; the governance of those who inherited their position had to bring it to completion. A beginning without completion, and the foundation is sure to collapse. The people of Zhou often took the fall of Yin (Shang) as a warning to themselves, showing that the correct posture for inheriting a tradition is not self-satisfaction, but fearful self-examination and cultivation.

The transmission of learning is likewise so. That the Master "transmitted but did not create, and trusted in and loved antiquity" does not mean he lacked creativity, but that he placed creativity within inheritance. Editing and transmitting ritual and music, teaching according to each student's capacity, answering questions and discoursing on benevolence -- all of this gave the ancient Way new life in his own time. Master Meng, following him, further elaborated benevolence and righteousness, the kingly Way, and the nurturing of qi; Master Xun unfolded his thought from ritual and law, accumulated learning, and human community -- the two agreeing in some respects and differing in others. That pre-Qin thought is so rich is precisely because inheritance and creation rubbed against and stirred one another into motion, rather than following one single, rigid repetition.

Ceaseless generation also implies a responsibility toward those not yet seen. To fell every forest and drain every pond for fish today may yield much in the present, but leaves those who come after with no way to live; to destroy trust and good faith and indulge deception today means that even if later ages have laws, they must pay a tremendous price to rebuild order. True completion of a thing must be able to endure. The text that follows moves from ease and simplicity to the virtue and achievement of the worthy, already placing endurance at the very center. To complete something for only a moment is not worthy of being called a great completion; only what allows the springs of life to continue accords with Qian and Kun.