XXIV. How Knowing and Doing Correct One Another

Though Qian's knowing and Kun's doing are distinguished, they cannot be separated into two households. Knowing sets the direction for doing; doing lets knowing be tested. Whether an idea accords with the actual principle of things cannot be proven in words alone; once put into practice, the response of people and things reveals what was previously unseen. The result of doing then, in turn, enriches knowing, and prompts the next, better round of beginning. Knowing and doing rub against one another, and virtue and achievement are thereby renewed day by day.

The Master said, "To learn and, at due times, to practice what one has learned" -- learning inclines toward receiving knowledge, practice inclines toward repeated action. Learning without practice leaves what is known floating on the mouth and ear alone; practice without reflection may turn action into mere mechanism. He also said, "Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous," letting external learning and internal reflection correct one another. Pre-Qin Confucian learning never chose only one side, but demanded that hearing and seeing, reflection, and practice all communicate with one another.

Master Xun said that without climbing a high mountain, one does not know the height of Heaven; without approaching a deep ravine, one does not know the depth of the Earth. Direct experience can correct imagination. If one who governs the state does not know the hardship of farm labor, and issues orders based only on figures from the treasury, then knowing is severed from the actual thing; if one who discusses warfare does not observe terrain and morale, but only recites battle formations from memory, then doing is bound to fail. Hence the noble person studies broadly and daily examines himself against it -- hearing widely, and also reflecting upon his own conduct.

The Guanzi's emphasis on concrete matters of governance -- granaries, the advantages of terrain, the weighing of relative importance -- offers the Confucian virtuous intention a reference point in the completion of things. If benevolent governance cannot answer how grain is to be stored, how labor service is to be arranged, how flood and drought are to be relieved, it easily stops at good words alone; but technique without the direction of benevolence and righteousness likewise turns the people into resources to be manipulated. Setting the knowing of the great beginning alongside the doing of bringing things to completion allows virtue and technique to remain inseparable: virtue fixes the direction, technique accomplishes the task; technique is regulated by virtue, and virtue is made substantial through technique.

The scheming, probing, and testing that Master Guiguzi speaks of, skilled at discerning human feeling and the changes of affairs, can help one who acts to understand complex interactions. But cunning strategy especially needs to be corrected by the great beginning. If one has only the ability to accomplish things, without asking what is thereby accomplished, cleverness may become a calamity. Being able to persuade, to control others, to achieve victory -- these are all merely "capability"; whether they accord with righteousness, whether they can endure, is what determines whether they enter into the achievement of the worthy.

Within a single person's life, the cycle of knowing and doing can also dissolve self-deception. People often substitute "I know" for "I have done," and substitute an occasional act for virtue already formed. True knowing changes action; true doing deepens understanding. To know filial devotion and yet be unable to attend to one's parents' warmth in winter and coolness in summer, to inquire after their peace morning and evening, is not yet true knowing; to perform filial acts occasionally while the heart is constantly resentful is virtue not yet formed. Only by continually moving back and forth between knowing and doing can one move from forced effort to easy, natural conduct.