III. "The Low and the High Are Set Out": The World Reveals Its Order Through Position

Once Heaven and Earth are seen, the low and the high are set out. The single word "set out" (chen) makes space no longer an empty void, but a field within which positions unfold. Mountains and hills are high; rivers and marshes are low; ancestral temples have their arrangement of places; courts have their order. Within a single household there are father and son, elder and younger brother; within a single state there are ruler and minister, high and low. Pre-Qin ritual propriety (li) and righteousness so often begin from position not because the ancients knew only how to subjugate, but because a shared life must answer the question of who stands where, what each ought to do, and how each should treat the other. Without position, responsibility has nowhere to attach; if position falls into disorder, name and actuality drift apart from one another, and governance, human feeling, sacrifice, and warfare all lose their order.

Yet "the low and the high are set out; thus the noble and the humble take their places" must not be crudely reduced to the strong being noble and the weak being humble. Heaven is exalted and bestows; Earth is lowly and completes. If one looks only at the titles and not at the function, one will entirely miss the meaning of Qian and Kun completing one another. Earth occupies the lowly position, and yet it bears mountains and ranges, holds rivers and seas, generates the hundred grains, and nourishes all living creatures. Its "lowliness" is precisely its virtue of vastness and depth. The Most High said, "The reason the rivers and seas can be king of the hundred valleys is that they are good at lying below them," and also, "The highest good is like water; water benefits the ten thousand things without contending, and dwells in places that people disdain." Being good at lying below is not self-abasement, but the capacity to receive; because it can receive, it can become great; because it can hold, it can bring things to completion. Seen in this light, position has its high and low, but the depth of virtue cannot be judged by the surface appearance of position.

What ritual propriety (li) seeks to accomplish is likewise not to let those who occupy high position act willfully while those below stay silent. Those who occupy high position must be all the more reverent and cautious, for every word and act of theirs reaches many; those below also have a portion that cannot be taken from them, for the rectification of names must define both the upper and lower sides at once. "Let the ruler be a ruler, the minister a minister, the father a father, the son a son" -- each name carries responsibility within it, and is not merely a warrant for demanding obedience. When the Master discussed governance, he first required that the ruler fully carry out the Way of the ruler and the minister fully carry out the Way of the minister. If one occupies the ruler's position without benevolence, one has the name but not the substance; if one is a father without kindness, one likewise cannot demand a son's conduct on the strength of the father's position alone. Position makes responsibility visible; virtuous conduct makes position stand.

Master Meng discussed how the people are of the highest worth, the altars of soil and grain next, and the ruler the lightest, and also said that one who wins the hearts of the multitude of farmers becomes Son of Heaven. This does not abolish position, but asks on what ground the highest position stands at all. The position of ruling all under Heaven cannot be gained by force alone; it must be in communication with the people's hearts and with the Mandate of Heaven. One who loses the people's hearts loses all under Heaven; one who is cruel to his people, though he occupies a high position, has already ruined the very root by which that high position stood. In pre-Qin political thought, the Mandate of Heaven was never a warrant fixed once and for all, never to be altered; the Book of Documents repeats again and again that "August Heaven has no favorites -- it assists only virtue," precisely testing position against virtue and achievement. Once noble and humble have their places, the question immediately arises whether name-position and virtue-position truly correspond.

Master Xun (Xunzi) laid particular stress on distinction (fen). If people form groups without distinction, they contend; contention brings disorder; disorder brings separation; separation brings weakness. Human beings are capable of forming groups, and groups are capable of accomplishing things, but communal life must have distinction; distinction does not sever the multitude from one another, but allows different talents, labors, and responsibilities to coordinate with one another. The farmer tends the fields, the artisan fashions implements, the scholar discourses on the Way, the one who governs orders the multitude -- each has his own office, and all are threaded through by righteousness. If everyone contends for the same position and seeks the same benefit, with no one bearing the corresponding labor, the community cannot endure. Hence "position" has the function of ending contention, and also the merit of uniting the group.

Yet if distinction departs from righteousness, it turns into partiality; if position departs from virtue, it turns into usurpation and excess. The setting-out of the low and the high comes from the great order of Heaven and Earth; positions among human beings must model themselves on how Heaven and Earth nourish one another, and cannot model themselves merely on the outward form of above and below. Heaven occupies the high place, yet does not grow arrogant over its height; Earth occupies the low place, yet does not abandon itself because of its lowliness. Heaven bestows and Earth generates, each fully carrying out its own Way, so that the ten thousand things each find their proper place. If, among human beings, those above know only how to take tribute while those below cannot fulfill their own lives, this does not accord with Qian and Kun. True nobility lies in being able to bear heavy responsibility, to bestow benefit, and to bring the multitude to completion; true position lies in name and actuality corresponding to one another, in those above and those below nourishing one another. Reading "the noble and the humble take their places" in this way, one sees both the order and the virtuous conditions on which that order depends.