The Yangist teachingsA philosophy entitling members of the ruling class to resist the overwhelming moral pressures to take office remained a permanent necessity in Imperial China. Yangism is the earliest, to be superseded in due course by Taoism and, from the early centuries A.D., by Buddhism. But Yangism differs from its successors in having nothing mystical about it. It starts from the same calculations of benefit and harm as does Mohism, but its question is not 'How shall we benefit the world?' but 'What is truly beneficial to man?', more specifically 'What is truly beneficial to myself?' Is it wealth and power, as the vulgar suppose? Or the life and health of the body and the satisfaction of the senses? The Mohists cared only for the useful, the Yangists ask 'Useful for what?'.Of the three doctrines ascribed to Yang Chu in Huai-nantzu, 'Keeping one's nature intact' introduces the concept of human nature into Chinese philosophy ( Confucius' "By nature we are near to each other, by habituation we diverge"9 is a sociological rather than a philosophical observation). Hsing "nature' is a noun derived from the verb sheng 'be born, live' (used causatively, 'generate'). It is graphically distinguished from it by the addition of the 'heart' radical, which in pre-Han texts may however have been supplied by later graphic standardisation. Even in the graphically standardised texts available to us the radical is indifferently included or omitted in such phrases as 'keep fife/nature intact', 'nourish life/nature', 'harm life/nature', which belong to the ordinary terminology in which questions of health had been discussed since far back in the Chou.10 For the Yangist, hsing is primarily the capacity, which may be injured by excess or by damage from outside, to live out the term of life which Heaven has destined for man."It is the nature of water to be clear; mud dirties it, so it fails to be clear. It is man's nature to live out his term;other things disturb him, so he fails to live out his term. A 'thing' is a means to nourish one's nature, not something one uses one's nature to nourish. Of the confused among the people of this age, most are using their natures to nourish other things, which is failing toknow the weighty from the light. If you don't know the weighty from the fight, the weighty is deemed light and the fight weighty." ('Life as Basic')"Therefore the sage's attitude to sounds, sights and tastes is that when beneficial to his nature he chooses them, when harmful to his nature he refuses them. This is the Way of 'keeping one's nature intact'." ( 'Life as Basic')'Therefore the sage controls the myriad things in order to keep intact what he has from Heaven. If what is from Heaven remains intact the spirit is harmonious, the eye and ear clear, the nose and mouth sensitive, the 360 joints all supple." ( 'Life as Basic')To injure health by excess or risk life to multiply possessions is to forget that things are only means to the life generated in us by Heaven; one's possessions are replaceable, one's fife is not. As for the second doctrine ascribed to Yang Chu, 'protecting one's genuineness' (chen), Confucius is presented as asking the old fisherman about it." 'Let me ask what you mean by "genuine".''The genuine is the most quintessential, the most sincere. What fails to be quintessential and sincere cannot move others. Thus forced tears however sorrowful fail to sadden, forced rages however formidable do not strike awe, forced affection however much you smile will not be returned. Genuine sorrow saddens without uttering a sound, genuine rage strikes awe before it bursts out, genuine affection is returned before you smile." ( 'The Old Fisherman')Confucius is denounced for preferring the ceremonial to the genuine."Ceremony is what worldly custom has manufactured. The genuine is what we use to draw on Heaven, it is spontaneous and irreplaceable. Therefore the sage, taking his standard from Heaven, values the genuine and is untrammelled by custom. The fool does the opposite;incapable of taking his standard from Heaven he frets about man, ignorant of how to value the genuine he timidly lets himself be altered by custom, and so remains unsatisfied." ( The Old Fisherman')As for the third doctrine, 'not letting the body be tied by other things, the extreme example of endangering oneself by involvement with another thing is possession of a state or the Empire itself. The Yangist may judge it safe to accept a throne (in practice of course it would be an office), but may also prefer to renounce it rather than endanger his own life or the lives of other people. His principle that life is more important than any possession leads him to put the lives of the people before the advantages to himself of possessing the state. An example is Tan-fu, an ancestor of the Chou, who renounced Pin rather than endanger his people by fightingthe invading Ti."'To send to their deaths the sons and younger brothers of those with whom I dwell is more than I could bear. Get on as best you can here, all of you. What difference does it make whether you are subjects to myself or to the Ti? Besides, I have heard that one does not let the means of nourishing do harm to what they nourish.''He departed staff in hand, and the people followed in procession behind him. Then he founded a state under Mount Ch'i. The Great King Tan-fu may be pronounced capable of honouring life. One capable of honouring life, though rich and noble, does not let what nourishes do harm to his person, though poor and lowly does not let a benefit be a tie to the body." ( 'Be Aware of What It Is For', also in 'Yielding the Throne')The more characteristic case is the refusal of a throne for the sake of one's own health. But even here the preference for life over possessions is assumed to extend to the lives of others, with the paradoxical consequence that the man least likely to want the state is the best man to rule it."Yao resigned the Empire to Tzu-chou Chih-fu, who replied:'It might not be a bad idea to make me Emperor. However, just now I have an ailment which is worrying me. I am going to have it treated, and have no time now to bother about the Empire.'"The Empire is the weightiest thing of all, but he would not harm his life for the sake of it, and how much less for any other thing! Only the man who cares nothing for the Empire deserves to be entrusted with the Empire." ( 'Valuing Life', also in 'Yielding the Throne').Fidelity to one's nature, genuineness, not being tied by possessions, are all themes which pass into Taoism; even the thought that the man who puts his own life before the Empire is the best man to rule it reappears as a typical Taoist paradox in Lao-tzu.15 But in philosophical Taoism health and life are nourished by not interfering with spontaneity by calculations of benefit and harm, whileYangist thinking is a meticulous weighing of means and ends. Ends, which in Mohism as we saw tend to disappear from sight,16 are discussed with the verb wi 'do for, do for the sake of'. Thus the selfishness of which Mencius accuses Yang Chu is wi wo 'doing for my own sake'. ' Robber Chih' has a debate between a Confucian who claims to "do for the sake of behaving well" and a worldly man who accuses him of "doing for the sake of reputation" and describes himself as "doing for the sake of benefit"; a Yangist then criticises both for "neglecting what doing is for and making a human sacrifice of oneself for what it is not for". The L Spring and Autumn has an essay on the same theme."One's person is what doing is for the sake of, the Empire is a means to doing for the sake of it. Be fully aware of what something is for, and what is weightier and what lighter will be grasped. Suppose we have a man who cuts off his own head in exchange for a cap, or executes his own person in exchange for a coat; the world will certainly think him deluded. Why? A cap is a means to adorn the head, a coat is a means to adorn the person. If you execute the adorned to get the means of adornment you do not know what it is for." ('Be Aware of What It Is For'.)We have noticed that Confucius seems not to think in terms of choice between alternatives. But with the appearance of rival doctrines choice moves to the conceptual foreground. The word ch' 'take', when used in explicit or implicit contrast with words for 'refuse', is regularly translatable by 'choose'. The estimating of 'heavier' and 'lighter' alternatives implies the image of balancing on scales also familiar in the West. The metaphor of the crossroads, the absence of which Fingarette notices in the Analects,20 turns up in an anecdote told variously of Mo-tzu and of Yang Chu. Hsntzu cites it in connexion with respect or neglect for merit in appointing ministers." Yang Chu wailed at the forked road saying: 'Isn't this where you take a half step wrong and wake up a thousand miles astray?'. Grievously he bewailed it. This too is a fork to glory and disgrace, safety and danger, survival and ruin, far more grievous than the fork in the road."The supposed egoism of Yang ChuIt is by now plain that the Yangist does not think of himself as Mencius sees him, as a selfish man who prefers his own comfort to taking office and benefiting the people. He can justly claim to be concerned for life in general, not just his own; the 'Discourse on Swords', for example, is a protest against the useless bloodshed of the swordfighting enjoyed by rulers as a spectator sport. There is however something a little shifty about that dictum "Only the man who cares nothing for the Empire deserves to be entrusted with the Empire". If not a principled egoist, the Yangist is at any rate an individualist concerned to benefit his own person and leave others to do the same."The authentic nature of the Dao consists in safeguarding one's owb person. Its fringes and leftovers for ruling a state, its dirt and weeds for ruling the Empire." ('Valuing Life')22"If one estimates the trouble something will cost, anticipates reverses, judges it harmful to one's nature, and therefore refuses to accept it, that is not out of a need for praise and repute. When Yao and Shun abdicated the throne it was not out of benevolence to the world, they wouldn't for the sake of vainglory injure life. When Shan Chan and Hs Yu would not accept the offer of the throne, it was no empty gesture of humility, they would not by taking on its tasks injure themselves. All these men took the beneficial course and refused the harmful, and if the world cites them as examples of men of excellence, by all means let us give them the credit, but it was not to win praise and repute that they did it." (' Robber Chih').23That Confucians and Mohists would be bound to see Yangists as preachers of selfishness shows up clearly in a dialogue put in the mouths of Yang Chu and a disciple Meng Sun-yang and Mo-tzu's chief disciple Ch'in Ku-li, which survives in the ' Yang Chu' chapter of Lieh-tzu ( C. A. D. 300). In this late book Yang Chu is used as spokesman of a hedonism which prefers the full enjoyment of the moment to length of life, but the present dialogue is one of several episodes borrowed from earlier sources and seems to be Mohist in origin. As in Mencius' denunciation of Yang Chu, the conventional posing of the issue as between a part of the body and an externalpossession is sharpened to the extreme case, whether to exchange a single hair for the whole world." Ch'in Ku-li asked Yang Chu: 'If you could help the whole world by the loss of a hair off your body, would you do it?''The world would surely not be helped by a single hair.''Supposing it did help, would you do it?'Yang Chu did not answer him. Meng Sun-yang said:'You have not fathomed what is in the Master's heart. Let me say it. Supposing for a bit of your skin you could get a thousand in gold, would you give it?''I would.''Supposing that by cutting off a limb at the joint you could win a state, would you do it?'Ch'in Ku-li was silent for a while.'That one hair matters less than skin', said Meng Sun-yang, 'and skin less than a limb, is plain enough. However, go on adding to the one hair and it amounts to as much as skin, go on adding more skin and it amounts to as much as one limb. A single hair is certainly one thing among the myriad parts of the body, how can one treat it lightly?'"Here the Mohist speaks of "helping the whole world", the Yangist of "winning a state", but neither quibbles over the difference. Both mean the same thing, the achievement of political power which is on the one hand the only means of benefiting the people in general, on the other hand the supreme goal of personal ambition. Yang Chu's principle that one's body is more important than the greatest of the external things which are used to nourish it forbids him, when the Mohist has pushed him into a corner, to say thathe would give a hair to benefit the world by good government. Yang Chu is embarrassed, but his disciple recovers the initiative by forcing the Mohist to admit his reluctance to sacrifice a limb for the opportunity to benefit a state.But what Mencius and Ch'in Ku-li see as Yangist selfishness is very far from being a principled egoism. One may indeed raise the question whether Chinese thought ever poses the problem of philosophical egoism as it is understood in the West. Some translators, including myself in the past, have translated the phrase wi wo applied by Mencius to Yang Chu by 'egoism' instead of 'selfishness'. But one has the impression that Chinese thinkers perceive persons as inherently social beings who are more or less selfish rather than as isolated individuals who will be pure egoists unless taught morality. This is suggested, for example, by one of the five dialogues of Mo-tzu and a certain Wu-ma-tz who declares that "To ignore the men of today and praise the former kings is to praise rotten bones" and explicitly defends selfishness."Wu-ma-tzu said to Mo-tzu:'I am different from you, I am incapable of concern for everyone. I am more concerned for men of Tsou than of Yeh, of Lu than of Tsou, of my district than of Lu, of my family than of my district, for my parents than for the rest of the family, for my own person than for my parents, because I judge by nearness to myself. If you hit me it hurts, if you hit someone else it doesn't. Why should it be what doesn't hurt that I ward off rather than what does? Therefore, by existence of myself, there are occasions for killing someone else on account of myself, none for killing myself on account of a benefit.''Are you going to hide your morality?', said Master Motzu,'or tell others about it?'.'Why should I hide my morality? I shall tell others about it.''In that case, if one man, ten men, the whole world, are persuaded by you, then one man, ten men, the whole world, will wish to kill you to benefit themselves. If one man, ten men, the whole world, are not persuaded by you, then one man, ten men, the whole world, will wish to kill you as a practitioner of dangerous tenets. If whether persuaded or not they wish to kill you, it's a case of "What gets you hanged is your own mouth"; you are the one who by establishing it as a norm gets yourself killed.'"To whom is your tenet beneficial?', Master Mo-tzu added.'If as beneficial to no one you refuse to say it, you might as well not have a mouth.'"Mo-tzu, anticipating the paradoxes of self-reference which interested the Later Mohists,27 sees a contradiction in preaching selfishness: to affirm the principle publicly is to disobey it. Wu-ma-tzu's arguments draw a clear line between my own pains which hurt me and other people's which do not, and could be used in favour of a true egoism. The striking thing however is that he is using them to defend a relative selfishness; he has a 'morality' (yi) which prescribes doing more or less to people according to their distance from himself. It would be Confucianism if it were not for that final step of preferring himself to his parents.Mo-tzu is credited with another argument against selfishness, set in the characteristic Yangist form, balancing parts of the body against external possessions. If this and the Wu-ma-tzu dialogue are genuine, doctrines associated with Yang Chu go back to 400 B. C. or earlier. It is likely however that the Mo-tzu dialogue chapters contain dramatisations of issues facing the school after their founder's death."In the myriad affairs nothing is to be valued above the right. Suppose you tell a man 'I'll give you a cap and shoes if you let me cut off your hands and feet', will he do it? Certainly he will not. Why? Because cap and shoes are less valuable than hands and feet. If you continue 'I'll give you the Empire if you let me execute your person', will he do it? Certainly he will not. Why? Because the Empire is less valuable than one's person."One is startled to see Mo-tzu apparently conceding the whole Yangist case. But there is one more step to go. "One will fight to the death over a single word, which is the right being more valuable than one's own person. Therefore I say: 'In the myriad affairs nothing is to be valued above the right'."This answer may be unexpected, but the assumption behind it deserves pondering. One might be inclined to object that the man who risks his life to avenge an insult is motivated by pride, which is egoistic, not by a moral principle. But his pride is stirred because he accepts that he would be justly despised as a coward if he refuses to do the socially prescribed thing for a man in his position. On what egoistic calculation can he prefer death to shame as merely an unpleasant emotion? The example is well chosen, as a moral reaction likely to be more rather than less common in a state of moral anarchy. It seems that in one way or another we cannot escape valuing life below yi, 'the right', the word which when used of a conception of the right we have been translating 'morality'. This connects with a problem we noted earher, why the Mohist conceives the primaeval war of all against all as a clash, not between interests, but between moralities. We may conclude that he sees individuals, even at the extreme of competition, as always recognising some code applicable both to themselves and to others, although they cannot arrive at harmony until united in an organised society with a single code. If so, he has no conception of an absolute egoism, only of varying degrees of selfishnessand unselfishness. Perhaps philosophical egoism is conceivable only in a highly atomised society such as our own, perhaps it is not conceptually coherent at all. Is it plain that an egoist can reject humility, gratitude, kindness and love as interfering with his own interests, without being committed to rejecting pride, revenge, cruelty and hate, which can clash with the same interests? But if one continues discarding passions by this logic, how much of the man is left? Without pursuing this thought, we may doubt whether a theoretically pure egoism would be conceived by individuals so closely cemented by kin relations as the ancient Chinese.Valuation of the right above life is not incompatible with valuation of life above possessions, and one Yangist essay successfully integrates them. The passage starts with a quotation from a certain Tzu-hua-tzu, said elsewhere to have dissuaded Marquis Chao of Hn ( 358-333 B.C.) from war by arguing that if he would not give one hand in exchange for the Empire it is illogical to risk his life fighting over a small territory." Tzu-hua-tzu said: 'The complete life is highest, the depleted life next, death next, the oppressed life lowest.' Hence when one says 'Honour life' it is the complete life which is meant. In 'complete' life the six desires all get what suits them, in 'depleted life' they get part of what suits them; and with depletion of life the honouring of it decreases, the more the depletion the less we honour it. In 'death' we have no means of knowing and revert to the unborn. In 'oppressed fife' none of the six desires gets what suits it,all get what we utterly hate. Examples are subjection and disgrace. No disgrace is greater than for wrongdoing ( = the not yi), so wrongdoing is of the oppressed life, but is not the only oppressed fife. Hence it is said: 'The oppressed fife is worse than death.'" ('Valuing Life').We conclude with the most eloquent of Yangist discourses,the conclusion of Robber Chih's diatribe against Confucius."Now let me tell you what man essentially is. The eyes desire to look on beauty, the ears to listen to music, the mouth to discern flavours, intent and energy to find fulfilment. Long life for man is at most a hundred years, at the mean eighty, at the least sixty; excluding sickness and hardship, bereavement and mourning, worries and troubles, the days left to us to open our mouths in a smilewill in the course of a month be four or five at most. Heaven and earth are boundless, man's death has its time; when he takes up that life provided for a time to lodge in the midst of the boundless, his passing is as sudden as a thoroughbred steed galloping past a chink in the wall. Whoever cannot gratify his intents and fancies and find nurture for the years destined for him, is not the man who has fathomed the Way."Everything you say I reject. Away with you, quick, run back home, not a word more about it. Your Way is a crazy obsession, a thing of deception, trickery, vanity, falsehood. It will not serve to keep the genuine in us intact, what is there to discuss?" (' Robber Chih').