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Despite their convictions about equality, the Confucians were aristocrats who could not transcend the assumptions of the ruling class. In the writings of Mozi (c. 480–390), however, we hear the voice of the commoner. Mozi headed a brotherhood of 180 men, who dressed like peasants and craftsmen and traveled from one state to another, instructing rulers in the new military technology for defending a city when it was besieged by the enemy.74 Mozi was almost certainly an artisan, and he regarded the elaborate rituals of the nobility as a waste of time and money. But he too was convinced that ren was China’s only hope and emphasized the danger of political sympathy extending no further than one’s own kingdom even more strongly than Confucius. “Others must be regarded like the self,” he insisted. This “concern” (ai) must be “all-embracing and exclude nobody.”75 The only way to stop the Chinese from destroying one another was to persuade them to practice jian ai (“concern for everybody”). Instead of simply worrying about their own kingdom, Mozi urged each prince to “regard another’s state as your own”; for if rulers truly had such solicitous regard for one another, they would not go to war. Indeed, the root cause of all the “world’s calamities, dispossessions, resentments, and hatreds is lack of jian ai.”76
Unlike the Confucians, Mozi had nothing positive to say about war. From a poor man’s perspective, it made no sense at all. Warfare ruined harvests, killed multitudes of civilians, and wasted weapons and horses. Rulers claimed that the conquest of more territory enriched the state and made it more secure, but in fact only a tiny proportion of the population benefited, and the capture of a small town could result in such heavy casualties that there was nobody left to farm the land.77 Mozi believed that a policy could be called virtuous only if it enriched the poor, prevented pointless death, and contributed to public order. But humans were egotists: they would adopt jian ai only if they were convinced by irrefutable arguments that their own well-being depended on the welfare of the entire human race, so that jian ai was essential to their own prosperity, peace, and security.78 Hence The Book of Mozi included the first Chinese exercises in logic, all dedicated to proving that warfare was not in a ruler’s best interests. In words that still ring true today, Mozi insisted that the only way out of the destructive cycle of warfare was for rulers “not to be concerned for themselves alone.”79
In ancient China, Mozi was revered more than Confucius, because he spoke so directly to the problems of this violent time. By the fifth century, the small principalities were surrounded by seven large Warring States—Jin, which had split into the three kingdoms of Han, Wei, and Zhao; Qi, Qin, and its neighbor Shu in the west; and Chu in the south. Their huge armies, iron weaponry, and lethal crossbows were so formidable that any state that could not match them was doomed.80 Their engineers built defensive walls and fortresses manned by professional garrisons along their frontiers. Supported by strong economies, their armies fought with a deadly efficiency based on unified command, skillful strategy, and trained troops. Brutally pragmatic, they had no time for ren or ritual, and in battle they spared no one: “all who have or keep any strength are our enemies, even if they are old men,” one commander maintained.81 Yet on purely pragmatic grounds, their new military experts advised against excessive plunder and violence,82 and in their campaigns they were careful not to endanger agricultural output, the state’s primary resource.83 Warfare was no longer a courtly game governed by li to curb aggression; instead it had become a science, governed by logic, reason, and cold calculation.84
To Mozi and his contemporaries, it seemed that the Chinese were about to destroy one another, but with hindsight, we can see that in fact they were moving painfully toward a centralized empire that would impose a measure of peace. The chronic warfare of the Warring States period revealed one of the ubiquitous dilemmas of the agrarian state. Unless they were held in check, aristocrats who were bred to fight and had developed a prickly sense of honor would always compete aggressively for land, wealth, property, prestige, and power. In the fifth century, the Warring States began to annihilate the traditional principalities and battle compulsively against each other until in 221 BCE only one of them was left. Its victorious ruler would become the first emperor of China.
We find in this period of Chinese history a fascinating pattern that shows how mistaken it is to imagine that a given set of “religious” beliefs and practices will lead inexorably to violence. Instead, we find people drawing on the same pool of mythology, contemplative disciplines, and ideas but embarking on radically different courses of action. Even though the Warring States were moving toward an ethos that approached modern secularism, their hardheaded strategists regarded themselves as sages and saw their warfare as a species of religion. Their hero was the Yellow Emperor and these commanders were convinced that, like his textbook of military strategy, their own treatises were divinely revealed.
The sage kings had discovered an orderly design in the cosmos that showed them how to organize society; similarly the military commander could discern a pattern in the chaos of the battlefield that enabled him to find the most efficient way to achieve victory. “The one with many strategic factors in his favor wins, the one with few strategic factors in his favor loses,” explained Sunzi, a contemporary of Mencius. “Observing the matter in this way, I can see who will win and who will lose.”85 A good commander could even defeat the enemy without any fighting at all. If the odds were stacked against him, the best policy was to wait until the enemy, believing that you were weak, became overconfident and made a fatal mistake. The commander should regard his troops as mere extensions of his will and control them as the mind directs the body. Even though he was of noble birth, an able commander would live among his peasant soldiers, sharing their hardships and becoming the model to which they must conform. He would inflict terrible punishments on his men to make them fear him more than death on the battlefield; indeed, a good strategist would deliberately put his troops into such danger that they had no option but to fight their way out. A soldier could have no mind of his own but should be as subservient and passive in relation to his commander as a woman. Warfare had been “feminized.” Indeed, feminine weakness could be more effective than masculine belligerence: the best armies might seem to be as weak as water—but water could be extremely destructive.86
“The military is a Way [dao] of Deception,” said Sunzi. The name of the game was to deceive the enemy:
Thus when able, manifest inability. When active, manifest inactivity.
When near, manifest as far. When far, manifest as near.
When he seeks advantage, lure him.
When he is in chaos, take him.
When he is substantial, prepare against him.
When he is strong, avoid him.
Attack where he is unprepared. Emerge where he does not expect.87
Sunzi knew that civilians would look askance at this martial ethic, but their state could not survive without its troops.88 The army should therefore be kept apart from mainstream society and be governed by its own laws, because its modus operandi was the “extraordinary” (qi), the counterintuitive, doing exactly what did not come naturally. This would be disastrous in all other affairs of state,89 but if a commander learned how to exploit the qi, he could achieve a sagelike alignment with the Way of Heaven:
Thus one skilled at giving rise to the extraordinary is as boundless as Heaven and Earth, as inexhaustible as the Yellow River and the ocean.
Ending and beginning again, like the sun and moon. Dying and then being born, like the four seasons.90
The dilemma of even the most benign state was that it was obliged to maintain at its heart an institution committed to treachery and violence.
The cult of the “extraordinary” was not new but was widespread among the population, especially among the lower classes, and might even date back to the Neolithic period. It had strong connections with the mystical school that we call Daoism (or Taoism) in the West, which was far more popular among the masses than the elite.91 Daoi
sts opposed any form of government and were convinced that when rulers interfered in their subjects’ lives, they invariably made matters worse—an attitude similar to the strategists’ preference for “doing nothing” and refraining from rushing into action. Forcing people to obey man-made laws and perform unnatural rituals was simply perverse, argued the ebullient hermit Zhuangzi (c. 369–286). It was better to “do nothing,” practicing “action by inaction [wu wei].” It was deep within yourself, at a level far below the reasoning powers, that you would encounter the Way (dao) things really were.92
In the West we tend to read the mid-third-century treatise known as the Daodejingb (“Classic of the Way and Its Potency”) as a devotional text for a personal spirituality, but it was actually a manual of statecraft, written for the prince of one of the vulnerable principalities.93 Its anonymous author wrote under the pseudonym Laozi, or Lao-Tzu—“Old Master.” Rulers should imitate Heaven, he taught, which did not interfere with the Ways of men; so if they abandoned their meddlesome policies, political “potency” (de) would emerge spontaneously: “If I cease to desire and remain still, the empire will be at peace of its own accord.”94 The Daoist king should practice meditative techniques that rid his mind of busy theorizing so that it became “empty” and “still.” Then the Dao of Heaven could act through him, and “to the end of one’s days one will meet with no danger.”95 Laozi offered the beleaguered principalities a stratagem for survival. Statesmen usually preferred frenzied activity and shows of strength when they should be doing the exact opposite. Instead of posturing aggressively, they should present themselves as weak and small. Like the military strategists, Laozi used the analogy of water, which seemed “submissive and weak” yet could be far more powerful than “that which is hard and strong.”96 The Daoist ruler should abandon masculine self-assertion and embrace the softness of the “mysterious female.”97 What goes up must come down, so when you strengthened your enemy by appearing to submit, you were actually hastening his decline. Laozi agreed with the strategists that military action should always be the last resort: weapons were “ill-omened instruments,” he argued, which a sage king used only “when he cannot do otherwise.”98
The good leader is not warlike
The good fighter is not impetuous
The best conqueror of the enemy is he who never takes the offensive.99
The wise leader should not even retaliate to an atrocity because this would simply provoke a counterattack. By practicing wu wei instead, he would acquire the potency of Heaven itself: “Because he does not contend, there is no one in the world who can contend with him.”100
This, alas, proved not to be the case. The victor in the long struggle of the Warring States was not a Daoist sage king but the ruler of Qin, who was successful simply because he had the most territory, manpower, and resources. Instead of relying on ritual, as previous Chinese states had done, Qin had developed a materialistic ideology based solely on the economic realities of warfare and agriculture, shaped by a new philosophy known as Fajia (“School of the Law”) or Legalism.101 Fa did not mean “law” in the modern sense; rather, it was a “standard” like the carpenter’s square that made raw materials conform to a fixed pattern.102 It was the Legalist reforms of Lord Shang (c. 390–338) that had put Qin ahead of its rivals.103 Shang believed that the people must be forced by strict punishments to submit to their subordinate role in a state designed solely to enhance the ruler’s power.104 He eliminated the aristocracy and replaced it with a hand-picked administration wholly dependent on the king. The country was now divided into thirty-one districts, each ruled by a magistrate who answered directly to the capital and conscripted recruits for the army. To boost productivity and free enterprise, peasants were encouraged to buy their land. The nobility of the junzi was irrelevant: honor was achieved only by a brilliant performance on the battlefield. Anyone who commanded a victorious unit was given land, houses, and slaves.
Qin had arguably developed the first secular state ideology, but Shang separated religion from politics, not because of its inherent violence but because religion was impracticably humane. Religious sentiment would make a ruler too benign, which ran counter to the state’s best interests. “A State that uses good people to govern the wicked will be plagued by disorder and be destroyed,” Shang insisted. “A state that uses the wicked to govern the good always enjoys peace and becomes strong.”105 Instead of practicing the Golden Rule, a military commander should inflict on the enemy exactly what he did not wish for his own troops.106 Unsurprisingly, Qin’s success was deeply troubling to the Confucians. Xunzi (c. 310–219), for example, believed that a ruler who governed by ren would be an irresistible force for good and his compassion would transform the world. He would take up arms only “to put an end to violence, and to do away with harm, not in order to compete with others for spoil. Therefore when the soldiers of the benevolent man encamp they command a godlike respect; and where they pass, they transform the people.”107 But his pupil Li Si laughed at him: Qin was the most powerful state in China, because it had the strongest army and economy; it owed its success not to ren but to its opportunism.108 During Xunzi’s visit to Qin, King Zhao told him bluntly: “The Confucians [ru] are no use in running a state.”109 Shortly afterward Qin conquered Xunzi’s native state of Zhao, and even though the Zhao king surrendered, Qin troops buried 400,000 of his soldiers alive. How could a junzi exert any restraining influence over such a regime? Xunzi’s pupil Li Si now emigrated to Qin, became its prime minister, and masterminded the lightning campaign that resulted in Qin’s final victory and the establishment of the Chinese Empire in 221 BCE.
Paradoxically, the Legalists drew on the same pool of ideas and spoke the same language as the Daoists. They also believed that the king should “do nothing” (wu wei) to interfere with the Dao of the Law, which should run like a well-oiled machine. The people would suffer if the laws kept changing, maintained the Legalist Han Feizi (c. 280–233), so a truly enlightened ruler “waits in stillness and emptiness” and “lets the tasks of themselves be fixed.”110 He did not need morality or knowledge but was simply the Prime Mover, who remained immobile but set his ministers and subjects in motion:
Having courage, he does not use it to rage
He draws out all the warlike in his ministers
Hence by doing without knowledge he possesses clear-sightedness
By doing without worthiness he gets results
By doing without courage, he achieves strength.111
There was, of course, a world of difference between the two: Daoists deplored rulers who forced their subjects to conform to an unnatural fa; their sage king meditated to achieve selflessness, not to “get results.”112 But the same ideas and imagery informed the thinking of political scientists, military strategists, and mystics. People could have the same beliefs yet act upon them very differently. Military strategists believed that their brutally pragmatic writings came to them by divine revelation, and contemplatives gave strategic advice to kings. Even the Confucians now drew on these notions: Xunzi believed that the Way could be comprehended only by a mind that was “empty, unified, and still.”113
Many people must have been relieved when Qin’s victory put a stop to the endless fighting and hoped that the empire would keep the peace. But they had a shocking introduction to imperial rule. Acting on the advice of Prime Minister Li Si, the First Emperor became an absolute ruler. The Zhou aristocracy—120,000 families—were forcibly moved to the capital and their weapons confiscated. The emperor divided his vast territory into thirty-six commanderies, each headed by a civil administrator, a military commander, and an overseer; each commandery was in turn divided into counties governed by magistrates, and all officials answered directly to the central government.114 The old rituals that had presented the Zhou king as head of a family of feudal lords were replaced by a rite that focused on the emperor alone.115 When the court historian criticized this innovation, Li Si told the emperor that he could no longer tolerate such di
visive ideologies: any school that opposed the Legalist program must be abolished and its writings publicly burned.116 There was a massive book burning, and 460 teachers were executed. One of the first inquisitions in history had therefore been mandated by a protosecular state.
Xunzi had been convinced that Qin would never rule China because its draconian methods would alienate the people. He was proved right when they rose up in rebellion after the death of the First Emperor in 210 BCE. After three years of anarchy, Liu Bang, one of the local magistrates, founded the Han dynasty. His chief military strategist, Zhang Liang, who had studied Confucian ritual in his youth, embodied Han ideals. It was said that a military text was revealed to him after he had behaved with exemplary respect toward an elderly man, and even though he had no military experience, he led Bang to victory. Zhang was not a bellicose man. He was a Daoist warrior: “not warlike,” weak as water, frequently ill, and unable to command on the field. He treated people with humility, practiced Daoist meditation and breath control, abstained from grains, and at one point seriously considered retiring from politics for a life of contemplation.117
The Han had learned from Qin’s mistakes. But Bang wanted to preserve the centralized state and knew that the empire needed Legalist realism because no state could function without coercion and the threat of violence. “Weapons are the means by which the sage makes obedient the powerful and savage, and brings stability in times of chaos,” wrote the Han historian Sima Qian. “Instruction and corporal punishment cannot be abandoned in a household, mutilating punishments cannot be halted under Heaven. It is simply that in using them some are skillful and some clumsy, in carrying them out some are in accord [with Heaven] and some against it.”118 But Bang knew that the state also needed a more inspiring ideology. His solution was a synthesis of Legalism and Daoism.119 Still reeling from the Qin inquisition, people yearned for “empty,” open-minded governance. Han emperors would maintain absolute control over the commanderies but would refrain from arbitrary interventions; there would be strict penal law but no draconian punishments.