1.2            Zisi and the "Five Modes of Proper Conduct (wuxing五行)" Doctrine

The Xunzi 荀子 associates the names of both Zisi and Mencius with the doctrine of "five modes of proper conduct (wuxing 五行)," a prescription for moral behavior that is initially separate from, but perhaps is developed into or is elided with, the later cosmological theories attributed to Zou Yan 邹衍 (305-240? BCE) that go by the same name. The fact that we have an earlier moral doctrine and a later seemingly unrealed cosmological theory, both called wuxing ¤­ ¦æ, has generated two explanations for Xunzi's rather severe condemnation of wuxing. We begin from the language of Xunzi's indictment:

略法先王而不知其统…闻见杂博，案往旧造说，谓之五行。甚僻违而无类，幽隐而无说，闭约而无解，案饰其辞而只敬之曰：此真先君子之言也，子思唱之，孟轲和之，世俗之沟犹瞀儒嚾嚾然不知其所非。…是则子思孟轲之罪也。

There are those who, only superficially emulating the way of the former kings, do not understand its real substance. . . . What they have seen and learned is indeed extensive and varied. Basing their ideas on ancient lore, they concoct their new theory and call it wuxing. In fact, this theory is perverse and bizarre. It is a lot of obscure and impenetrable nonsense. They dress it up in eloquent language, and with great reverence say: "These are truly the words of the exemplary persons of old." Zisi sang this song, and Mencius chimed in with it. The deluded and foolish Confucians of our present day are thrilled with this theory and are wholly oblivious to where it goes wrong. . . . This then is the crime of Zisi and Mencius.[i]   

One possible explanation is that the ever practical Xunzi takes exception to a perceived connection between the moral doctrine "five modes of proper conduct (wuxing)" of Zisi and Mencius, and the increasingly popular "five phases (wuxing)" speculations about cosmic operations that he believes ought not concern the human world. According with Confucius's refusal to pronounce on speculative questions,[ii] Xunzi is adamant that human beings should invest their efforts in personal and communal cultivation, and not waste their time conjecturing about things they cannot and should not hope to understand. It has been claimed that this passage in the Xunzi is somewhat ambiguous in that it is not immediately clear from the language whether Xunzi is criticizing Zisi and Mencius themselves, or rather the inappropriate co-opting and contaminating of their "five modes of proper conduct" doctrine by those later day Confucians who are given to speculating on cosmic mysteries. In an attempt to resolve this ambiguity, John Knoblock points out that Xunzi himself applies the expression "five modes of proper conduct (wuxing)" to appropriate human deportment elsewhere in his writings in a positive sense, albeit with a content different from the specific five moral excellences of Zisi and Mencius. On the other hand, it might be argued that the almost total absence of the term wuxing from the Xunzi broadly would suggest that Xunzi wants to avoid any association with the cosmologist's misuse of the term, whatever its reference. In any case, it is most probable that Xunzi's complaint was directed at the misappropriation of this term wuxing as a cosmological theory by his contemporaries, and even more harshly, was aimed at the complicity of his fellow Confucians in promoting this distortion.

There is an alternative explanation of Xunzi's complaint against the wuxing doctrine associated with Zisi and Mencius that might be more plausible. To begin with, we have no corroborating evidence that the wuxing cosmological theory that emerges in the Han dynasty was current as early as Xunzi. Given Xunzi's antipathy to such speculations and his willingness to speak out against heterodox philosophical ideas, the absence of any clear reference to this development would suggest that the target of Xunzi's ire is probably the moral doctrine associated with Zisi and Mencius.

Secondly, in other contexts, Xunzi is anything but shy about voicing loud and sustained objections to the ideas of Mencius, especially Mencius's attempt to define the natural human tendencies (xing) as the "four shoots of moral conduct (siduan)." And as we shall see, the recovery of the Five Modes of Proper Conduct in recent archaeological finds establishes an immediate and incontrovertible link between the wuxing moral doctrine and Mencius's "four shoots," where the "four shoots" are nothing other than the first four of the five modes of proper conduct.

Thirdly, given Xunzi's practical turn, the fifth of the five modes of proper conduct—the celebration of the role of human "sagacity (sheng)" as a profoundly creative cosmic force—would indeed by received by him as "a lot of obscure and impenetrable nonsense."

Finally, the passage from Xunzi condemning Zisi and Mencius is anything but ambiguous. It describes the wuxing doctrine as a gross distortion of historical antecedents, denounces the hyperbolic language in which it is presented, deplores the popularity it has garnered among contemporary Confucians, and blames Zisi and Mencius by name and in unequivocal terms, for their role in promoting what he takes to be heretical Confucianism.

Xunzi's rejection of the wuxing doctrine would seem to be an opening volley in what becomes a contest between two importantly distinct interpretations of Confucian philosophy: the Xunzi lineage that had some prominence in the early Han dynasty, and the Mencian lineage that in the course of time was to supersede it.

The connection between Mencius and Zisi and this wuxing doctrine has become somewhat clearer with the recent recovery of two versions of a Five Modes of Proper Conduct text attributed to Zisi. Mencius's well-known list of the "four shoots of moral conduct (siduan 四端)"--"authoritative conduct (ren 仁)," "appropriateness (yi义)," "the observance of ritual propriety (li 礼)," and "wisdom (zhi 智)" in this specific order--is in fact an abbreviated version of the "five modes of proper conduct," with the fifth mode of proper conduct, sagacity (sheng 圣), being the fruit of growing these four shoots.

In 1973, in the archaeological find at Mawangdui 马王堆） , Changsha, documents buried in c. 168 BCE were discovered that have been attributed to the school of Zisi, if not Zisi himself. Specifically, there are two silk manuscripts. One is an untitled text, and the second is the Dexing 德行 or Acting on Character. In fact, the untitled text is one of the most substantial documents recovered at Mawangdui. The contemporary scholar, Pang Pu 庞朴, on first analyzing it, suggested that it is the long lost Wuxingpian 五行篇 or Five Modes of Proper Conduct.

In the recent find at Guodian 郭店 Hubei province in October 1993, new texts recovered in a tomb of "the tutor to the eastern palace," probably the teacher of the crown prince of Chu, have also been attributed to the Zisi lineage. This tomb dates to around 300 BCE, some century and a half earlier than Mawangdui. The 13,000 characters on some 800 pieces of bamboo strips have been tentatively reconstructed into sixteen documents including two Daoist texts: a version of the Daodejing and another Daoist text previously unknown called The Great One Produces Water 太一生水). Also recovered was another version of Wuxingpian 五行篇 similar to the untitled one found earlier at Mawangdui, and a text of the Black Robes (ziyi 缁衣) that is attributed to Zisi in the tradition, and exists as a chapter in the Record of Rites. The remaining twelve of these sixteen documents are entirely new, and shed important light on the development of classical Confucianism in the century and a half between the death of Confucius and the emergence of Mencius as a spokesperson for the lineage.

What can we learn from these new texts that enable us better to locate the Zhongyong within the classical tradition? One general observation is that in both the Mawangdui and the Guodian finds, versions of the Daodejing and other Daoist documents were recovered along with these largely Zisi materials. A marked feature of the Guodian Daodejing is the absence of the anti-Confucian polemic found in the received version of the text, suggesting a more positive if not even complementary relationship between the ideas of early Daoism and this particular branch of Confucianism. That the range of texts includes both Daoist and Zisizi materials suggests that at least the scholars associated with the tombs did not see the contents of these texts as exclusive or irreconcilable. It is noteworthy that, although the Zhongyong is clearly a Confucian text, as recently as the fifties a scholar of Qian Mu's 钱穆 stature provoked a sustained debate with Xu Fuguan徐复观  and others by suggesting that Zhongyong is largely a Daoist document.[iii]

The version of the Wuxingpian found at Guodian with the two characters "Wuxing 五行 as a title on the first bamboo strip corroborates Pang Pu's speculation that the edition of the same text found at Mawangdui is indeed the lost Wuxingpian. The fact that two almost identical versions of Wuxingpian have been recovered along with versions of the Daodejing would indicate a certain canonical status of this text within the tradition. Also, the pervasive use of differing loan characters in these texts representing sounds first and then by context and inference, ideas, might imply that they are part of an oral tradition that was written down from memory for the specific purpose of providing reading for the tomb occupant in the journey to the nebulous world beyond. In addition, rather direct linguistic and conceptual resonances between the Wuxingpian and the Mencius suggest that whoever produced the Mencius was aware of a version of this earlier text.

What is the relationship between the Zhongyong translated here, and these other documents associated with Zisi? First, the documents found at Mawangdui and Guodian (except where they overlap in the Wuxingpian) differ from one another in language and style, suggesting that they are neither by one person nor date from one specific period. Several contemporary scholars including Li Xueqin and Pang Pu have suggested, quite plausibly, that there was a composite collection of writings under the name of Zisi (perhaps similar in structure to the Daoist classic, the Zhuangzi) that evolved during the period between Confucius and Mencius, and that the materials recovered at Guodian and Mawangdui are remnants of it. This composite nature reflecting many different contexts and authors has a real bearing on what kind of coherence we should expect from these documents, and what kind of comparisons we can make among them. We ought to anticipate that as these additional Zisi materials come to light, they cover a rather broad and diverse range of ideas.

In addition, the five modes of proper conduct--ren 仁 yi 义 , li 礼, zhi 智, and sheng 圣 --all have a prominent role in the Analects, appearing separately and occasionally in pairs. "Authoritative conduct (ren 仁 and wisdom (zhi 智)," for example, are frequently found together in the Analects. However, it is only with the Five Modes of Proper Conduct ascribed to Zisi that they are organized into a formal, sequential cluster and identified as wuxing. As we have observed above, the Mencian "four shoots (siduan)" seems to be derived from the wuxing, and is simply another name for the "four modes of proper conduct (sixing)" formula, the same as the wuxing cluster minus "sagacity (sheng 圣)," that also appears in this text. "Sagacity (sheng 圣)" certainly appears elsewhere in the Mencius, but on its own.

The "five modes of proper conduct" does not appear as a formal cluster in the Zhongyong, and in fact these five terms are not all that prominent in the text as a whole. Interestingly enough, when these five terms do occur in Zhongyong 20, the same chapter that links Mencius 4A12 and the Zhongyong, they emerge in the discussion in precisely the same formulaic wuxing order, beginning from "authoritative conduct (ren 仁)" and ending with "sagacity (sheng 圣)."

Although the curious and much discussed phrase "thus, exemplary persons are ever concerned about their uniqueness (故君子慎其独)" occurs twice in Five Modes of Proper Conduct 7 and also in Zhongyong 1, it appears in the Great Learning and in the Xunzi as well, suggesting that it was a familiar expression in the early Confucian literature.[iv]

Perhaps the strongest connection between the Zhongyong and the other Zisi documents is the pervasive theme of coordinating the way of human beings and the way of tian to become partners in the creative processes of the heavens and the earth. In this literature, optimizing the continuity between tian and the human being (tianren heyi 天人合一) is an accomplishment, not a given. As we shall see below, this creative contribution of the human being becomes particularly relevant in determining how we are to read the opening passage of the Zhongyong.

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