The Unification of Words

To follow this preemptive logic, entire realms of activity and potential must be pared away. The human body must be divested of any pretence to wholeness and self-direction, becoming a unifunctional working part of a greater whole. In other words, a dedicated organ in a superorganism.

If objects come near, the eye cannot but see them; if words are insistent, the ear cannot but hear them, for if objects approach they alter in appearance, and if words draw near they form coherent speech. So with the organization in a well-governed state, people cannot escape punishment any more than the eyes can hide from the heart-mind (xin) what they see. In the disorderly states of the present time, it is not thus: reliance is placed on a multitude of offices and a host of civil servants, but however numerous the civil servants may be, their affairs are the same and they belong to one body. Those whose affairs are the same and belong to one body cannot control one another. [D.320-21/KH 24:175]

There must be no distance between the ruler and the bodies of his subjects, who provide him with unmediated vision, comprehension, and judgment. The person of ruler is a double-faceted principle of desire (heart) and direction (mind). The body politic's capacities for concerted vision, comprehension, and judgment flows from the ruler's person, and what is gleaned by them returns to it.

There is a fundamental difference between this heart-mind/organ distinction and the Cartesian mind/body duality. The state is not disembodied in the ruler, as transcendent seat of rationality. The ruler is embodied in the State. Not only his senses but his faculty of judgment is embedded in the body politic in the form of the mutual spying machine.[18] In the well-governed state, he is the source and destination of all possible sensation and thought, between which there can be no separation.

If a coherent body, similarly combining sensation and thought, interposes itself between the ruler and his organs, the body politic is mutilated, rendered blind, deaf, and dumb. The emperor is no longer able to judge and rule. Not only is the ruler's sensation cut from his thought, but source and destination are no longer one. The ruler is still the driving principle by right, but in fact he is crippled, depleted, for what he brings forth is not returned. An interloping body diverts energies to its own ends.

The presence of such a mediating body cannot be tolerated. The law is the means by which the parasitic bureaucratic body is destroyed, and the mutilation it causes healed. It enforces nonseparation between the heart-mind and the organs. The law is the vehicle by which the source--the ruler as desire or driving principle--is embodied in organs connecting the source to itself as destination. The law makes immanent what otherwise would be a piece apart, in the dark and impotent. It closes the State circle in such a way as to make it a line. It makes it possible for the spiralling energies of the body politic to be channeled toward their one rightful outlet: war, the river of no return.

The law divides as it unifies. "In a condition of complete government, husband and wife and friends cannot dismiss each other's evil deeds and cover up each other's faults without causing harm to those close to them, nor can the men of the people conceal each other from their superiors and government servants. That is because, although their affairs are connected, their interests are different" [D 321/KH 24:176]. Everyone's affairs are connected in their subordination to the aims of the state, but each individual is assigned a special function distinguishing him or her from those around. Each is held responsible for the proper fulfillment of the other's duty. As the reference to government officials reveals, it is recognized that the total elimination of the bureaucratic caste is unattainable. Their numbers must be held to a minimum, their functions must be clearly differentiated, and they must be subject to the same system of mutual responsibility as everyone else.

The establishment of strict divisions within the body politic constitutes the core of the law. This is called the "unification of words." There can be no social order without it. Words, slippery by nature, are the most fearful of lice. "A country that loves talking is dismembered" [D 188/KH 3:35].

Words must be unambiguously pinned to a referent. That referent must be an unambiguous State function. That State function must carry with it unambiguous duties. When the duties are fulfilled, the functionary must be unambiguously rewarded. When they are not, he must be unambiguously punished. [D, KH chapters 8, 9, 17]

Social divisions are just the beginning. The unification of words as applied to State functions can only succeed if other aspects of life are similarly unified. Rewards and punishments, not to mention taxation, cannot be systematized unless currency and weights and measures are standardized. Society cannot be effectively divided into mutual responsibility units unless the population is known. Births and deaths must therefore be registered. The land must be surveyed and its divisions regularized. The products of the land must be painstakingly accounted for. The waters must flow where they are needed. Roads must connect the capital from which order emanates to the countryside embodying it, like spokes in a wheel. An immense labor of organization, standardization, and recording must be undertaken. All of this necessitates clear boundaries for the state as a whole: the Great Wall and inscribed stone monoliths will mark its borders.

The more unified the body politic becomes, the more differentiated it is. The more undividedly its energies flow, the more rigidly they are channeled. In order to smooth, one must striate.

1. STANDARDIZATION OF LANGUAGE, WEIGHTS, MEASURES AND ROADS. Li Si introduced standardized "Small Seal" script forms for the Empire, suppressing the earlier Large Seal script as well as several regional scripts (such as the Chu "bird-script"). He reduced the number of characters by twenty-five percent by removing alternate characters and rare place-names. [Barnard 1978] His calligraphic style appears on surviving Qin inscriptions.

"In the twenty-sixth year of his reign (221 B.C.) the First Emperor of Qin annexed all the feudal lands under heaven, brought peace to the black-heads [the 'masses'], and proclaimed himself the sole ruler. Then, he issued a decree to his ministers, ordering them to clarify and unify all laws and weights and measures which were perplexing or which were not uniform." [Cotterell 1981:75; Li Xueqin 1985:240-46]

This inscription has been found on a large number of bronze and iron standard weights and measures (see illustration above) dating to the first empire, including a bronze pint measure (sheng) which was originally cast in 344 B.C. and inscribed with Shang Yang's name. Whole sections of the Yunmeng legal documents are concerned with the problem of standard weights, and the punishments to be allotted to those who dare tamper with the standards. Extraordinary attention was paid to minor infractions. If a weight deviated by less than 1%, heavy fines were levied on the culpable official.

Metal currency was standardized, as was the gauge of vehicles.

2. REGULATED STOCKPILING. Stockpiling was a chief concern of the state. Centralized granaries are essential to the provisioning of a large-scale war-machine. The Yunmeng documents reveal a highly detailed and standardized granary administration system. Constant and careful inspections were conducted. State and regional granaries kept detailed accounts of grain received and rations issued. There was an obsession with graft among officials. Many regulatory and supervisory methods are outlined, with itemized punishments for specific infractions. In a typical example, punishment is exacted for the discovery of poorly maintained granaries: we learn that when it comes to the Law, three mouseholes are equal to one rathole.

Weapons, shields, and armor were also stockpiled. A large number of bronze weapons cast by the state of Qin have been discovered in every corner of the early Empire by Chinese archaeologists. Many of these are inscribed with the date of casting, the name of the prime minister who supervised their production, and the place of production (usually in regional government foundries or in central governmental institutions). Shang Yang's name appears on at least two bronze weapons dating from 349 and 346 B. C. [Li Xueqin 1985:234].

3. MARKING AND RECORDING: THE INSCRIPTION OF THE LAW. Censuses, cadastral surveys, tax assessments, physical marking of prisoners, insignia of rank, the pass system, and registration at inns (all discussed above) were aspects of a generalized process of marking and recording undertaken to regularize implementation of the law.

The law itself was inscribed. It was Qin policy to post the laws throughout the land, beginning as early as 513 B.C. with the inscription of the law on iron tripods. Practisebooks found in Han border garrisons suggest that the army may have been instrumental in spreading literacy. But to most people, the official inscriptions were primarily awesome emblems of authority. Foremost among them were the imperial monoliths. The secret rituals and imperial progresses of the First Emperor were marked by great stone inscriptions set atop the sacred mountains and at the borders of the Empire. The texts to these monuments have been preserved in the Shiji. In them we read that the progresses of the First Emperor "mark the end of human tracks..."

4. TERRITORIAL UNIFICATION. Bodde [1986:61] estimates that Qin built imperial roadways totalling over 4250 miles, far more than the 3740-mile Roman road system (as estimated by Gibbon). According to a critical Han dynasty memorial: "The First Emperor ordered the building of post-roads all over the empire, east to the uttermost bounds of Qi and Yan, south to the extremities of Wu and Chu, around lakes, and rivers, and along the coasts of the sea; so that all was made accessible. These highways were fifty feet wide, and a tree was planted every thirty feet along them....all this was done so that the First Emperor's successors should not have to take circuitous routes" [quoted in Needham 1971:7].

The Great Wall built by General Meng Tian is said to have extended over 3,110 miles [Li Xueqin 1985:249; for another view, see Waldron 1990]. The Wall connected together earlier walls built by various northern statelets. Kafka's picture of the fragmentary work on the Wall had more than a little truth [Kafka 1948].

Prior to the establishment of the Empire, Qin was involved in massive hydraulic engineering projects. The Chengdu plains irrigation system was completed from 250-230 B.C., and to this day irrigates over 200,000 square miles. The Zhengguo canal was completed in 246 B.C., and provided irrigation for half a million acres. "Thereupon the land within the passes became a fertile plain and there were no more bad years, Qin in this way became rich and powerful, and ended by conquering the various lords" [SJ 29:1408/MH 3:525]. The Magic Transport canal was completed by 219. Joining the Wei and the Yellow River by means of a three-mile channel through mountainous terrain, the canal became a vital link in an inland waterway system that eventually extended 1,250 miles from the north to the south. [Needham 1971:299-306].

5. SUMMARY. Unification requires increasingly minute and regulated compartmentalization, enforced by ubiquitous mechansims of differentiating markings and vengeful recording. It is therefore inseparable from the dismemberment it is designed to avoid. It is instructive to recall that Shang Yang, the mighty unifier, ended up in quarters.

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