The Logic of Mohists

The Logic of the Mohist "Hsiao-ch'" Author(s): A. C. Graham Source: T'oung Pao, Second Series, Vol. 51, Livr.
1 (1964), pp. 1-54 Published by: BRILL Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4527577 . Accessed: 26/08/2011 06:13
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THE LOGIC OF THE MOHIST HSIAO-CH'U

BY
A. C. GRAHAM
. . .. . . .. . . . .. . . .. . . . .. . . . Introduction .I...... i. Translation and Textual Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.
Technical Terms
2/I.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .II
Huo * Chia
Fa P'i
f
'some' and chin a

t
'all'.
. . . . . . . . .
. . . . .
.II
212.
'so-called' ..'......................
'standard'. 'illustrating',
I4 i6
2/3.
2/4.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . mou
!f4 'matching',
yuan
'adducing' and 2i .
26
t'ui
2/5.
'inferring.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
f
Shih/fei
'X is or is not Y' and jan
'so' .......
. 3. The Argument of the Hsiao-ch'ii .................... . . . . . . . . . . . 4. The Mohist Logic and the Chinese Language ..... 5. Finding List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . INTRODUCTION
28 39
51
Before the introduction of Indian logic by the Buddhists in the 7th century AD, only one Chinese philosophical school is known to have studied the forms of reasoning for their own sake. This was the later Mohist school of the 3rd century BC, to which we owe the ' consisting of the two section on dialectics in Mo-tzi
f,
chapters of the Ching 1M 'Canons', the two of the Ching shuo jig &;, 'Explanations of the Canons', and the two entitled Ta-ch'ii
)*
;,
'Taking the greater', and Hsiao-ch'ii
,J
'Taking the
lesser'. (These last were evidently misnamed by someone who read no further than a discussion of choosing the greater benefit and the lesser harm early in the Ta-ch'ii.) The series presents textual problems which have so far deterred all Western translators except Forke, who has included them in his German version of Mo-tzui. Among the six chapters the Hsiao-ch'ii is unique in being a
Toung Pao, LI
I
A. C. GRAHAM
consecutive treatise relatively free from textual corruption. It is thus the only surviving document of pre-Buddhist China which discusses the forms of reasoning continuously and at some length. Since Hu Shih pointed out its importance nearly half a century ago it has attracted some attention, although less than the Mohist canons; only T'an Chieh-fu among the various modern commentators on the canons has annotated the Ta-ch'i6 and Hsiao-ch'ii. A paper by D. C. Lau includes English translations of about three quarters of the text, but there is still no complete English version.
I. TRANSLATION AND TEXTUAL NOTES
The text followed is that of the Chia-ching Kuei-ch'ou Ar1 # A 1" (AD I553) edition reproduced in the Ssii-pu ts'ung-k'an g
fl.
The following abbreviations are used: <A> [A] (A)*B A(=B) A B Insert A. Omit A. Read B for A. A is a graphic alternative for B. Transpose A and B.
Emendations based on parallelism are generally noted without comment. Wu Yii-chiang's edition notes the variants of all major editions and manuscripts.
W-L
#gA'
0 Am
_fJ*
c8fi\
W :A0.k 0 bal
The purpose of Dialectics is to clarify the distinction between right and wrong, inquire into the successions of good government and misrule, clarify points of sameness and difference, and scrutinise
the ordering of names and objects 1).
W
1) Pi identifies
B sIOG, k
the following rhymes:

KO,
KIG,
LIJG,
NGIG,
PLaR,
Jj
TS'IU,
DlO.
But since their placing is so irregular, the author
was perhaps working older mnemonic lines into his prose without attending to the rhymes.
THE LOGIC OF THE MOHIST HSIAO-CHU

2 ..
It settles benefit and harm, resolves doubts and difficulties, explores the truth about the myriad things, and considers how various kinds of statement compare with each other 1). It refers to objects by means of names, expresses thoughts by means of sentences, presents reasons by means of explanations, and accepts and proposes by means of analogy. What is present in one's own case is not to be rejected in the other man's; what is absent from one's own case is not to be required of the other man's 2).
Att}Xio
t*+X#fito
Z*rtD
\4 t
t fiem*fiezatWto urP mRlJXt @ m Rlj j toR meoW(-w)t * s;@;t(

*i *
B8
"
tto
*}twi^Cto
Zt
> H
rf ffi a g g w w z M1 rXt-tWl ,*fl,O
o t
tpEX>gtEtt;pi3g*ff.t@,
r^="l
u*Euw
'Some' is 'not all'. The 'so-called'is in the present case not so. 'Applying' is imposing a certain standard. VVhat is applied is the standard imposed. Therefore3) what it fits when applied is the thing in question, what it does not fit is not. Such is 'applying'.
2)
Sun, Hu, Chang, T'an punctuate before yen ,,
which they take as the conjunction
('then') common in Mo-tx4. But in this usage yen seems generally to have the implication 'only then', which does not fit here.
2) 3)
The last pair of clauses is found also in Huai-nan-tzfi ' Ku ,
+,
g/I3B/4.
here translated 'therefore', is taken by Hu (followed by T'an, Wu, T'ang) But there is a very strong presumption that ku at the beginning of a
as the noun ku 'reason'. Hu ((3) 96) translates: "When the cause or the because conforms to the hsiao..." sentence means 'therefore', and Hu's theory is in any case tenable only on his dubious assumption that ku 'reason' and fa 'standard' are "one and the same thing" ((3) 95), criticised by Maspero
(I4-I8).
A. C. GRAHAM
'Illustrating' is referring to some other 1) thing for the purpose of clarification. 'Matching' is comparing sentences and developing them together. 'Adducing' is saying 'If it is so in your case, why should it not be so in mine too?' 'Inferring' is using what is the same in something which he refuses to accept and in something which he does accept, in order to propose the former. 'This is like saying . . .' implies sameness; 'How can I say . implies difference
2).
.?
iE
i~~~~~p jo
m:
AO i <t0
t
ftW
i aX
E AW
. ,h7A t <t t it _ Sf> W

i
laOeitwt
8t lo W;;a4
RlJ~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ X4 mtZ5t*f if i-M
When things are the same in some respects, it does not follow that they are altogether the same. The matching of sentences is valid only within limits. If matters are so, there are reasons why they are so; but although they are the same in being so, they are not necessarily so for the same reasons. If claims are accepted there
1) T'o
-fit
is written without the radical three times in the Hsiao-ch'ii and several times
223/9, 325/9, 328/2).
elsewhere in Mo-tzfl (cf. Sun

2)
Cf. also Morohashi I7I
(Definition
I4).
So Chang, Forke. Other explanations
are
(i) "This is like saying that the other (

other is different ?" (Wu, Feng, T'ang).
fI
) is the same; how can I say that the
(ii) "This is like either saying that the other is the same or else( a substitution
J I
for
for which no parallel is offered) saying that the other is different" (T'an). 'this is like . ..,
Neither makes good sense and neither accounts for the formula
which, as Chang notices, is common in Mo-tzui (including the Canons, B 27, 78) introducing illustrations.
THE LOGIC OF THE MOHIST HSIAO-CH U
are reasons why they are accepted; but although they are the same in being accepted, they are not necessarily accepted for the same reasons. Therefore sentences which illustrate, match, adduce and infer become different as they develop, become dangerous when they change direction, become fallacious when carried too far, become detached from their base when we let them drift, so that we must on no account be careless with them, and must not use them too rigidly. Hence discourse has many methods, separate analogies, different reasons, which must not be looked at only from one side.
Sometimes
wha3t
is s
ofa ti
fl
wa
is so
t %a% A o4
% o % 4
At <
Sometimes what is so of a thing follows from what it is; sometimes what is so does not follow from what it is; sometimes what is so follows from what it is not. Sometimes one case does not admit exceptions while the other does. Sometimes in one case something is and in the other something is not.
1) This clause is restored from its recapitulation in p. 8, 1.9 below. There it lacks the pu j,
k but the examples which lead up to it make it clear that the shih
& must be negated; in any case the unemended clause is unacceptable since it would be a mere repetition of
the first clause of the present passage. Moreover the displaced characters X-* -m two clauses later (cf. note 3 below) seem to be a fragment of the missing clause. (Hu, followed by Chang, T'an, Wu, T'ang.). 2) Emended according to the recapitulation in p. 9, 1. 5 of the Chinese text below. 3) Two fragments have crept in at this point, breaking a clause the continuity of which is guaranteed by its recapitulation in p. io 1. IO: (i) The two characters from the missing clause in 1. i (cf. n. i above). (ii) Twenty characters, beginning in mid-sentence, mistakenly repeated from p. 4,11. 6,7 above ( ,,
.<
).
A. C. GRAHAM
A white horse is a horse; to ride a white horse is to ride a horse.
A black horse is a horse; to ride a black horse is to ride a horse. Huo is a person; to love Huo is to love a person. Tsang is a person; to love Tsang is to love a person Here what is so follows from what they are.
1).
tm ( *i) *A A A
t*to
Huos
%A
ReA
A *
i hr pareti
e$t8~(A)2)
Ipaet so meone
s Huots A
A
serin
t (
-aRt r3 A
somen
M)
fo149,0X
WP 1
R 191 ide1f m -0% M F 4 i t # X t 3) &

8
5).@kXt E&A .1 We YN P 1
W]
[&
( )
|Jb ,
41
+ if
kJ
WFih4,@,3~4)
t<g;fiL
fi
Huo's parent is someone, but Huo's serving her parent is not
serving someone 5).

') Tsang was an abusive niame for a bondsman, Huo for a bondswoman (Fang-yen
31iB). They were widely used as typical names for the humblest people (Huaifasa-tz4 9/I4B/i, Ham Fei tz4
7/3B/i2),
and Tsang appears as the typical
proper name in the canons (A, 78).

2)
So Hu, Fan, Maspero, T'ang. The two characters are often confused in Mo-tzA; cf.
24I/6, 257/8,
Sun 87/I4,
33,17, 367/I4.
The variant
preferred by Pi, Chang, Wu is
surely a conjectural emendation T'ang ts'e hsien
inspired by the previous sentence. It appears only in the edition, which has conjectural emendations, and the Ssi-k'u
ch'iian-shu pm
3)
J*
4
..
copy, based on the former (cf. Wu, Appendix I/13B, I5A).
The parallel in p. o 1. o below confirms this transposition.
') That this is a gloss is a plausible suggestion of T'an. Chang identifies the gloss as the seven characters
6)
The phrase
'serving another' implies serving a master or husband
(cf.
Mo-tzis 6/2A/7), not one's own parents.
THE LOGIC OF THE MOHIST HSIAO-CH 'U
Her younger brother is a handsome man, but loving her younger brother is not loving a handsome man. A carriageis wood, but riding the carriageis not ridingthe wood 1). A boat is wood, but entering the boat is not entering the wood 2). A robber-manis a man, but abounding in robbersis not abounding in men, being without robbers is not being without men. How shall we make this clear ? Hating its abounding in robbers is not hating its abounding in men. Wishing to be without robbersis not wishing to be without men. The whole world agrees that these are right; but if such is the case, there is no longer any difficulty in allowing that, although a robber-man is a man. Loving robbers is not loving men. Not loving robbers is not not loving men. Killing robber-men is not killing men 3). The latter claims are analogous to the former; the world does not think itself wrong to hold the former, but thinks the Mohists wrong to hold the latter. Is there any reason for it but being, as the saying goes, 'clogged within and closed without'? (Glosson 'clogged within': "Having no empty space within the heart; it is indissolubly clogged"). Here what is so does not follow from what they are.
1)
'Riding wood' (or 'riding a tree'?) evidently had an idiomatic use; but I know no of Hexagrams 59, 6I), where it
example of it, except perhaps in the Changes (t'uan * refers to riding a boat.
2)
'Entering the wood' would naturally be used of an arrow penetrating wood or ink The thesis "Killing robbers is not killing men" does not appear elsewhere in Mo-tzx;
-
soaking into it, as in the late examples noted in Morohashi 14I51i98.

3)
but it is mentioned as a sophistry in Hsiin-tzfi
A 17B14, and as a principle origin-
ating in the time of Yu % (patron sage of the Mohists) in Chuang-tzfi5148B1i.
A. C. GRAHAM
et
ra
ab
iA
b t
b o
l eP r Mn Pb to
is to like books. Cockfights are not cocks, but to like cockfights is to like cocks. Being about to fall into a well is not falling into a well, but to stop someone being about to fall into a well is to stop someone falling into a well. Being about to go out of doors is not going out of doors, but to stop someone being about to go out of doors is to stop someone going out of doors. If such is the case, there is no longer any difficulty in allowing that Being about to die prematurely is not dying prematurely, but
1) The restoration of these characters on grounds of parallelism is a proposal of Hu (followed by Wu, T'ang). Less plausible solutions have been offered by Sun (followed by Chang) and by T'an. 2) The omission of this character, although not previously suggested, seems a necessary corollary of Hu's emendation of 1. I. It cannot be understood either as 'moreover' or as 'about to', and must have entered the text by assimilation to the neighbouring clauses.
3)
T'ang has proposed this ingenious emendation, which takes
as a mistake for the
four characters written close on top of each other. Wu reads

t 4) .
)C<> f
Earlier solutions did not respect the parallelism with the preceding sentences. at the beginning of the sentence in the interests of parallelism.However
i4
Wu adds
Mohists refer to fatalists indiscriminately as (Cf. for example Mo-tzi g/IBB/I, 8A/5).
5) Cf. p. 5, n. i above.
-L
or simply ;
f4
to stop someone being about to die prematurely is to stop someone dying prematurely. Acknowledging the existence of Destiny is not Destiny, but to deny the doctrine of the existence of Destiny is to deny Destiny. The latter claims are the same as the former; the world does not think itself wrong to hold the former, yet condemns the Mohists as wrong for holding the latter. Is there any reason for it but being, as the saying goes, 'clogged within and closed without'? (Gloss as in
i.
above.)
Here what is so follows from what they are not.
'He loves men requires him to love all men without exception before being deemed to love men. 'He does not love men' does not require him to love no men, without exception; he does not love all without exception, and so is deemed not to love men. 'He rides horses' does not require him to ride all horses without exception before being deemed to ride horses; he rides some horses, and so is deemed to ride horses. On the other hand 'He does not ride horses' does require him to ride no horses, without exception, before being deemed not to ride horses. Here one case does not admit exceptions while the other does.
1) Commentators agree that first they correct ;
A<
must be supplied in the second position; but in the
(Yu, Sun, Chang, (Wang, T'an), or retain it and omit to f for Hu (who drastically emends the T'ang), or correct the latter to 9t, (Wu). But except
whole passage) all agree on the general sense.
IO
A. C. GRAHAM
Z WJ $t.Ofi At ZX t f you inhabit t yo a d eeme iA30 t ihb somewhere <A> A X1 t 1.0X At t. A AL A .-i A It JPo,I R It
0.
S
* "@w8
4Zt.X <A>-t t#Atk

ot% t - 4%e) *5
t At i4(c
8Xit
iff 19 ljg_ A %( 0 4%
) n {R
75 X
t .
t] A J% +
If you inhabit somewhere in a state, you are deemed to inhabit

the state; if you own one house in the state, you are not deemed to own the state. The fruit of the peach is the peach; the fruit of the bramble is not the bramble. Asking about the man's illness is asking about the man; disliking the man's illness is not disliking the man. The ghost of a man is not a man; the ghost of your elder brother is your elder brother. Sacrificing to a man's ghost is not sacrificing to a man; sacrificing to your elder brother's ghost is sacrificing to your elder brother. If this horse's eyes are blind, we deem this horse blind; if this horse's eyes are big, we do not say that this horse is big. If these oxen's hairs are yellow, we say that these oxen are yellow; if these oxen's hairs are many, we do not say that these oxen are many. One horse is HORSE, two horses are HORSE. 'Horses have four feet" (HORSE FOUR FOOT) implies four feet to one horse, not
1) This is the reading of parallels in Huai-nan-tzu i61i5A/3,
4 and a comment of Ssui-ma
Piao
ajt Wl9
on Chuang-tzzx Io/42A/6.
II
to a pair of horses. 'One-or-other of the horses is white' (HORSE SOME WHITE) implies not one, but two horses of which one-orother is white. Here in one case something is and in the other something is not.
2. TECHNICAL TERMS 2/I.
Hfio
& 'some' and chin
'all'.
t
... According to the Hsiao-ch'ii, "'Some' is 'not all"' (

4
+ @ ). Here huo is defined
in relation to chin, a verb ('apply
to all', 'exhaust') also used adverbially in the sense of 'all', 'exhaustively'. In the canons chin is itself defined in relation to mo, 'none': A, I A, 42(IO/2B/5) f k, "'-(Applying to) all' is 'of none not so"' 1). FeAngYu-lan maintains that huo in the Hsiao-ch'ii definition combines the meanings 'some' and 'possibly', and his translator Bodde, forced to make a choice, picks the latter: "What is possible is what is not complete" 2). Several other scholars have also preferred to give huo this meaning, which of course becomes increasingly important in the later history of the word 3). Yet there is no doubt that its most common meaning throughout pre-Han literature is 'some'; and in the Mohist dialectical chapters, including the Hsiao-ch'ii itself, it seems never to mean 'possibly' outside this passage. Since the Mohists were in any case interested in quantification, a heavy burden of proof rests on anyone who wishes to deny huo its normal pre-Han function as a quantifier. The Mohist interest in 'some' and 'all' is connected with the
1) The explanation (Io/8A/4, 5
too short to emend.
2) 3)
fi2
fi
M ) is unintelligible as it stands and
Feng
(I)
325
(2)
259.
Sun 260, T'an 25I, T'ang 7I, Wu ii/iiB take huo as 'some'.
72, Hu
(2)
40). But Maspero 6 ('le limit6'), Chang 405,
I2
A. C. GRAHAM
defence of the doctrine of universal love. The Hsiao-ch'ii notes that one is said to ride horses if one has ridden any at all, but to love men only if one loves them universally 'without exception').
(QJ chou,
here translated
The passage uses neither huo nor chin. But
two canons which refute objections to universal love use chin repeatedly, both as the adverb 'all' and as a verb (here translated 'exhaust'); the second also uses huo in contrast with chin:
B, 73(I0/5B/2)
(IE/2oB/8-2i/A5) "
1f "%% w ;Vf
e it is fl
. or not".
Explanation:
(beto
) "
the Sot
a liit
is
exhAustible,if n it e sib. If isin Ai w hte
ha a l
Canon: "Absence of a limit does not interfere with universality". Explanation: Explanatio": "Whether it is filled or not". (Objection:-) "If the South has a limit 1) it is
exhaustible, if not it is inexhaustible. If whether it has a limit or not cannot be known, then whether it is exhaustible or not, whether men fill it or not, and whether men are exhaustible or not, also cannot be known, and it is a fallacy to insist that men can all be loved. (Answer :~) "If men do not fill the limitless, then men are limited, and there is no difficulty about exhausting the limited. If they do fill the limitless, then the limitless is exhausted, and there is no difficulty about exhausting the limitless."
1) The classic statement of the paradox of infinity is "The South has no limit but has
a limit"
tj
'4
(Chuang-tz4 Io/39A/4).
..
I3
t
B, 74 (IO/5B/3, 4) 4
")
*
IO/2IA/5-7)
Xo
Xo
(-)
t g
o
&(34)*tto 9t pe o
o
A*t+tRttl
t%>ttgit9tX
t 9 Rt XRh RlJ X
az
8
(t)*t
Canon: "Withoutknowingtheir numberwe know that (love)is
for all of them. Explanation: 'The questioner'. Explaxation: "Howdo you knowthat yourlove of men exhausts all whose numberyou do know?' Some men are left out of his question.If he asks about all men, then one loves all whom he asks about, and even without knowingtheir numberthere is no difficultyaboutknowingthat one'slove is for all of them".Chieh tW, the commonest Classical Chinese wordfor 'all', occurs in the Ta-ch'u but never in the canons, except in one corrupt passage1).The canonsuse two words,chin and chu , the former generallyreferringforwardto the object, the latter invariably referring backto the subject.Chu,like chin, is usedin contrastwith hgo 'some'2). The choiceof chin as the standard wordis no doubt due to the Mohistconcern with love for all men, and therefore with the quantification of the object. H?o 'some'andmo'none'alsoreferbackto the subject,andthere are no corresponding quantifiers for the object. The only flexible methods of indicating'some' and 'none' are constructions with yu g 'there is' and zeu g\EX 'there is not'; indeed huo and mo (archaic*G'WaK, *MAK) themselvesseem to have begun as yg and zeoX (*GIUG, *MIWO) modifiedby the final -K shared with other distributives whichoccupythe samepositionbetweensubjectand
2)
1) Mo-txV I 0/ I I B/2. A, 74 (Io/gA17, 8) ;
J08
4<
8,
"If they do not both fit the
facts, one necessarily does not fit the facts".
I4
A.
C. GRAHAM
verb (,g
*KLAK
'each', JiW *BI6K 'which', perhaps iQ
*D'UK
'alone'). The Mohist dialecticians, with their special concern with the quantification of the object, resort frequently to a construction which seems to be unusual, with yu or zw before the verb and the preposition yii before the quantified noun. There are examples in the Hsiao-ch'ii and in a canon which will be quoted in full later 1): "ride some horses"; 4f t A, t A, "love some men and not love other men". A negative example A & , is ffi" "overlook none of the harm in it" 2).
t
4ft 4
~,
A0
2/2 Chia
'
'so-called'.
Chia (literally 'borrowing') appears once in the canons:
0~~~~~n
Canon: "Borrowing is necessarily illegitimate. Explanation: is not so'." Explanation: "What is borrowed for this cannot be this; otherwise it would not be borrowed. Borrowing 'crane' for 'dog' is like surnaming it 'Crane' 3)". T'an Chieh-fu
4)
'It
convincingly identifies the subject as metapho-
rical naming. The transference of the name 'crane' is mentioned in

') Cf. p. i9 below. The following 2. Other examnples are Io/5B/7, 8, 20B/6, I/l4B/i. Mo-tzA Io/9B/i, extraordinary sentence, universally assumed to be corrupt, may be another example:
2)
-A some horses" (I I/3B/3).

3)
,%
The puzzling character
,
. "To
own some Ch'in horses is to own
frequent in the canons, is probably
'crane'. The
only example of the latter in Mo-tzii (5/IIB/7) is written with the variant character and characters written without the radical are common in the canons, perhaps because
scribes were timid in modernising characters in a part of Mo-tzi which they found unintelligible. This explanation (T'an II4, Wu io/i8A, to among others) seems now to have 'tiger' (Sun
220).
definitely superseded the older emendation ') T'an

I34.
(;@ R ) and "A dog could be regarded as a sheep" ( A 4
I5
other canons 1). The dog is the standard example in the canons of a thing with two names, koqX 9
('whelp', used of the young of other
animals besides dogs) being in process of supplanting ch'uan +;; this was probably the basis of the sophistries "A kog is not a dog"
.g
ffi +
) 2).
The Mohists would naturally object to the assump-
tion that anything can be named anything, used in the Ch'i 7Wg lgn
* *
=jj of Chqxang-tzg to discredit all dialectics.
Chia is one of the five kinds of personal names distinguished in the Tso-chfban & *; "Those taken from other things are deemed 'borrowed"' (ag t * ; t ) 3). Among the six classes of written characters (lig shu * X ), those adapted to other words of the same sound are called chia-chish t , 'borrowed'.The name Tao or 'Way' is describedas chia in a terse couplet towards the end of the Tse-yang chapter of Chgang-tzu4): "'Way' is a name we borrow for it in order to walk it ( t t A t )ivi t ffii C ). In Hsun-tz? * :f there is a phrase t t 'Supposing...' (literally 'Borrowit), which introduces fictitious illustrations in the manner of the later t ,
t
+, t
5).
This kind of usage
has inspired many scholars, among them Hu Shih and Wu Yuchiang, to understand chia as 'hypothesis' or as 'argument by supposition'.But there are two strong objections to this explanation: (i) It is incredible that the author of the canon should flatly reject hypothetical illustrations as 'erroneous', 'illegitimate' ( 4 ).
1) A, 89 (Io/IIA/3)
t t
B, 72 (IO/20B/5)
""
fi
rg1
ffi
t t
@ . "One may call this 'crane', but still it is not that crane."
2) Canons A, 79, B, 35, 39, 40, 54. Chuang-tzV Io/4<A/2, 40B/2. Outside discussions of the problems of naming, the common word for 'dog' is ch'uan in Mo-tsu ch. I-40 and kou in ch. 4I-7I 3)
Tso-chuan,Duke Huan, 6th Year. The commentatorTu Yu t; ('carp'), name of the son of Confucius.
ffi
gives as example
Li ;t
4)
Chuang-tzG 8160Al8. ') Hsu"-tz?sI 61 I 5B/ 3, I 7/5B/6 .
I6
A. C. GRAHAM
Mo-tzui himself was as fond of them as other Chinese thinkers, and even the later Mohist dialecticians did not scorn them entirely 1). (ii) Illustrative examples in Mo-tzui regularly begin with comi nj Outside Mo-tz' it is common to find chia and p'i used side by side binations including p'i ('compare', 'illustrate'), such as
2). 3).
But the Hsiao-ch'ii gives separate and dissimilar definitions of the two words. It is therefore not using chia in the sense which makes it almost synonymous with
p'i
4).
Maspero 5), who saw the difficulties of this explanation, translated chia as 'le faux'. His interpretation, which assumes drastic textual emendations, is based on the Shuo-wen ` definition of chia,
as the opposite of chen 'genuine' ( t
Ii!). But it is unlikely
that the Shwo-wen uses che'z and chia in their modern sense of 'true' and 'false', since during the Han dynasty the words still applied not to statements but to genuine and spurious (misnamed) things, as in this passage from the biography of the Marquis of Huai-yin
Xk e C}Shilt-Chi f :i 4f JE
prince ?"
2/3. Fa
j'
92/2A/2:
.
*tttg@
"A great man who pacifies the rulers of
the states is a true prince, no less; what do you mean, a so-called
'Standard'.
Fa 'model', 'standard', is a key word in early as well as late Mohism. According to the chapter Fa yi
f
ff
('Standards and
Patterns'), of which it is the theme, there are standards and patterns

') Cf. Mo-tzu Ii16A/5 (Ta-ch'ii). and passim. 2/IB/3, Mo-tzf i/i8A/3,
2)
3)
Thus at the beginning of the Kung-sun Lung tzil
K/. 4
"
Kung-sun
).
Lung is said to 'take illustrations by borrowing from other things'

Cf. also the quotation from Wang Fu, p.
4)
4 2
22 below. This consideration tells against T'an Chieh-fu's opinion that chia means 'hypothesis' in the Hsiao-ch'iu although meaning 'metaphorical naming' in the canon (T'an 134, 252).
5)
Maspero 7, n. 4.
I7
for every kind of conduct. The compass is the standard for drawing a circle, the carpenter's square for drawing squares; but what is the standard for moral behaviour? Not parents or teacher or ruler, all of whom are fallible. The one ultimately valid course is to model
ourselves on heaven (
)
will of heaven, the
The fa have two functions in early Mohism. In the first place they are models to be imitated in action-the sages, the rules laid down by the sages on such matters as the proper combination of efficiency and economy in houses, clothes and funerals. (The word used for 'imitate' is generally fa serving as a verb, but at least once it is hsiao, as in the Hsiao-ch'ii) 1). In addition they are standards by which one measures the rightness or wrongness of conduct or of opinions. The compass and carpenter's square, introduced in the Fa yi chapter as tools for drawing geometrical figures, reappear in the three versions of the T'ien chih
X
,AL chapter as standards for judging whether a figure is or is

2).
not a circle or square

X
i
The standards proposed in the l'ien ming
chapters for testing such doctrines as fatalism (the authority
of the sages, common observation, and practical consequences), are called, in two of the three versions, the 'Three Fa' the typical instance A, 70 (Io/IB/7)
3).
The definition in the Mohist canons again takes the circle as

4),
and uses it to show that there can be more
than one standard for one thing:

),
i ffi t ;
A
(io/9A/5)
being so."
afo
A-t
A ff
to in
Canon: "A standard is what something approximates
1) Mo-tzi 9/22B/5
2)
5QN;a
fi
'imitate Confucius'. Cf. 2/6B/5.
3)
Mo-tzft 7/5B/5-6A/3, I3A/8-I4B/4, I9B/5-8. Mo-tzf 9/6B/5-7A/4, ioB/i-8. Cf. IB/7-2A/6. ') Cf. also B. 65 (Io/5A/I, 2. i9A14-6), where the example is a square.
2
Toung Pao, LI
I8
A. C. GRAHAM
Explanation: "The idea, the compass, the circle, all three can be taken as the standard". A,
7I (Io/IB/7,
8)
'f' , )6Ji f tti

X 1)
(Io/9A/5, 6) Canon: "The duplicate
is what is made so."
Explanation: "Being 'so' is the people approximating to the standards." Both here and in the Hsiao-ch'ii the definitions imply that the fa is primarily a model for 'imitation'
2)
by the 'people'. However, concerned, not with
the Mohist dialecticians were immediately
teaching moral principles, but with the methods of defending them in argument. In practice they use fa only as criteria for deciding what a thing is. Indeed, when the theme of modelling oneself on the sage does appear in the canons synonymous yi and fa. The Hsiao-ch'ii sharply distinguishes questions of shhl/fei (A robber is a man) from questions of jan (Killing robbers is not killing men), and implies that the use of standards belongs to the former: "Therefore if it fits when applied to something, that is the thing in question (shih), otherwise it is not (fei)"
4). 3),
the word used is yi 'pattern',
suggesting that a difference was emerging between the formerly
It would seem
then that standards are used for the preliminary inquiry into
1)
The Prh-ya i
Fe
(Shih yen
). A, 7Bf3 explains the rare word Irhby
The canons provide no example of the term used in practice. (cf. p. 17 above), but stretches its 2) The Hsiao-ch'iu still uses the word hsiao 'imitate' meaning to cover the application of the standard as a test; I therefore translate it by the non-committal word 'apply'. Maspero (io-I8) has sufficiently criticised Hu Shih's argument (Hu (2) 42, (3) 95) that hsiao is deduction.
3) 4)
Cf. B, 53 (Iof4A/2,
i8A14-7).
X
k Compare the accounts of standards in the T'ien chih p 'What fits is this' (7/5B/7)
chapters, where the
sentence
of the first version appears in a
fuller form in the second version:

pass is called round' (7JI3B/3, 4).
4,
X,
'What fits my com-
I9
whether X is Y, before proceeding to the real subject of the Hsiaoch'ii, inference by analogy from X to Y. This interpretation is confirmed by one sequence in the canons:
A, 94 (Io/2B/8) f
(io/iiA/6)
Ji,
aI
t
*
II
i's'g
-")
Canon: "Where the standard is similar, take account of the similarities". Explanation: "Accept the similarities, but take account of
sophistical twists".
A, 95 (I0/2B/8)
fX
o
JX
(IO/IIA/6-8)
Af XlW""}}
At
Canon: "Where the standard is different, take account of its relevance". Explanation: "Accept this, reject that; ask about reasons, take account of relevance. Using what is black or what is not black in a man to fix 'black man', and using one's loving some men or not loving other men to fix 'loving men' relevant ?"
-
in these cases which is
A, 96 (IO/3A/I)
(io/iiB/i,
X Jt @Jj MIJ 1 2) (J)) *jj t ;
fi
t Jt
Canon: "Fix a criterion, in order to distinguish alternative courses". Explanation: "If the other refers to cases where it is so, as evidence that it is so here, refer to cases where it is not so, and ask about them." B, I (I013A/4) (io/IIB/5, 6)
iL z 1 (A)
jIMkO
20
A. C. GRAHAM
Canon: "F ix the analogy in order to proceed further"
1).
Explanation: "The other, on the grounds that it is so here, argues that it is so of the one in question. I, on the grounds that it is not so here, doubt whether it is so of the one in question." The sequence includes other canons which are seriously corrupt, but its general tendency seems clear. We decide what a thing is by applying a standard. This standard, when we are not dealing with rather special cases such as the circle, is presumably a verbal definition; a long series of such definitions, followed by a shorter series distinguishing between the meanings of ambiguous words, occupies most of the first half of the canons. Sometimes conflicting considerations hinder the application of a standard; if we are deciding whether someone is a 'black man' or someone's love is 'love of mankind', shall we judge by black eyes or light skin, love for some men or indifference to others ? (As will be seen later
2),
there is reason to believe that sophists did argue that a dog with white hair and black eyes is black, and that we love mankind if we love any man). Having decided what things are, we can proceed to argue by analogy from one to another, from tz'z' (i4 ('this here', opposite of pi jIL* 'that there') to shih g ('this the aforementioned', 'the one in question'). The former pronoun evidently refers to illustrative examples from which one can draw conclusions illuminating the topic in question. (Compare the formula which so often
introduces illustrative stories,
ft Ak J,4ut
'Take the case of a
man. . .', literally 'Here we have a man . . .'). We have now reached the kind of argument found in the Hsiao-ch'ii, in which one argues from elder brothers, carriages and boats to the controversial
I) The canon has three more words,
"Explanation:
'Similarity-the
first occurrence of the formula which marks the latter half of the canons. In view of the confusion of the text at this point, and the parallelism of this canon with A, 96, which lacks the formula, it is doubtful whether the three words belong here. 2) Cf. p. 32, 33 below.
2I
subject of robbers. In the last canon quoted the disputant doubts whether the claim is true of the illustrative example, but does not yet raise the questions concerning the validity of the analogy which occupy the Hsiao-ch'ii. But in the next section, too corrupt for consecutive translation, the canon begins with the words: "The ` difficulties of inferring by analogy.. . " (4 ), and the t explanation, after an obscure beginning in which one can recognise some names of animals, concludes: "If what is so here were necessarily so of the one in question, they would all be deer". ('.4ffi
2/4. P'i
: {l 'Illustrating',
Mou
ft
'Matching', Yuan
'Adducing', and T'ui *
'Inferring'.
The definitions of illustrating, matching, adducing and inferring constitute the second of three sequences of four in the Hsiao-ch'ii. They are applications in argument of the four tools of dialectics presented early in the essay: names, sentences, explanations and analogies. Moreover they are immediately followed by warnings against four corresponding fallacies, with a final summing up which begins: "Therefore sentences which illustrate, match, adduce and infer become different as they develop
. . ."
Before considering
the definitions, it may therefore be useful to lay the three sequences side by side:
A It refers to objects by means of names, B 'Illustrating' is referring to some other thing for the purpose of clarification. C When things are the same in some respects, it does not follow that they are altogether the same.
expresses thoughts by means of sentences,
'Matching' is comparing The matching of sentensentences and develop- ces is valid only within limits. ing them together.
22 A
A. C. GRAHAM B C
presents reasons (ku) by means of explanations,
'Adducing' is saying 'If it is so in your case, why should it not be so in mine too?'
If matters are so, there are reasons (so-yi) why they are so; but although they are the same in being so, they are not necessarily so for the same reasons. If claims are accepted, there are reasons why they are accepted; but although they are the same in being accepted, they are not necessarily accepted for the same reasons.
and accepts and proposes 'Inferring' is using what is the same in something by means of analogy. which he refuses to accept and in something which he does accept, in order to propose the former.
Of the first two, one compares things while the other compares sentences. The word p'i (generally written with Radical I49, is the common term for the most ordinary of Chinese debating o devices; it is defined in much the same way by Wang Fu ]IP
(c. AD 76-c.
I57)
in his Ch'ienJu lun
"
7/5A/2
"Illustrative similes arise when direct statement is not clear;
one therefore borrows another thing of which the same is so or not so in order to throw light on it." On the other hand the matching of sentences of the same logical form is a Mohist innovation, and so is the adaptation of the word
rnou (literally 'equalise') to denote it. Neither the practice nor the
word took lasting root in Chinese philosophy. Indeed the shift of interest from names to sentences reflected in the Hsiao-ch'ii gives this document an exceptional place even among the Mohist sources. The canons, although deeply concerned with names, their classification, their definitions and their ambiguities, never use the word 'matching' and do not include 'sentence' among the terms which they define. A contemporary document in which we do find an interest in the sentence and even a recognition that names
THE LOGIC OF THE MOHIST HSIAO-CH'J
23
cannot be fully understood outside their context is the Chetngnitng
jJj f
('Correctuse of names') of the ConfucianHsiin-tzui(c. 298t t i t
c. 238 BC): Hsiin-tzu 16/9B/4-IoA/I
)EJ
0 "The conveying of an object at the hearingof its name is the 'use' of names. The construction of texts by attaching
.g 3-#
them together is the 'interconnecting' of names. One who grasps both its use and its interconnections is said to know a name. The name is the means to identify attached objects. The sentence puts together the names of different objects in order to develop one idea"' Yiian and t'nti, literally 'pulling' and 'pushing', are opposite ways of arguing from analogy. The former is adducing X as evidence for Y; "If it is so in your case, why should it not be so in mine too ?" We need not suppose, in spite of the phrasing of the definition, that X is necessarily part of the opponent's case; more probably it is a commonly admitted thesis, and the background assumed is the kind of debate in which the opponent is induced by leading questions to propose X himself. A similar use of yuian is common in later Chinese, but in the rather narrower sense of appealing to a precedent, as in the phrase
4f 91
noticed by Hu Shih
1).
The parallels in columns A and C show that X is conceived as Y's 'reason' (ku), 'why it is so' (so-yi jan). 'Reason' is the very first of the technical terms defined in the canons:
A, I (Io/IA/3)
Canon: "The reason is what is required before it can come about."

1) Hu (2) 47.
24
A. C. GRAHAM
Explanation: "-Minorreason': having this, it is not necessarily so; not having this, it is necessarily not so. 'Major reason': having this, it is necessarily so" 1). The definition suggests that ku is primarily a cause; but the Mohists, like other Chinese thinkers, do not in practice reserve km for 'cause' and do not detach it from other kinds of reason. We can take the minor reason as a cause without which an event will not happen or as evidence without which a claim is untenable, the major reason as a cause which ensures the event or as evidence which proves the claim. 'Pulling' 'pushing' ; starts from Y and appeals to X as evidence; starts from X and infers Y as a new conclusion. T'ui,
'push', 'extend' was already in the 3rd century BC, and has remained, ' 'kind, sort', the standard word for inference. The word lei found in the parallel in column A, is commonly combined with it in the phrase t'ui lei 'extend the kind', 'infer by analogy' following example is from a passage in the Shuo-shan chapter of Huai-nan-tziu (c. the Hsiao-ch'ii: Hitai-nan-ta'
I30
2).
The
1`
BC), which borrows directly from
I6/I5A/3-5
,J6 j
-p
- " P4
1
U.
1) Commentators
$ -PT
Z RW'o
have offered very forced explanations
of the two bracketed passages. w 'like' have the look
But the numerous illustrations
in the canons introduced by jo
of marginal glosses which have not always entered the text at the right point. Here the first may be a mutilated gloss on the next canon (A, 2), the other surely belongs to A, 6, as the last of a series of four illustrations: intellect'); A, 4 t; (on 9f 0'L 'Like peering' (on A, 3
$
'Like nJJ
eyesight'
(on
>,
'the
'thinking'); A, 5
'Like seeing'
'knowing'). In A, 6 (on 4XP 'wisdom'), the original illustration has been displaced
by a repetition of the illustration of A, 3. But the last six words of A, I would fit perfectly: "Like fully seeing when one sees." giving this translation of the Hsiao-ch'ui 2) Hu Shih identified t'ui with 'induction', definition: "The tuei consists in making a general affirrmation on the ground that the unexamined cases are similar to those already examined" (Hu (3) ioo). But the decisive word 'general' is not in the original. Cf. also the criticisms of Maspero (22-28).
25
"A small horse with big eyes cannot be called a big horse, but if the eyes of a big horse are blind one can call it a blind horse. Certainly there are things which seem to be so but are not. Hence some die of a cut finger, others save their lives by amputating an arm; it is not always safe to infer by analogy" 1).
Things are said to be 'of the same kind' (
J M)
or 'not of a
kind' ( :; Iff); the word lei indicates the similarity between them, not a class to which they belong. Lei is indeed one of the four senses of t'ung 'same' distinguished in the canons:
A, 86 (I012B/i)
(io/ioB/3-5)
E t\
Rk
'
8af
IQ = - 1#
he E
a kind."
RLXfI~ AL
A. t . ft
mWt
Canon: "The same-identical,
or of one body, or together, or of
Explanation:
"Two names but one object, is 'identity'.
Not
elsewhere in a collection, is 'of one body'. Both occupying a house, is 'together'. The same in some respects. is 'of a kind'."
A, 87 (I0/2B/iP 2) (io/ioB/5, 6)
m
5k <
i
>
8_tO4
f f >%
100 <*> ft
Canon: "Different -two, not of a kind."
or not of one body, or not together, or
Explanation: "Two necessarily different is 'two'. Discontinuity is 'not of one body'. Not in the same place is 'not together'. The same in no respect is 'not of a kind'." The interest in the sentence rather than in the isolated name, which led to the adoption of the word rnou 'matching', also
1) Cf. Hsiao-ch'il, p. Io above.
26
A. C. GRAHAM
inspired a new conception of inference by analogy. The Hsiao-ch'ii, and also the Ta-ch'ii, consider not likenesses between things, but the formal similarity of sentences. The Hsiao-ch'ii twice explicitly argues from analogy, observing that "the latter claims are of the same kind as (or are similar to) the former", and in both cases it is referring to parallel sentences. The Ta-ch'ii declares that "Sentences are things which develop by means of analogy"
fi (
4j 5*
.)
1),
and continues by presenting a list of controunexplained
versial Mohist theses with the analogies-unfortunately -which establish their validity.
g
2/5. Shih/Fei
[ 'X is or is not Y', and Jan
'so'.
The pairs shih/fei and jan/pu jan are often used almost interchangeablv in pre-Han literature, to approve or reject assertions. But the Hsiao-ch'ii sharply differentiates them in the passage introducing the five types of argument, and the examples of the five types show clearly how the words are being used: Shih and jan. . . "A white horse is a horse, and to ride a white horse is to ride a horse. " Shih but not jan. . . "A robber is a man, but to kill a robber is not to kill a man." <Not> cockfights shih but jan. . . "Cockfights are not cocks, but liking is liking cocks."
. .
One shih and one fei .
"The fruit of the peach is the peach;
the fruit of the bramble is not the bramble." In the first three pairs shih applies to the first member and jan to the second. The words do not serve to pronounce the propositions true, since the negative propositions are true but pronounced not shih, not jan, or fei. It is clear that shih and fei affirm and deny that X is Y, while jan and not jan affirm and deny something said
1) Mo-tzii II/6B/7, 8.
27
of Y (that one rides horses, kills men, likes cocks). The implicit questions are as follows: "Is a white horse a horse ?"-"It is" (shih). is so" "If one rides a white horse, does one ride a horse ?"-"It (jani). This accords with the ordinary use of shih/fei in pre-Han philosophy
').
Classical Chinese conveys the copulative relationship by
the formulae 'X Y yeh' 'Xfei Y yeh'. Fei is a negative verb ('is not'), but there is no corresponding affirmative verb. There is, however, the pronoun shik 'this', inserted at the same position in longer sentences ('X shih Y yeh'), which later developed into a copulative verb corresponding to fei. A Chinese thinker who wishes to abstract the copulative relationship therefore uses shih and fei as parallels, 'being (Y)' and 'not being (Y)'. The formulae '. . . yeh' and 'fei. . . yeh' are also used to affirm and deny propositions: 'It is that.
.
.', 'Is is not that
...'.
Shih
and fei therefore embrace the rightness or wrongness of assertions (the state of affairs in question being or not being the state of affairs reported). The Hsiao-ch'ii several times uses shih and fei transitively to judge propositions
2).
However shih/fei is in Chinese of translation
a single concept, which only the inconveniences
compel us to split into 'X being or not being Y' and 'right or wrong'. For example, it would be pointless to insist on one or other rendering in the opening sentence of the Hsiao-ch'ii, "The aim of Dialectics is to clarify the division between shih and fei". The general purpose of Dialectics is to distinguish between right and wrong judgments, but the cases taken as typical in the canons are such questions as whether a thing is or is not an ox, a horse, a dog. Compare the two definitions of Dialectic in the canons:
1) Cf. Graham (2) 8I, 82, 86-98.
2)
Cf. p. 6 1. 9, p. 8 11.5, 6, 7 above.
28
A. C. GRAHAM
A I4 (IO/2A/I,
2, 9A/6,
7)
ff) * t
.
One saying that it
"Dialectic is contesting the other 's case ...
is an ox, the other that it is not, is 'contesting the other's case'." B 35 (io/i6A/i) $" 0tX t@ "Dialectic is one saying that it is (or 'is right'), the other that it is not (or 'is wrong')" 1). Jan pronounces that a state of affairs is 'so', as reported or suggested. In all the examples in the Hsiao-ch'ii what is so of a thing is what one does to it (ride a horse, love a man). But in a canon already quoted 2) what is so of a man includes his qualities (he is black) and what he does (he loves men). The essential feature of jan in the Mohist dialectical chapters is that it applies to what is said about a thing, and not like shih to what it is said to be. 3.
THE ARGUMENT OF THE
Hsiao-ch'ii
The most useful approach to the thought of the Hsiao-ch'ii is to consider first the positions which it attacks. There are five sequences of arguments in the essay, of which the first three form one gioup; and the second and third of these end with propositions which the enemies of Mohism are said to deny: "A robber is a man, but killing a robber is not killing a man. "Being about to die prematurely is not dying prematurely, but to stop someone being about to die prematurely is to stop someone dying prematurely." "Fatalism is not fate, but to deny fatalism is to deny fate." None of these controversies is documented elsewhere; but by reversing the three theses we can recover the anti-Mohist arguments,
1) From Canons A, 74, B, 35, translated in full Graham (2) 9I. Canon A, 95. Cf. p. i9 above. "What is black or what is not black" and "one's loving some men or not loving other mnen" are evidently examples of the "cases where it is so" and "cases where it is not so" in the next canon.
2)
29
which are intelligible as criticisms of Mo-tzu's affirmation of universal love and denial of fatalism. (i) It is a duty to love all men; it is also a duty to execute criminals. This apparent contradiction worried the Mohists, as we can see from a list of problems at the end of the Ta-ch'fi, each followed by an unexplained reference to an analogy supposed to resolve it:
MO-tz' II/7A/5
oh
"Selecting one to be killed out of men who are loved equally: analogy, a rat down a pit." Certain Mohists avoided the difficulty by affirming that "Killing a robber is not killing a man." (But even in Mo-tzu' this claim appears nowhere outside the Hsiao-ch' ii.) Critics of other schools answered with the common-sense objection: "A robber is a man, so killing a robber is killing a man." (ii) Mo-tziu was a dedicated enemy of fatalism. His followers evidently argued, although we have no independent evidence of this, that the time of death cannot be fated because we can voluntarily save a threatened life. Fatalists reply that we never stop an event from happening, only from being about to happen: "Being about to die prematurely is not dying prematurely, so to stop someone being about to die prematurely is not to stop someone dying prematurely." (iii) Fate is mting
k
'the decree'. One who conceives fate as a
commanding power might well argue that the Mohist attack on fatalism is itself proof of the possibility of defying fate; there can be no greater disobedience than to deny the very existence of the orders. Replying to some such objection, fatalists answer that a denial of fatalism may itself be fated: "Fatalism is not fate, so to reject fatalism is not to reject fate." Each of these presupposed anti-Mohist arguments has the same
30
A. C. GRAHAM
form: "X is Y, so to do something to X is to do it to Y." This leads the Mohist to examine the validity of the formula. He concludes that such pairs of propositions are of three kinds, and that the argument is valid only for the first. In order to decide this sort of question, therefore, we can no longer take it for granted that we can pass directly from the first proposition to the second, as in "A white horse is a horse, so to ride a white horse is to ride a horse". We must first decide to which category the case in question belongs. For the Mohist, then, each of the three sequences is a single argument leading through a series of undisputed examples to a controversial Mohist conclusion. His opponents offer each pair of sentences as a complete argument, with 'X is Y' as the premise and 'Doing it to X is doing it to Y' as the conclusion. But for the Mohist such pairs are themselves premises, leading to a similar pair or pairs as conclusion. In the second and third sequences he is quite explicit on this point, which investigators of the Hsiao-ch'ii do not seem always to have fully appreciated: "The whole world agrees that these are right; but if such is the case . . ." "The latter claims are of the same kind as the former: the world does not think itself wrong to hold the former, yet thinks the Mohists wrong to hold the latter". Even the first sequence, which raises no controversial issues and is hurried through with only four examples, begins on the neutral theme of horses, and ends on the Mohist theme of love for men. The Mohist constructs and operates his sequences by means of the four devices Illustration, Matching, Adducing and Inference. The solution of his first problem, 'Is killing robbers killing men?', takes the following steps: (i) Illustration. To illuminate the case of the robber, the Mohist "refers to other things in order to clarify it": parent, younger brother, carriage, boat.
3I
(ii) Matching. He uses the illustrations to "compare sentences and develop them together": "Huo's parent is another man, but Huo's serving her parent is not serving another man." "Her younger brother is a handsome man, but loving her younger brother is not loving a handsome man." (iii) Adducing ('pulling'). At the fifth set of matched sentences he broaches the theme of robbers, and to avoid doubts at this crucial point justifies his propositions by supplementary propositions which are generally acceptable, which he can elicit from his opponent by leading questions and then say: "If it is so in your case, why should it not be so in mine too ?" "A robber man is a man, but abounding in robbers is not abounding in men, being without robbers is not being without men. "How shall we make this clear? "Hating its abounding in robbers is not hating its abounding in men. "Wishing to be without robbers is not wishing to be without men." (iv) Inference ('pushing'). The opponent has now accepted the whole series down to "A robber man is a man, but many robbers is not many men. . ." The Mohist now "uses what is the same in something which he refuses to accept and in something which he does accept in order to propose the former":"If such is the case, there is no longer any difficulty in allowing that, although a robber man is a man... not killing mnen." The basis of reasoning, then, is the formial similarity, the wordfor-word correspondence, of sentences. But this similarity is deceptive, as the introduction to the treatise repeatedly warned us, killing robber men is
32
A. C. GRAHAM
and we can never afford to take it on trust. We check it by substituting or adding a word on both sides and confirming that the correspondence still holds. For example, 'Robbers are men' is formally similar either to "White horses are horses' or to 'Huo's parents are men'. How can we be sure that it is the former parallel which is deceptive, so that we are not entitled to infer: "Killing robbers is killing men" ? Because this parallel breaks down as soon as we substitute, for example, 'loving' for 'killing': "Loving robbers is not loving men." Or again, if we substitute 'being without' for 'killing', but someone questions "Being without robbers is not being without men", we can expand to "Wishing to be without robbers is not wishing to be without men" and confirm that the sentence remains negativte. The problem of checking the limits of formal similarity entirely occupies the Mohist throughout the rest of the chapter. He illustrates his fourth type of argument by one example only, the difference between 'riding horses' and 'loving men'. These phrases look alike, yet on examination we see that, while a man can be said to ride horses if he has ridden any horse at all, he loves men only if he loves them without exception. The target of this argument is no doubt some critic of Mohism who had objected that we can love men without loving all of them just as we can ride horses without riding all of them. The fifth sequence is devoted to phrases which seem to be formally alike, yet prov,e to be dissimilar when expanded. The phrases 'ghost of a man' and 'ghost of one's elder brother' look alike, yet "The ghost of a man is not a man, but the ghost of your elder brother is your elder brother." Further expansion only confirms the difference: "Sacrificing to the ghost of a man is not sacrificing to a man;
33
but sacrificing to the ghost of your elder brother is sacrificing to your elder brother." This sequence is unique in that it does not culminate in any controversial Mohist thesis. However, there is reason to suspect that its concluding arguments attack paradoxical claims of the sophists. There seem to be no references to sophistries earlier in the chapter. Admittedly, the very first proposition in the first sequence is "A white horse is a horse", suggesting the most notorious of Chinese sophistries, Kung-sun Lung's "A white horse is not a horse". But since this stands at the head of the least controversial of the five sequences clearly it is assumed to be beyond dispute. Very probably the Hsiao-ch'ii simply continues a tradition of taking "A white horse is a horse" as the classic case of an indisputable proposition, and Kung-sun Lung chose to deny it precisely because this tradition made its denial the most daring of paradoxes. Ssiu-ma Piao (died 306 AD) used the proposition
,lJ ,% ,
about the horse's eyes to explain the sophistry "A white dog is
black" ( b
'4M ): Ching-tienshih-wen #
Ifi" t
28/32A/II
t75~~~~
Nt 1 k> MRI 11P4b41
"If a dog's eyes are blind we call it a blind dog, but if a dog's eyes are big we do not say it is a big dog. Here in one case something is and in the other something is not 1). It follows that a white dog with black eyes can also be taken as a black dog." Ssiu-ma Piao assumed that the sophist and the Mohist were saying the same thing. But if he is right in connecting the two passages, as seems very probable, we must suppose that the Mohist is criticising the sophist. Indeed, if we take the Mohist's observa1) A direct quotation from the last sentence of the Hsiao-chii. Ssui-ma Piao explicitly quotes one of the canons (B, I6. Mo-tza Iof4B/2) in his comment on "A flying bird's shadow never stirs" (Chuang-tzii IO/4iB/7). Toung Pao, LI 3
B,
I2
(I0/4A/I)
k * t
R A rA 1 sr e 10
34
A. C. GRAHAM
tions concerning the horse's eyes and ox's hairs as the answer, we can make a much neater although purely conjectural reconstruction of the sophist's argument. V\tecall a dog white if it has white hairs but black eyes. But we call dogs blind when only their eyes are blind, and do not call them many when their hairs are many. We should therefore judge the dog's colour by its eyes rather than its hair, and pronounceit black. The Mohist, taking his examples from horses and oxen, replies: "If this horse's eyes are blind, we deem the horse blind; if this horse's eyes are big, we do not say that the horse is big. "If the hairs of these oxen are yellow, we say that these oxen are yellow; if the hairs of these oxen are many, we do not say that these oxen are many." This brings in one new consideration, the size of the animal's eyes.The sophist is placed in a dilemma. If he chooses to judge magnitude by the eyes, he can no longer refuse to judge number bythe hairs; if he refuses to take the eyes as the criterion of magnitude, he can no longer insist on taking them as the criterion of colour. The propositions about horses at the end of the sequence seem to connect with one of the canons:
(g) *1 rA 1. t 4 %IEI XO r Z18 24 .W ffi 4 E,% MIJ4 .%= g t ft

(IO/I3A/I 3)
O
MIJ+.%-
tffit.tXii-o Canon: ''A classified thing is one unit. Explanation: 'Both as oneX 'Only this'."
Explanation: "'Both as one': as in OX HORSE FOUR FOOT. 'Only this': specifying 1) OX, HORSE. If we count OX and count
1) Tang 2 is used in the canons for 'hitting the right alternative' (A, 74. B, 35. MotzEi Io/2A/2, 4B/4, gA/7, 8, I6A/I). The formula 'Tang X Y' seems to be basically 'Hits
35
HORSE, then OX, HORSE are two; if we count OX HORSE, then OX HORSE is one. It is like counting the fingers; the fingers are five but the five are one." The point is evidently that how we count things depends on how we choose to 'classify' them (
I9/I2
j-
used as in Analects
*,
k "We may compare them to Eo 2) XiJ 2
the plants and trees, they are divided into classes"). There are five fingers, but the fingers together are one part of the body; oxen and horses may be taken either as one class or as two. A point of some interest is raised by the phrase OX HORSE FOUR FOOT and the similar HORSE FOUR FOOT of the Hsiao-ch'ii. We might translate them either as singular or plural: Oxen and horses have four feet/An ox or a horse has four feet. Horses have four feet/ A horse has four feet. The English word 'or' calls attention to a logical difference between the two propositions; each four-footed individual can be called HORSE in the latter, but cannot be called OX HORSE in the former. Would this distinction be obvious to a Chinese working without an equivalent to the ambiguous but useful little word 'or'? Unless he saw the need to analyse the former proposition into OX FOUR FOOT, HORSE FOUR FOOT, before asking what has four feet, he would surely be tempted to take it as describing a class of, so to speak, 'ox-horses', each of which whether horned or maned has four feet, just as HORSE FOUR FOOT describes a class of horses each four-footed whether white or black or yellow. Something of this sort is implied by the sophistry YELLOW
HORSE BLACK OX THREE (

Ssiu-ma Piao commented:
X or Y'. Cf. A, 50 (io/8AI8, 8B/I)
,% ,
4--
), on which
"OX HORSE turns two into three, 'i
...
'
...
'It is either an ox or not a horse' . . . 'It is either a horse or not a horse'.
Al;
36
A. C. GRAHANI
'oxen', 'horses'and 'ox-horses"' ( + ,% , _ A -> El 4: 8 Ef *%8 Ef 4: ,%) 1).Thereis in fact one canon which directly discussesthe questionwhether'ox-horses' are or are not oxen and horses: B, 67 (Io/5A/3,4)48
t: s (IO/I9B/2-7) 4
4: .% t
@ 4
1a1 0 gt
$ (% ) t + jes r i 4 t vr MaJ A# t- ais A 4 i r+ t 14 0k H > r+ ,% # 4 @, 1*

4 'L + j% + t l * 4 8 0lJ $ 4 $ %4 i B L +
44+ t * 4 l t> X t o X + X- ,% X- i 4: W RgJ+4#4} W4# % iLM W

tt41ffio
"Ihere are the samegroundsfor denyingthat ox-horses are not oxen as for admittingit. Explanation: their combination." Explanation: "If it is admissible that, since some are not oxen, they are not oxen, then, sincesomeare oxen thoughsomeare not, it is equally admissiblethat they are oxen. Therefore,if it is inadmissible to say either 'Ox-horses are not oxen' or 'Ox-horses are oxen', then, since one shouldbe admissible if the otheris not, it is alsoinadmissible to say: "'Ox-horses areoxenl'is inadmissible'. "Moreover, if neither oxen nor horses are two, but ox-horses are two, then, the oxen not being the non-oxenand the horsesnot being the non-horses, there is no difficulty about 'Ox-horses are non-oxenand non-horses"' 2).
Canon:
Thisstrangecanonbecomes intelligible if we take it as an answer to some sophist arguingthat ox-horsesare not oxen, since some
1) Chxang-tzVIo/42A/4. For the controversial question of the division between this and the preceding canon, cf. Graham (I), p. I62, I63 n. I, 2, (2) 97 n. 24. The first character of the canon is repeated after in stead of before the first character of the explanation, an error so cornmon as to suggest that these references to the canon were originally written in the margin beside the first character of the explanation (there seem to be no cases one place too early in stead of one place too late).
2)
37
are admittedly not oxen, nor horses, since the rest are admittedly not horses, and must therefore be a third kind of animal. The Mohist replies:
(i)
The case for OX HORSE IS-NOT OX can just as well be OX HORSE IS-NOT OX IS-NOT HORSE is valid, but does
turned round to prove that ox-horses are oxen.

(2)
not imply a third animal; it simply means that those which are oxen are not horses and those which are horses are not oxen ("Oxhorses are non-oxen and non-horses", or, if we suppose the Mohist completely free of the tendency to class both animals together as ox-horses, "Oxen and horses are non-oxen and non-horses"). Another possible objection to the sophist would be that in OX HORSE FOUR FOOT the OX HORSE refers to single individuals, while in OX HORSE SOME IS-NOT OX/HORSE it refers to aggregates within which some individuals are not one or not the other, so that we cannot infer from the latter propositions that each individual is neither an ox nor a horse. It seems likely that the last example in the Hsiao-ch'ii is making just this objection to the same sophistry applied to horses alone. The sophist, we may suppose, points out that HORSE FOUR FOOT applies to single horses; but these individuals are not black, since HORSE SOME WHITE, nor white, since some horses are black; in the absence of a convenient disjunctive particle, he cannot say that they are white or black or of another colour; he concludes that they are a species distinct from all horses with colour. The Mohist replies that he has made an illegitimate jump from HORSE FOUR FOOT, in which HORSE refers to one, to HORSE SOME WHITE, in which it refers to more than one. Scholars have tended to assume that the author of the Hsiao-ch'ii attempts a deductive logic but fails to advance beyond argument from analogy. But this verdict seems to depend on a misunder-
38
A. C. GRAHAM
standing. It is necessary to distinguish between the manner in which the later Mohists argued in practice, discarding the older type of analogical argument for deductive reasoning of considerable subtlety and precision, and their inquiries into the forms of reasoning, which show no sign that they were even groping towards a deductive logic. The starting-point of the inquiry in the Hsiao-ch'ii is a type of deductive argument common in practice but seen to be fallacious: "X is Y, so to do something to X is to do it to Y'. For us, wise after the event, it seems that such problems might have led him to abstract the logical form of deductive arguments and develop some equivalent of the Greek or Indian syllogism. The concern to formulate deductive arguments completely and consistently, apparent in the essays of Kung-sun Lung and in the Mohist canons, would seem to have made the situation ripe for suich an event. However, the author of the Hsiao-ch'ii took quite a different course. Observing that the arguments to which he objected assimilate propositions of the form 'X is Y' to the single type "A white horse is a horse", he developed a method of uncovering the dissimilarities of propositions which are formally alike. This procedure consisted in reducing assertions to the same form, laying them side by side, and testing their similarity by substitution and addition of words. Thus the Mohist's target is a deductive fallacy, yet his way of attacking it is to expose false analogies. The absence in his essay of watertight patterns like the syllogism does not imply that he is groping towards Aristotelian logic and failing to reach it. He offers a method which is valid but always provisional, since there is always the possibility that new formal manipulations will reveal new similarities and differences. It is perhaps easier to understand this now than it was when Hu Shih and Maspero made their studies, since this kind of argument has become increasingly important in English philosophy during the last thirty years. The successors
39
of Wittgensteindislike fighting with the deductive weapons of their enemies,and preferto underminethem by exposing false analogiesvery much in the mannerof the Hsiao-ch'u.
4. THE MOHIST LOGIC ANDTHECHINESE LANGUAGE.
Severalscholarswho have translatedfrom the Hsiao-ch'u into Frenchor Englishhave remarked on the limitationsof the Chinese language, whichcondemn the authorto overlook, or to notice only by a laborious effort,distinctions whichourownlanguages manifest by number,the article and other grammatical devices. At first glance the justice of this estimate seems quite obvious, yet it becomesmuchless so whenone tries to pin downparticular examples. We have alreadyconsidered a Chineseproblem,that of the ox and the horse,whichseemsto be excludedfromEnglishby the word 'or'1). But it is clear that any languageis likely to have particularmrords or constructions which will help or hinder its users in dealing with particularlogical puzzles;the distinctions obliteratedby the Indo-European 'to be' have at times involved
1) For the relevance of the English word 'or' to the problem of the ox and the horse, cf. p. 35 above.-For the question of disjunction in Chinese, ci. Chao 33, 34, Chmielewsk;
(2) I04, I05.
It may be added that jo

It126
and ju tp
+ * i
could be used as disjunctive particles,

*
as in Analects
"In
a territory sixty to
seventy or fifty to sixty miles square..." This usage is rare in most pre-Han writing (cf. Chou II7, II9), but there is at any rate one text in which it recurs constantly, the military section of Mo-tzfl (ch. 52-7I). This seetion, most conveniently studied in Ts'en Chung-Inien'sedition, consists largely of instructions for defence taking account of alternative possibilities, and uses jo about fifty times as a disjunctive particle, generally between nouns, sometimes between verbs or clauses: Mo-tzV Is/2lA/6 (Ts'en I36) t ^ ^ $ X , g t > t t "If they see in the distance charioteers or cavalry coming on the road from outside" . . . Mo-txV I418B12-4 (Tsen 55) * (= )
A fS ffifn g
i t
t8
tt(=X)gAsSt*Xw
"If the enemy behaves differently, building walls and piling earth in an unusual way, or if there is an unusual amount of water and mud at the side, this shows that he is tunneling". There are also two examples in the Mohist canons (B IO, 70: IolI2B/8, 20A/7).
tRit0
40
A. C. GRAHAM
Western philosophers in tangles impossible for thinkers in Chinese
1).
The crucial question is whether the general structure of Chinesea purely isolating language which makes sporadically and by adding separate words the distinctions which Indo-European languages make consistently and by inflection-crippled Mohist logic. The conception of the author of the Hsiao-ch'ii as a man painfully struggling to think clearly in an opaque language owes much to the mistaken assumption that whenever he points out a difference, quite obvious to us, between two formally similar propositions, he implies a real danger of his readers confusing them. But we have seen that only the last propositions in each sequence present problems which are real for him. The function of the others is to illuminate the last, and depends upon being as obvious as possible; indeed, we are more than once expressly told that "The whole world agrees that these are right" and that "The world does not think itself wrong to hold the former". To suppose that anyone was genuinely puzzled by such questions as whether disliking a man's illness is disliking the man, or whether one can have a taste for reading without a taste for books, is like supposing that a logician expounding the classical syllogism is in serious doubt as to whether Socrates is mortal. Maspero
2)
the development of
explains the second sequence of the Hsiao-ch'ii as a
reductio ad absurdurn by a writer who believed that to kill robbers is to kill men, but saw no way to defend this common sense position without also maintaining that, for example, absence of robbers is absence of men. XVhy did the Mohist get himself into this tangle? Because, says Maspero, the Chinese language hides from him distinctions which are plain to us:
1) Cf. Graham
2)
(2) Io5-IIo.
Maspero 45-53.
U THE LOGIC OF THE MOHIST HSIAO-CH
4I
II m'est impossible d'6mettre un jugement contenant le mot homme sans aucune determination ou a la fois avec plusieurs d6terminations: je dois adopter homme au sens g6n6ral d'humanitJ, ou sp6cialement un homme, ou des hommes, quelques hommes, mais non pas quelque chose de vague qui ne soit nettement ni un homme, ni des hommes, car la langue franQaisem'oblige a choisir. Un Chinois n'a jamais a choisir, et pour lui le mot jen comprend ordinairement toutes ces nuances simultan6ment et sans distinguer, et ce n'est que dans des cas sp6ciaux, s'il y a deja eu pr4alablement determination, que dans son esprit le mot s'applique distinctement a l'une ou a l'autre suivant les cas. Lorsque l'auteur du Siao ts'iu p'ien d6roulait sa s6rie de sophismes sur le voleur, il ne pensait pas successivement de favon distincte comme nous nous sommes oblig6s de le faire: ,,un voleur est un homme", ,des voleurs nombreux, ce n'est pas la meme chose que des hommes nombreux", "il n'y a pas de voleur n'est pas la meme chose que il n'y a pas d'homme", "tuer un voleur n'est pas la meme chose que tuer un homme", etc., mais les concepts homme, voleur, lui venaient tout purs sans aucune determination distincte et en meme temps avec la possibilit6 indistincte de
toutes ces determinations 1).
The general observation with which Maspero begins is very interesting, and we shall return to it later. But when he proceeds to specific examples one sees immediately that in none of them does the Chinese language obscure the issue even on Maspero's quite idiosyncratic explanation of the passage. In his second example, the sense forces us to translate the noun as plural in any case; in the rest it makes no logical difference whether we choose singular or plural; in no case does the possibility of jen meaning (mankind' enter the question at all: A robber is a man/Robbers are men. Many robbers is not many men. No robber is not no man/No robbers is not no men. Killing a robber is not killing a man/Killing robbers is not killing men. Number is irrelevant throughout the propositions of the Hsiaoch'ii, with the possible exception of the last two. These are, in pidgin English, HORSE FOUR FOOT and HORSE ONE OROTHER WHITE; it is explained that HORSF, means ONE HORSE in the former and TWO HORSE in the latter. Is this not
1) Maspero 5I,
52.
42
A. C. GRAHAM
clear proof that Chinese thinkers had to discover a distinction which we cannot overlook, the distinction marked by the noun forms 'horse' and 'horses'? I have myself expressed this opinion, following Maspero, Waley and Lau 1). However, it now seems to me likely that the theme is not number at all, but the division and combination of classes
2).
Without insisting on this explanation, improbable the current
it is worth considering how extremely
explanation is. Indo-European number termination distinguishes only between one, two if there is a dual form, and from two or three to infinity; can one imagine a philosopher calling attention to the ambiguity of 'horses', which may refer in one context to a couple of horses and in another to hundreds or thousands? It may be objected that descriptions of properties such as HORSE FOUR FOOT apply only to single things, and that the step from one to a multiple of one, from "A horse has four feet" to "Two horses have eight feet between them", is different in kind from any suibsequent step; a language without number termination may obscure this difference. But it happens that just this kind of sentence is unconfined by grammatical number, the distinction being between distributive and collective, not between singular and plural; we say indifferently "A horse has four feet" and "Horses have four feet". It may still be objected that "Horses have four feet" could not, like HORSE FOUR FEET, mislead anyone into forgetting that only one beast is involved, since we can convert it at will into "A horse has four feet". But if we take into account possibilities of manipulating the sentence, we can just as easily expand HORSE FOUR FOOT to ONE HORSE erh jij FOUR FOOT ("There are four feet to one horse") which is what the Mohist does. Moreover the expansion of the Chinese sentence merely determines the
20I;
2)
1) Waley, 63, 64; Lau Cf. p. 37 above.
Graham (2)
90
n. 7.
43
previously undetermined number of the noun, while the transformation of the English sentence alters the number. If grammatical number is so significant, should it not inform us that the horses which share the four feet of a single and presumably Platonic horse in "Horses have four feet" cannot be the single horse of "A horse has four feet" ? D. C. Lau, from whose approach I have learned a great deal, has also used the Hsiao-ch'ii as a basis for very interesting general reflections on the Chinese language:
The noun in ancient Chinese has not only no number, gender, person and case, but also no article. Moreover the majority of Chinese words are capable of being used in more than one grammatical category. Whether a word belongs to one category or another cannot be ascertained by the shape of the word, which does not change at all, but by its syntactic position. To complicate matters, two sentences which look alike may yet often be of different syntactic form ... The characteristics of the Chinese language which give rise to so many sentences of the same apparent form, also rendered very difficult the task of the logician who wishes to deal with the problem. Firstly, he cannot point to any morphological feature of a word which can epitomise the results of his analysis. Secondly, he cannot take a word out of its context in order to talk about it, because a word, once it is lifted out of its context, is no longer determinate in its grammatical function. If, in talking about a word (or expression) we have, every time we mention it, to mention also its whole context, discussion about language would be so unwieldy as to make it
unpracticable 1).
But with Lau as with Maspero, the particular examples of the Mohist struggling in the toils of the Chinese language are much less impressive than the general reflections. Besides the case of the one or two horses just considered, Lau gives two concrete illustrations:
(i) In English the difference between 'Thieves are men' and 'To kill thieves is not to kill men' can be seen from the number of the verb. 'Thieves' is seen clearly to be the subject of the first sentence and not of the second. But in the Chinese it is much easier' to take 'kill thief' as 'thief' with a modifying word and so think of the word 'thief' and the phrase 'kill thief' as parallel 2).
It is no doubt potentially significant tbat such nominal units as WHITE HORSE and RIDE HORSE are formally indistinguishAble
I) Lau
20I, 203. 2)
Lau
202.
44
A. C. GRAHAM
until the sentence is manipulated. But it is not clear why Lau should suspect that this resemblance misled the Mohist, or those whom the Mohist attacked. Throughout the first three sequences the phrases parallel to KILI ROBBER in the second member never of the type WHITE of each pair are always of the same type (RIDE WHITE HORSE, LOVE YOUNGER-BROTHER), HORSE, HANDSOME MAN 1). Is it suggested that without the assimilation of 'Killing robbers' to 'robbers' no one could have argued from "Robbers are men" to "Killing robbers is killing men" ? But whatever the logical status of the inference from 'X is Y' to 'Doing something to X is doing it to
Y'
2),
it is surely no less
convincing or misleading in English than in Chinese. A Western reader will be as satisfied as any Chinese that riding white horses is indeed riding horses, and as suspicious of the sophistry of "Killing robbers is not killing men". (ii) The second sequence includes two curious pairs, the latter of them corrupt; these are, in pidgin English: CARRIAGE IS MWOOD (TREE), RIDING CARRIAGE IS-NOT RIDING WOOD. BOAT IS WOOD, *ENTERING (variant RIDING preferred by Lau) BOAT IS-NOT *ENTERING WOOD. The difficulty is to decide what the Mohist meant by 'riding wood' and 'entering wood', and why he was so sure that we ride and enter carriages and boats without doing the samie to wood. Lau comments that in Chinese BOAT IS WOO) seems perfectly parallel to WHITE HORSE IS HORSE, but in English their difference is apparent: "A boat is of wood", "A white horse is a horse"
3).
His point is apparently that the resemblance misled
1) Even the phrases translated 'abound in men' and 'be without men' are cases of verb and object in Chinese (
2)
)
3)
Cf. Lau I94-I96.
Lau
202.
45
Chinese thinkers into supposing that they could reason from BOAT IS WOOD to (TO) SAIL BOAT IS (TO) SAIL WOOD 1); for he remarks later that an inflected language would have "ruled out certain constructions, e.g. a sentence like 'To sail a boat is to sail wooden"'
2).
But this is very difficult to follow. Surely if a boat is
wood, or 'of' wood, to carve or paint the boat is to carve or paint wood; the absence of the article, and possible presence of 'of', do not affect the validity of the argument, only its tidy presentation. The trouble is elsewhere, in the meaning of the words which Lau translates "sail wood". Waley alludes briefly to the same passage, to illustrate the confusion between identity and class membership allowed by the
construction A B yeh P.:

If words have a fixed connection with realities, the Chinese argued, yeh ('indeed') ought always to mean the same thing. If for example it implies identity, one ought to be able to travel hundreds of leagues on any 'woodenthing'; but in point of fact one can only travel on a boat 3).
Against this I have elsewhere objected that the danger of confusing identity and class membership is no greater in Chinese than in English, and proposed the translation: "A boat is tree(wood), but to enter a boat is not to enter a tree"
4).
On this interpretation the Mohist is misled by an ambiguity excluded in English by the indefinite article (and also, of course, by the accident that we do not use 'tree', as we use 'oak' or 'elm', to cover the tree's wood). The fact that Waley, Lau and myself have been able to base quite different explanations on supposed ambiguities of Chinese shows vividly how facile this kind of explanation can be. My present view is that to understand either sentence we must know in what contexts 'ride wood' and 'enter wood' would
1) This phrasing follows Lau's version (Lau Lau 203. 63. ') Graham (2) 89 n. s.
I92).
2)
3) Waley
46
A. C. GRAHAM
be used in practice; I know no relevant example of the former, but some later examples of the latter used of arrows piercing wood or ink soaking into it. There is consequently no reason to suspect ambiguity; the natural interpretation of the last clause is: "Entering the boat is not entering (piercing) the wood" 1). Why is it that Maspero and Lau are so much more effective when they make general observations than when they apply them to particular cases
2) ?
There is a difference, which Maspero and Lau
have perhaps not sufficiently emphasised, between the disciplinary value of inflections which force us to choose between word-forms several times in every sentence, and the logical value of the distinctions which inflection marks. It is possible to agree that Chinese thinkers suffered from the lack of what L-aucalls "the analytic habit of mind made possible by the initial help given to logic by grammar"
3),
and at the same time to doubt whether they were ever
seriously hampered by difficulties which number or case or tense are supposed to eliminate for us. Let us take the example of number. A beginner in Chinese is appalled to discover that nouns have no singular and plural forms, and expects baffling ambiguities. However, as he soon learns in practice, we seldom care whether there is one of a thing or between two and infinity; we want to know whether there is one or a couple or a few or some or plenty, or we do not know the number, or the noun does not refer to a countable entity, or we are indifferent to number, or we require the exact numnber.Useful information about number is conveyed by additional words in English as in Chinese, and to such an extent that the simple plural noun has assumed functions other than marking plurality; we use it when the number is unknown and not necessarily more
1) p. 7 above. which have the same kind of general 2) Waley and Bodde have both made observations value and invite the same kind of detailed criticism. Cf. Graham (2) 86-9o, IIO-II2.
3)
Lau
204.
47
than one ("We had burglars last night") or to imply totality ("Men are mortal" is for ordinary purposes as adequately quantified as "All men are mortal"). If grammatical number contributes anything to our understanding or misunderstanding it is the dangerous presupposition, which thinkers in Indo-European languages have to unlearn consciously, that all nouns refer to countable entities. But however small its direct value, number termination contributes indirectly to certain advantages of inflected languages rightly stressed by Maspero and Lau. In the first place, Indo-European singular and plural help to distinguish noun and verb from each other and from other parts of speech and to show the verb's dependence on the subject from which it takes its number; such word forms illuminate the structure of the sentence and the different and interacting functions of its parts. The Chinese sentence, on the other hand, is a featureless series of unchanging words the interrelations of which defied analysis until very recently; Chinese has had lexicography from an early date but, unlike inflected languages such as Greek, Sanskrit and Arabic, scarcely any study of grammar. For example the Chinese OX HORSE FOUR FOOT ,% PM X) invites speculation as to how OX HORSE can refer to a single animal with four feet. A language with number (4: termination avoids this puzzle, not, as one might suppose at first sight, because the distinction of singular and plural is directly relevant, but because singular and plural forms have different relations with the articles and conjunctions which prevent the compounding of the two nouns and demand the use of a disjunctive particle in the singular: "Oxen and horses have four feet"/"An ox or a horse has four feet". In the second place, number commits the speaker to nmaking a choice every time he uses a word with number termination. The Chinese sentence can be indefinitely expanded and contracted, rendered as precise or vague as the
48
A. C. GRAHAM
speaker pleases. But there is a lower limit of vagueness beneath which an Indo-European sentence cannot sink, because case and person, number and tense, demand answers to certain for the most part useless, muddled, potentially misleading but unavoidable questions. It is arguable that the weaknesses of Indo-European grammar have contributed as much to the progress of logic as its strong points, by perpetually reminding the philosopher that the forms as well as the content of thought present problems; the more complex a language is, the more can go wrong with it. Neither of these indirect uses of number has anything to do with the logical value of distinguishing one from multiples of one; we could make out the same case for the frankly irrational gender of the noun in many Indo-European languages. Moreover one of the main Chinese resources for tightening sentence structure and narrowing meaning is parallelism, a device which, unlike inflection, turns attention away from the analysis of the sentence in stead of towards it. For example, there is a passage
in the chapter Refutation of t[eelve Philosophers(

Hsiin-tzt which begins
T ) in
'DOUBT
'TRUST TRUST TRUST t yeh' 1). Taking the sentence by itself, even the syntax is doubtful.
u
But the next sentence is parallel:
DOUBT ALSO TRUST yeh.' At once the syntax orders itself: "Trusting the trustworthy is trustworthiness; doubting the doubtful is also trustworthiness." Hsiin-tziu could have put the thought into a more complex and clearer sentence, like that which his
'4 (prefacedated AD 8i8) provides commentator Yang Liang M as a paraphrase: 4fi 4 f, B

" M PA
t
@,J. "Trust in what deserves trust and doubt of
what deserves doubt, although as attitudes they are not the same,
1) Hsiin-tzii 31i 6A18.
49
both belong to trustworthiness". But Hsuin-tziu'saim is not precision but gnomic force, and parallelism serves to organise the sentences and restrict their nmeaningjust to the degree that he needs. The grammatical functions of parallelism are relevant to the Hsiao-ch'ii in more than one way. In the first place, we have noticed 1) that the Mohists use deduction widely in practice and that the starting-point of the logical inquiry in the Hsiao-ch'ii is the exploration of a deductive fallacy; it is a point of great interest that at this critical moment in the history of Chinese thought the author of the Hsiao-ch'ii should choose, not to analyse propositions, but to lay them side by side and compare them. It is natural to connect this choice with the fact that the Mohists were thinking in a language in which the organisation of the sentence inflexibly resists analysis, yet the parallel organisation of paired sentences belongs to the language's ordinary resources. In parallel sentences subject corresponds to subject, object to object, transitive verb to transitive verb, intransitive to intransitive, particle to particle, although no one until modern times could parse sentences in such terms. MWhat more natural, then, than that the Mohists should approach logic by seeking tests of the structural similarity of parallel sentences ? The hesitant grammatical studies which were under way by the time of the Sung dynasty
(960-I279)
show a comparable tendency.
Until the beginnings of Western influence, Chinese scholars generally took it for granted that the understanding of a sentence is simply the understanding of its component words. They became increasingly conscious of the importance and special position of particles, yet continued to explain them by mere definition in terms of each other. The sentence was invtisible to them, an almost perfectly transparent window through which they looked straight
1) Cf. p. 38 above. Toung Pao, LI 4
50
A. C. GRAHAM
at the facts. Only one flaw in the glass attracted much notice; they were aware of something odd about cases where we should say that a noun is being used verbally or an intransitive verb transitively. But this problem stimulated them only to make a general distinction between u 'solid' and 'void' words (shih-tz1t
, hsii-tzis huo-tz,
4),
j ),
or 'dead' words and 'live' words (ssz'-tzi'
7E4,
correspondingroughly to our nouns and verbs 1).
On the other hand, the problems of parallelism occasioned quite elaborate classifications of words based on a mixture of semantic and syntactic criteria. For example, I.ang T'ing-chi
(I663-I7I5)
2)
distinguished ten word classes, some further sub-
divided; among them are 'solid' and 'live' words, of which the examples generally correspond to English nouns and verbs respectively, and 'void' words subdivided into 'likeness-tracing words' (mu-ni chih tz' -.
k t 4)
corresponding to adjectives, and
particles (chu-tz' i JI
composition,
'3 ). The purpose of such systems was not to
clear up grammatical difficulties, but to codify the rules of poetic in particular to ensure precise parallelism within the verse couplet. At several places in the Hsiao-ch'ii one notices the tendency, when faced with two alternative ways of clarifying a problem, to choose parallelism rather than analysis. An example is its treatment of the fourth of its five types of argument. Refuting the claim that "He loves men" does not imply loving all men any more than "He rides horses" implies riding all horses, the Mohist might have
1) For the early history of these terms, cf. Aoki Masaru*
are 'Empty Words'? Journal of Chinese Literature

4 (I956)
2)
4i
* Ti- ,,
hn
What
Kyoto,
98-I07.
Chi T'ang
2614).
yao fa (Ts'ung-shu chi-ch'eng X W; t R I am indebted to Mr G. B. Downer for this reference, and for most of my information
about Chinese conceptions of grammar before the beginnings of Western influence.
5I
chosen to analyse the two propositions separately.
"X rides"
requires only that X can ride; "X loves men" asserts not that he can love them, nor even that he loves them as kinsmen or benefactors, but that he loves them as men, and therefore loves all men. Nothing in the Chinese language forbids the Mohist to argue in this way. Classical Chinese is well provided with words for ability and possibility 1), and there seems to be no reason why the Mohist should not have found a formula equivalent to 'love them as men' if he had wanted it, for example ,1W:
jfjj
2)
However, he is content to notice that a man is said to ride if he has ridden any horse at all, but is not said to love mankind if he has loved anyone at all. Although the Chinese language does not forbid him to press the analysis further, it encourages him rather to stop at this point and bring out the difference as sharply as possible by laying down absolutely parallel but contrasting sentences. He therefore develops two pairs of matched sentences, the symmetry of which deceives him into supposing that he has proved, not merely that it is fallacious to argue from riding horses to loving men, but that love must be universal. To show up the pattern we may rephrase the sentences as follows:
.......... ....... "He refuted "He refuted does not love men" is not by "He loves X". does not ride horses" is by "He has ridden X".
"He rides horses" is not refuted by "He has not ridden X".
The vacant space seems to require:

"He loves men" is refuted by "He does not love X". The Mohist supplies question.
1) K'o
it without
seeing
that
he is begging
the
if,
'permissible,possible' (dependingon moral principle or objective conditions). 'have whereby to' W2
Ngng Oht, 'able' (depending on personal qualities). Yu-yi (dependingon possession of resources). 2) I am indebted to Mr. Lau for this suggestion.
52
A. C. GRAHAM
In the light of these considerations, let us consider for the last time the most controversial Mohist thesis, "Killing robbers is not killing men". Since the Mohist tells us explicitly that "Robbers are men", he cannot mean that robbers are outside the scope of universal love because they have outlawed themselves from the human race. He must mean that killing someone as a robber is not killing him as a man, and is compatible with loving him as a man. As we have just seen, he could have said the equivalent of 'love him as a man' in Classical Chinese if he had wanted to. Since other schools denounced this Mohist tenet as a sophistry, it was very much in his interests to avoid misunderstanding. Why then did not the Mohist explain himself a little more clearly? The answer is perhaps that the parallelism of "Robbers are men, but killing robbers is not killing men" excludes any interpretation which makes the two members contradictory, intelligible and that a thinker in Chinese has no incentive to clarify by grammatical particles a sentence sufficiently in its context and further illuminated by parallels throughout the sequence to which it belongs. This sequence, the second of the five, seems at first sight a heterogeneous assortment of sentences some of which derive their point from accidents of Chinese idiom. But whether a phrase in the form 'doing something to X' implies 'doing something to it as X', will naturally be affected by the idiom of the language; and in fact a single principle runs through the whole series. 'Parent' and 'someone', 'younger brother' and 'handsome man', 'carriage' or 'boat' and 'wood', 'robber' and 'man', are all pairs of words or phrases which apply to the same objects, but which call attention to different properties and relations; often an action or state is involved with one only of these aspects of an object. To serve someone is to become a servant or a wife; but Huo's parent is not merely 'someone', she serves him as her parent. The same object is,
53
considering its function, a 'boat', designed to float and to carry loads, while considering only its material it is 'wood'; an arrow said to 'enter the boat' need only enter the space for men and cargo, an arrow said to 'enter the wood' must pierce the substance. We could no doubt account similarly for 'carriage' and 'wood', if we were sure what was meant by 'riding wood'; and the theme continues throughout the rest: "Loving (him as) a younger brother is not loving (him as) a handsome man." "Abounding in (them as) robbers is not abounding in (them as) men." "Being without (them as) robbers is not being without (them as) men." "Loving (them as) robbers is not loving (them as) men." "Killing (them as) robbers is not killing (them as) men.
5. FINDING LIST
CHANG Ch'un-yi
f
Mo-tzui chi-chieh
1936.
'
, Shih-
chieh shu-chiu
West 5/I
"-I
$X
CHAO,Y. R., Notes on Chinese Grammar and Logic (Philosophy East and
(I955), 3I-4I.
CHOU Fa-kao tsao-chii pien
$ M4 f, Chung-kuo ku-tai yii-fa t fiJ , J (Academia Sinica,

(I962), t , 7-22; (2) 26/2 (I963), 9I-I05. (i) Chung-huoch'-hsiieh shih
nu
Special Publications
39), Taipei, I96I. CHMIELEWSKI, Janusz, Notes on Early Chinese Logic, Rocznik Orientalistyczny, (I) 26/I FENG Yu-lan , Shanghai,
(2)
4i j tJ
Commercial
Press,
1947.
History of Chinese Philosophy, translated by Derk BODDE, PrinceI922.
ton, I952. FORKE, Alfred, Me Ti des Sozialethikers und seiner Schiller philosophische
Werke, Berlin,
GRAHAM, A. C., (i) The Composition of the Gongsuen Long tzyy, Asia Major NS 5/2, (I957), I47-I83. - , (2) 'Being' in Western Philosophy compared with shih/fei and yu/wu in Chinese Philosophy, ut sup. 7/I-2 (I959), 79-II2.
ch'u-pan she Sj _LL )&
,rt}
I944.
54
GRAHAM, THE LOGIC OF THE MOHIST HSIAO-CH U
Hu Shih t0 ,
shih ta-kang [p (I) Chxng-kgoche-hsixeh
Shanghai, CommercialPress, I947. t * , , (2) Hsiao-ch'up'ien hsin-k? ,J g jg * Mj, Hu Shih wen-ts'un ISt collection 2/35-74. #, M W t of the Logical Methodin S"cient China, Shanghai, , (3) Development CommercialPress, I922. LAU, D. C., Some Logical Problemsin Ancient China, Proceedingsof the Aristotelian Society, NS 53 (I952-3), I89-204. Henri, Notes sur la logiquede Mo-tseuet de son dcole,T'oung Pao MASPERO, 25 (I928), I-64. Tetsuji u u j2 , Dai Kan-Wa jiten * 'tg 9 B MOROHASHI 1#1, Tokyo, I955-I960. Mo-tzs, Ssu-pu pei-yao PI Yuan g
sj7g,
A
N g "%.
+ t + i
SUNYi-jang
nd ,
*
M Mo-tzuchien-k?s
2,
Peking, I954.
T'ANChieh-fu a
Mo-pienfa-wei ;
2{},|,,Peking, I958
An Intetpretationof Arg?ment (pien) in the Chun-yi W T ANG Hsin-Ya hsiieh-pao * 3 E $g, of theMo-tz?z, 'HsiaoCh'is'Chapter 4/2 (I960), 65-99. Mo-tzg ch'eng-sho? ko-p'ien chien-ch?s TS'EN Chung-mien 4 + , ;% + + t ffi jg fW '9, Peking, I958. Arthur, The Way and its Power, London, I934. WALEY, tsa-chih i t T?X-shg WANGNien-sun I +X 4, wen-k u S ;t t Wu Yu-chiang % u ,
t ig
^,
Wan-yu Tu-li
il
9/IO4-IO7. Mo-tzx chiao-chx
M+ 8>;9
Chu-Sg p'ing-yi g + e 4, Basic Sinological Yu Yueh k zerles, 207. This list is confinedto titles quoted in the present article. Referencesto classical texts are (unless otherwise stated) to the editions and are to chuan @, page of the Ssa-pu ts'?ng-k'an ffi g $ and line. References to the Mohist canons are to (I) The numberingof the canons in T'an's edition (also usable for other modern editions, allowing for discrepanciescaused by occasional disagreement over the division of canons). (2) The Ssu-pu ts'"ng-k'an(the text followed).
,> .
t*
fflJ

The Logic of Mohists

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The Logic of the Mohist "Hsiao-ch'" Author(s): A. C. Graham Source: T'oung Pao, Second Series, Vol. 51, Livr.

THE LOGIC OF THE MOHIST HSIAO-CH'U

'some' and chin a

'X is or is not Y' and jan

'Taking the greater', and Hsiao-ch'ii

the following rhymes:

But since their placing is so irregular, the author

THE LOGIC OF THE MOHIST HSIAO-CHU

t fiem*fiezatWto urP mRlJXt @ m Rlj j toR meoW(-w)t * s;@;t(

rf ffi a g g w w z M1 rXt-tWl ,*fl,O

Sun, Hu, Chang, T'an punctuate before yen ,,

which they take as the conjunction

The last pair of clauses is found also in Huai-nan-tzfi ' Ku ,

. ,h7A t <t t it _ Sf> W

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ X4 mtZ5t*f if i-M

elsewhere in Mo-tzfl (cf. Sun

Cf. also Morohashi I7I

So Chang, Forke. Other explanations

(i) "This is like saying that the other (

) is the same; how can I say that the

THE LOGIC OF THE MOHIST HSIAO-CH U

A white horse is a horse; to ride a white horse is to ride a horse.

R 191 ide1f m -0% M F 4 i t # X t 3) &

Huo's parent is someone, but Huo's serving her parent is not

serving someone 5).

and Tsang appears as the typical

proper name in the canons (A, 78).

preferred by Pi, Chang, Wu is

surely a conjectural emendation T'ang ts'e hsien

copy, based on the former (cf. Wu, Appendix I/13B, I5A).

The parallel in p. o 1. o below confirms this transposition.

'serving another' implies serving a master or husband

Mo-tzis 6/2A/7), not one's own parents.

THE LOGIC OF THE MOHIST HSIAO-CH 'U

soaking into it, as in the late examples noted in Morohashi 14I51i98.

but it is mentioned as a sophistry in Hsiin-tzfi

A 17B14, and as a principle origin-

ating in the time of Yu % (patron sage of the Mohists) in Chuang-tzfi5148B1i.

T'ang has proposed this ingenious emendation, which takes

as a mistake for the

four characters written close on top of each other. Wu reads

THE LOGIC OF THE MOHIST HSIAO-CH U

must be supplied in the second position; but in the

whole passage) all agree on the general sense.

4Zt.X <A>-t t#Atk

If you inhabit somewhere in a state, you are deemed to inhabit

1) This is the reading of parallels in Huai-nan-tzu i61i5A/3,

4 and a comment of Ssui-ma

THE LOGIC OF THE MOHIST HSIAO-CH 'U

& 'some' and chin

... According to the Hsiao-ch'ii, "'Some' is 'not all"' (

+ @ ). Here huo is defined

in relation to chin, a verb ('apply

M ) is unintelligible as it stands and

40). But Maspero 6 ('le limit6'), Chang 405,

The passage uses neither huo nor chin. But

exhAustible,if n it e sib. If isin Ai w hte

THE LOGIC OF THE MOHIST HSIAO-CHU

Canon: "Withoutknowingtheir numberwe know that (love)is

1) Mo-txV I 0/ I I B/2. A, 74 (Io/gA17, 8) ;

"If they do not both fit the

facts, one necessarily does not fit the facts".

'each', JiW *BI6K 'which', perhaps iQ

Chia (literally 'borrowing') appears once in the canons:

t fiemfiezatWto urP mRlJXt @ m Rlj j toR meoW(-w)t s;@;t(