University of Virginia Library

PREFACE
TO
"THE COMPLETE WORKS OF HAN FEI TZŬ
WITH COLLECTED COMMENTARIES"

Han Fei lived at the time when the weakened State of Han
was facing an imminent danger. On account of his remoteness
in kinship to the ruling house, he could not advance his
career and join governmental service. Witnessing the vices
of the itinerants and diplomatists, who beguiled the lords
of men and thereby sought for their own advantages, and
the evils of the wicked and villainous people, who committed
violence and outrage at their own pleasure and could not
be suppressed, he bitterly criticized administrators of state
affairs for their inability to exercise the powers vested in
them, enforce penal laws definitely, forbid wicked deeds
decisively, purge the government and the country from
corruptions, and scheme for peace and order. He took the
fate of the country as his own and pointed out the obstacles
in its way. As there was left no chance for him to reform the
surroundings, he wrote laboriously and thereby clarified his
proposed remedies. Therefore, in thought he was vehement
and in word informative, thus differentiating himself sharply
from the rest of the thinkers and writers of the Era of the
Warring States (403-222 B.C.).

After reading his literary remains in the present age and
inferring therefrom the political trends of his times, everybody
is inclined to maintain that aside from Han Fei's
teachings, there could be no other ways and means to create
order out of chaos in those days. Indeed, benevolence and

beneficence are significant means of mass control, but are
not ways of suppressing wickedness and outrage. Mencius
had taught the rulers of his days benevolence and righteousness
and abhorred any discussion on the problem of profit.
According to Fei's sayings, however, "The learned men of
the age, when giving counsels to the lord of men, do not
tell them to harass the wicked and rapacious ministers with
authority and severity, but all speak about benevolence, and
compassion. So do the present-day sovereigns admire the
names of benevolence and righteousness but never carefully
observe their actual effects." As a matter of fact, what the
then sovereigns admired was not what Mencius had called
benevolence and righteousness only, but was, as the itinerants
emphasized, "either benevolence and righteousness or
profit." As regards the advice to employ authority and
severity, nobody but Fei, a relative of the royal family,
dared to utter it.

Han Fei's ideas and principles, no doubt, involve biases
and bigotries. Yet his teaching that law should be made
clear and penalty should be made strict to save all lives
out of chaos, purge All-under-Heaven from calamities,
prevent the strong from oppressing the weak, the many
from transgressing the few, and enable the aged and infirm
to live a happy ending and the young and the orphan to
grow up to their best, is an emphasis on the utility of the
legal code and on the propriety of severity and leniency,
which in motive and purpose does not differ from Mencius's
advice how to utilize ease and leisure and clarify the rules
of political and penal administration.

After his theory had failed to take effect in Han, the
legalism enforced by Ch`in happened to be identical with

it, till she succeeded in exterminating the rest of the Warring
States and annexed All-under-Heaven. Accordingly, Tung
TzŬ-nai said, "Ch`in practised Han Fei's theory." In the
light of the facts that when Fei was appointed a good-will
envoy to Ch`in, the state policy of Ch`in had already been
well fixed and her supreme position in the world had been
successfully established, and that no sooner had he entered
Ch`in than he was put to death, how could it be said that
Ch`in had acted on his theory?

His writings altogether cover twenty books. Hitherto
few of the commentaries have succeeded in elucidating the
whole text. It is not until my younger cousin, Hsien-shen,
has collected all the commentaries, corrected the errors,
supplied the hiatuses, and discussed the meanings and implications
of dubious points, that the author's text appears lucidly
readable. The Tao of the Sovereign and its following Works
were most probably written during the lifetime of the author.
The First Interview with the King of Ch`in and others at the
opening of the text were subsequently added. In these
memorials Fei attempted to persuade the Ruler of Ch`in
not to ruin Han and thereby schemed for the preservation
of the ancestral shrines of his people. His plan was extremely
unique, wherefore every gentleman sees the more reason to
sympathize with his patriotic cause.