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CHAPTER XXXIV.

Remarks on Insects (Shang-ch`ung).

The phenomenalists maintain that the eating of grain by insects
is caused by the officials of the various departments. Out of covetousness
they make encroachments, which results in the insects eating
the grain. Those with black bodies and red heads are called military
officers, those with black heads and red bodies, civil officers. If
these officers related to insects be punished, the insects desist from
their ravages, and are seen no more.

If those red heads are supposed to be produced by military
officers, and the black heads, by civilians, sometimes insects have
red heads and white bodies, or black heads and yellow bodies, or
their heads as well as their bodies are yellow, or both are green,
or both white, as is the case with worms in fish or meat. To
which officials do these correspond?

Sometimes influential citizens disturb officials, interceding for
those who are to be tortured. Their ascendancy is greater than
that of office-bearers, and their usurpations are more varied than
those of officers. How are their corresponding insects shaped?

Insects are usually destroyed by wind and rain, but at that
time the officials are not necessarily subjected to punishment.

On dry land there are always mice, and in paddy fields, fish
and crabs, which all injure the grain. Either they seldom come
out and suddenly cause damage, or they are always there, doing
mischief. Their kinds are very numerous. To which officers are
they related?

Duke Hsüan of Lu levied the land tax on each acre, when
simultaneously larvæ of locusts were born.[1684] Some say that they
resemble winged ones. When locusts appear, they obscure the sky,
falling down on the earth like a shower of rain. They eat everything,
making no difference between grain and other plants. Judging
by their heads and bodies, which class of officials do they represent?
With which do they tally in the opinion of the phenomenalists?

In the thirty-first year of Chien-wu,[1685] locusts rose in the T`aishan
circuit.[1686] They went to the south-west, passing Ch`ên-liu[1687] and
Ho-nan,[1688] and then entered the country of the I and Ti. In hundreds
and thousands of districts and villages they alighted, but the officers
of these places had not all measured the fields for taxation.[1689]
Locusts eat grain and grass, and, in a few days, reach the end of
their life. Either they proceed on their journey, or they stop,
dry up, and die. But at that time the local authorities are not
all liable to punishment.

The insects' eating of grain has its term, as the silkworms'
feeding on mulberry leaves has a limit. Their breeding takes a
number of days, and they die after a number of months. Having
completed their span, they are transformed, and do not always
remain grubs. If the sovereign does not punish his officers,[1690] the
insects die nevertheles, of their own accord.

Insects are produced by the fluid of wind. Ts`ang Hsieh knew
it, and therefore formed the character fêng (wind)[1691] of fan (all)[1692]
and ch`ung (insects).[1693] Having received their fluid from wind, they
are bred in eight days.[1694]

The insects of spring and summer either live on the Five
Grains, or on other herbs. As they eat the Five Grains, officers
collect money and grain, but what manner of things do they exact,
when the insects feed on other herbs?

Among the three hundred naked animals man takes precedence,
consequently he is an animal also. Man eats the food of insects,
and insects likewise eat what man lives on. Both being animals,
what wonder that they eat each other's food.

Were insects endowed with intelligence, they would scold
man saying, "You eat the produce of Heaven, and we eat it as
well. You regard us as a plague, and are not aware that you are
yourself a calamity to us. Inasmuch as all animated beings like
the taste of something, their mouths and bellies are not different.
Man likes the Five Grains, and detests the insects for eating them,
he is himself born between Heaven and Earth, and detests the
coming forth of insects."

Thus the insects would censure man, if they could speak, and
he would be unable to refute their charges. The existence of insects
amongst other creatures is nothing wonderful for the knowing,
and that they eat so many things, the latter do not consider
an exceptional calamity.

In fragrant and succulent plants there are always insects in
great numbers. Therefore of all kinds of grain millet has most
insects, rice has them at times, wheat and beans never. If the
officials be always made responsible for the existence of insects,
the departmental officers of villages growing millet would invariably
be culpable.

The system of Shên Nung and Hou Chi of sowing grain consisted
in boiling horse dung and soaking the seeds in liquid manure,
lest they should be damaged by insects.[1695] Thus, by soaking the
seeds in horse dung, the village officers would become Pao Chiao[1696]
and Ch`ên Chung Tse.[1697] How could these officers get rid of all
viciousness by merely employing the method of Hou Chi and Shên
Nung, since, in case no insects were produced with the crop, the
emperor could not discover their guilt?

As long as insects content themselves with other plants, it
is not the custom to see anything extraordinary in them, but no
sooner do they feed on the Five Grains, than it is called a calamity.
Cassia trees have wood-worms, and mulberry trees, wood-fretters.
Cassia furnishes medicine, and mulberry trees serve as food
for silkworms. Their usefulness is very great, no less than that of
grain. To see nothing wonderful in these wood-worms and wood-fretters,
and to decry insects as a disaster, shows ignorance of the
real character of the various classes of animals, and a misconception
of the nature of calamitous phenomena.

By insects we usually understand those which feed on grain,
grubs are like moths. When millet and rice turn mouldy, the
fermentation produces grubs. Now these grubs eating millet and
rice are not considered disastrous, whereas, when insects eat the
leaves of corn, it is laid to the charge of the government.

If in the course of discussion they urge that millet is of much
less consequence than corn in general, we reply that there is the
greatest variety of insects, and not only one species. When fish
and meat rot, worms are produced, and so they are, when mincedmeat
and gravy are not covered, or when cooked rice gets warm
and damp, or when the scrolls of books are never unrolled, or when
garments are folded together and not hung up. Diseased snails,[1698]
flies, mole-crickets,[1699] and crabs all have parasites: some are white,
some black, some long, some short. They are greatly diverse
in size, and they are by no means all similar. All are the
upshot of the fluid of wind, which they keep up to their end.
They cannot choose their days of life, and when their life-time
is very short, they perish almost as soon as they appear. Struck
with the rarity of their appearance and with the fact that when
they come out, they eat something, the phenomenalists call them
a calamity, but a calamity presupposes some guilt. Therefore
they put forward such officials as bear some resemblance to them.

Man has three worms in his intestines. The worms living
in low marshes are called leeches. They eat man's feet,[1700] as the
three worms eat his bowels. To whom will these critics, so fond
of similarities, compare the three worms?

All creatures that are born between Heaven and Earth from
the Yin and the Yang, such as ant-dragons and entozoa, reptiles
and vermin,[1701] are imbued with the fluid, while alive; they open
their mouths to eat, and what they eat, they either like or do not
like. Their instincts are the same, and their propensities similar:
the strong and big ones devour the weak and small ones, the
shrewd and clever hurt the blunt-minded. If other creatures, big
or small, lacerate one another, it is not regarded as a calamity.
Therefore only to consider this an echo of the actions of government
if insects eat grain, is to misunderstand the true principles
and to ignore the real nature of the animal fluid.

The birth of insects depends upon warm and damp weather.
As a rule, the air is warm and damp in spring and summer, and
it is cold and dry in autumn and winter, when insects are not yet
produced. If the village officers are made responsible for the growth
of insects, then these officers must be covetous in spring and summer,
and disinterested in autumn and winter. Even though they be functionaries
like robber Chê, they would in their offices imitate the
conduct of Po Yi in autumn and winter.

Spring and summer are not always the same; when insects
grow, it must be exceedingly warm and damp. Exceedingly means
that the Yin and the Yang are not in harmony. For a disharmony
of the Yin and the Yang the government has to account, to which
alone it can be ascribed. Consequently it is preposterous to point
to the depravity of the officials of the various departments.

Whence do we know that insects grow from warmth and
dampness? From noxious insects. Grain being dry, insects do not
grow, but when it becomes warm and damp, it moulds and putrefies,
and the growth of insects can no further be precluded. If
the grains of stored up old wheat are dried in the hot sun, and
then put in a dry vessel, insects do not generate, but should the
seeds not be dry, voracious grubs would grow like clouds and mist.
The analogy of voracious grubs makes it evident that all insects
owe their birth to warmth and dampness.

The Shiking says: ["They buzz about, the blue flies, lighting
on the fences. O happy and courteous sovereign, do not believe
slanderous speeches."][1702] Slanderous reports injure honest men, just
as the blue flies pollute white things. The damage is the same,
and the Shiking therefore used this image.

The king of Ch`ang-yi dreamt that below the western flight of
stairs the dirt of flies was piled up. The next morning, he summoned
the officer of the Guards Kung Sui, and asked his opinion.
Kung Sui replied, "The flies are emblems of slanderers. The fact
that their dirt is piled up below the stairs, denotes that Your
Highness is going to listen to the insinuations of slanderous officers."[1703]

According to this view, flies as insects would tally with the
prince's lending his ear to defamations; why not regard them as
a calamity then? If flies may be looked upon as a calamity, they
live troughout the year; but does a ruler always listen to slanderers?

Of insects hurtful to mankind, none are worse than mosquitoes
and gad-flies, which are generated the whole. year. In case mosquitoes
and gad-flies represent some calamity, are there always officers
on earth preying upon their fellow-people?

Provided that the eating of animals be a calamity, then man
being the noblest of all creatures, mosquitoes and gad-flies feeding
upon him must be the worst of calamities. If to be accounted a
calamity, animals must have unexpectedly been produced and have
hurt others, which annoyance is greater, that of creatures produced
the whole year and feeding on man, or that of others appearing
but occasionally and doing mischief?

Itching is an occasional and not a constant complaint; wherefore
are the insects producing it not held to be calamitous?

Moreover, when Heaven is about to rain, ants come out, and
gnats fly about, thus conforming to the weather. Perhaps the
birth of all insects of itself, accords with the temperature, but why
then incriminate the officials of the various departments? The
principle of Heaven is spontaneity, good and bad luck happen by
chance. Rare insects happen to be produced, when covetous officials
happen to be in office. Noticing their transactions and observing
the simultaneous growth of noxious insects, people presume that
it has been caused by the officials.