Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Articles

Small, and Nobody Can Make a Subject of It

Citation Formats

General Reference

APA Style

BibTeX

Learn More
Small, and Nobody Can Make a Subject of It

The chapter opens with a claim about size that is really a claim about power. The way is constantly nameless. Though the uncut block is small, nobody in the world can make a subject of it.

The verb is political. To make a subject of something is to bring it under a ruler, and the sentence denies that anything in the world stands above the block. What protects it is not strength but the absence of a handle: something without a name cannot be entered in a register, assigned a rank, taxed or commanded. That is a real observation about how early states worked, and it is the same insight chapter one gestures at when it distinguishes the nameless from the named.

The middle of the chapter says what would follow if a ruler could hold to it. The ten thousand things would submit of their own accord. Heaven and earth would join and send down sweet dew. The people would be even, without being ordered.

Sweet dew is an omen image, one of the standard signs that a reign is in accord with heaven, and its appearance here is a rare instance of the book using the conventional vocabulary of good government. What it attaches the omen to is not virtue, sacrifice or correct ritual but the ruler holding to something nameless, which is an unusual condition to set for a portent.

The last clause is the practical one. The people would be even of their own accord, without an order being issued, which is the outcome chapter fifty-seven describes at length and the standard by which the book judges a government throughout.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Article On

Sources
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.

View At A Past Year

The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.