Foreword to Xiao Zisheng’s47 All in One
Self-Study Notes (Summer 1917)


You have entitled this book All In One, and have asked me to write the foreword. I
think of the words of Zhuangzi: “My life flows between confines, but knowledge has no
confines.”48 In today’s world, learning is more and more highly developed, civilization is
constantly progressing, and human affairs keep proliferating so that one can never study
them exhaustively. But as civilization advances, our knowledge likewise increases, and
there should consequently be some way to study it more systematically. Even though
different people have taken upon themselves to study, some have results but others do
not. It all depends on whether or not they properly accumulate what they study. Take,
for example, a hundred-zhang-high platform.49 When it is first built, it begins with
a single stone; then there are two, three, four, and finally ten thousand stones. So it
is with studies. Today we record one thing, tomorrow we comprehend another truth,
and in time all this adds up to learning. Heights are built from low foundations, and
greatness has humble beginnings. They all depend simply on men’s quest for them.


Once the basic knowledge is gleaned, there remain the differences of quality and scope
of different works. As a platform is built with logs gathered from a thousand mountains,
so is knowledge gathered together from many schools of thought. The more refined the
knowledge we have extracted, the wider its usage; the deeper the roots of the tree, the
better its fruit. This approach is definitely different from that which follows only one
master and is self-complacent.

Even if we have built a high platform or have gleaned a
wide range of knowledge, however, we have not yet arrived, though we may think we
have. A platform that is not securely built, or knowledge that is not carefully selected,
is not very much different from having no platform or no knowledge at all. How do we
achieve excellence in studies? It depends on the way we accumulate our learning. The
way to accumulate it is to do it systematically. The defect of our country’s ancient
learning lay in its disorganized and unsystematic character. The only categories used were classics, history, philosophical works, and literary collections. Politics and religion were combined into one,50 and no differentiations
were made between the abstract and the empirical. This is why we have not made
any progress, even in several millennia.

As for Western studies, they are quite different.
Each field of study is further divided into pure and applied, and also into explanatory
and standard works. Each field is singled out from thousands of other fields of study.
A field is further divided into branches, phylums, classes, genera, and species. The
47 On Xiao Zisheng, see the notes to Mao’s letters of July 1915 to a friend and of November 1920
to Xiao Zizhang.
48 See the Zhuangzi, Chapter 3, “On Nurturing Life,” par. 1 (Graham, Chuang-tzu, p. 62).
49 The zhang is a measurement of length equal to 10 Chinese feet, or 3.3 meters.
50 Zhengjiao heyi, the principle already alluded to in note 70 to the “Classroom Notes,” which refers
in particular to the fusion of political and religious (or spiritual-ethical) authority in the person of the
emperor.