| | Someone asked a Confucian scholar, "At this time, where was Yao?" The person replied, "Yao was the Son of Heaven." "If that is so, how did Confucius praise Yao as a sage?" A sage who is wise and in the position of authority will ensure there are no evildoers in the world. Now, if farming and fishing were done without contention, pottery was made well, what virtue did Shun need to transform them? If Shun had to correct these failures, then it means Yao had made a mistake; To praise Shun is to question Yao's wisdom and vigilance; to praise Yao as a sage is to negate Shun's moral influence; Both cannot be true at the same time. A man from Chu who sold shields and spears boasted, "My shield is so strong that nothing can pierce it." He also praised his spear, saying, "My spear is so sharp that there is no object it cannot pierce." Someone asked him, "What if you use your own spear to pierce your own shield? What would happen?" The man could not respond. A shield that cannot be pierced and a spear that can pierce anything cannot coexist in the same world. Now, the fact that Yao and Shun cannot both be praised is akin to the paradox of the spear and shield. Moreover, if Shun corrected failures, after one year he could only correct one mistake; in three years, at most three. Yet Shun's life was limited and human lifespan finite. If the mistakes of the world were endless, then with a finite life pursuing infinite errors, there would be few things that could truly be stopped. Rewards and punishments ensure that the people of the world must act accordingly. The decree says, "Those who meet the standard will be rewarded; those who fail to meet it will be punished." If an order is issued in the morning and changed by evening, or one given at dusk is altered by dawn, then within ten days the whole realm would be transformed. Why wait a full year? Shun did not use this method to persuade Yao and make people follow him, but instead personally involved himself. Was that not a sign of lacking strategy? Moreover, the idea that one must endure hardship oneself in order to transform the people is something even Yao and Shun found difficult; To hold a position of power and dominate subordinates through authority is something an ordinary ruler finds easy. "To govern the world, yet abandon what an ordinary ruler can easily do and instead pursue what even Yao and Shun found hard—such a person cannot be entrusted with political affairs."
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