Self-Admonition

The sage takes the way of Heaven as his model, the worthy take the Earth as theirs, and the wise take the ancients as theirs. The arrogant bring ruin upon themselves; the reckless accumulate disaster; those who talk too much lack credibility; those who care only for themselves show little kindness to others; rewarding those without merit makes people alienate themselves; punishing those without guilt makes people resentful; and those whose joy and anger are inappropriate bring about their own destruction. Modern Application:This chapter closes the whole work, and its core thesis can be compressed into one sentence: a leader’s first line of defense is not with rivals but in his choice of a “frame of reference.” The juxtaposition of “modeling on Heaven,” “taking Earth as law,” and “modeling on antiquity” points to a mechanism of continuous outward calibration and self-restraint: using as mirrors the objective laws that do not yield to human will (Heaven), the hard constraints of actual conditions (Earth), and historical experience that has already been verified or......