The Humanistic Divine Path Forms a Network

"Sir, according to the Way of Knowledge and Action, does that mean everything can be tried? If I wished to kill someone, should I kill them first before knowing it is wrong?"

Once Qiu Yan opened things up like this, every sort of question truly emerged. It was also because he seemed so mild and was about the same age as the others that they felt far less pressure and dared to speak freely.

Qiu Yan replied, "The Supreme Sage Teacher once said: govern a state with virtue, esteem rites, and employ punishments. Guide them with governance and regulate them with punishments, and the people may avoid punishment yet have no sense of shame; guide them with virtue and regulate them with rites, and they will have shame and become upright. Knowledge and action have no order of precedence, nor is there any fixed form. The fact that you can ask this question already proves that you know the good and evil of the matter. This, too, is a manifestation of the court's laws being carried throughout the realm—it is action that brings knowledge, a form of moral instruction. If you were actually told to do it, how could you bring yourself to do it?"

After he finished, someone else said, "Rites, laws, and punishments were established by those before us. I heard that when the present Ancestral Dragon established the dynasty, Mr. Heavenly Secrets accompanied him. He could divine with uncanny precision, and the Great Rui Code was drafted by him over nearly ten years. Since one man served as its chief editor, how can we ensure there are no errors? Would that not be forcing what one man knew upon the entire realm?"

Qiu Yan answered, "People are born with desires. Some are as vast as heaven; some