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In every case where a state is vast and its ruler honored, it has never been other than through heavy laws that orders are carried out and prohibitions enforced throughout All-Under-Heaven. Therefore one who rules men, in apportioning rank and regulating salary, must make the law strict and heavy.

When the state is well governed, the people are secure. When affairs are disordered, the state is endangered. Heavy laws accord with human nature; light prohibitions lose touch with reality.

The capacity for mortal exertion is what the people possess. There is no one whose nature does not drive them to expend their utmost effort to achieve what they desire. But what the people desire and detest is what the ruler controls. The people desire profit and salary; they detest punishment and penalty. If the ruler grasps desire and aversion to direct the people's effort, reality should not be lost. Yet when prohibitions are light and reality is lost, it is because rewards and punishments have gone astray. When governing the people, if one does not uphold the law as the standard of goodness, then it is as if there were no law at all.

The principle of order and disorder requires that one urgently attend to the clear distinction between punishments and rewards. All who govern states have laws, yet some states survive and some perish. Those that perish are those whose system of punishments and rewards lacks clear distinctions.

In governing a state, punishments and rewards always have distinctions. But when distinctions are maintained merely to create differences, this cannot be called true distinction. Only when the discerning ruler makes distinctions is it genuine distinction. Under such conditions, the people value the law and fear prohibitions; they desire to avoid crime and dare not seek unearned rewards.

Therefore it is said: without even awaiting punishments and rewards, the people attend to their duties.

In a state of perfect governance, the paramount concern is stopping treachery. Why? Because its laws accord with human nature and are connected to the principles of governance.

Then how does one eliminate even minor treachery? One must make it the people's business to watch over each other's conduct. How does one make them watch each other? The answer is simply this: through collective liability within the neighborhood unit.

When prohibitions have consequences that extend to oneself, one cannot afford not to watch one's neighbors -- one's only fear is failing to protect oneself. Those who harbor treacherous thoughts cannot afford to be careless, because there are so many watching. Under such conditions, each person guards his own conduct while watching others, and treachery is exposed down to its finest detail.

Those who report offenses are exempted from punishment and receive rewards. Those who fail to detect treachery are invariably punished under the collective liability system. Under such conditions, all categories of treachery are exposed. Not even the smallest treachery can escape detection -- and it is the system of private reporting and collective liability that makes this so.

The most enlightened application of the law relies on institutional measures, not on individual men. Therefore in a state that possesses techniques, without relying on personal reputation there are no enemies; the territory is certainly well governed -- because it relies on institutional measures.

A doomed state allows enemy soldiers to march freely through its territory, unable to resist or prohibit them -- because it relies on individual men and has no institutional measures. What attacks from within is the human factor; what attacks the human factor is institutional measures. Therefore a state that possesses techniques discards words and relies on the law.

In general, irregular merit that follows established procedures may be recognized, but transgressions against punishment that arise from mere words are difficult to detect. This is why punishments and rewards become confused by ambiguity. What is called 'following procedures yet difficult to know' refers to fraudulent merit. What is called 'ministerial transgressions difficult to detect' refers to losing sight of the root cause.

If one follows the principles yet cannot see through hollow achievements, and if one measures the circumstances yet is deceived by the roots of treachery, then how can both failures be avoided? Thus hollow men establish reputations within, while persuaders craft strategies without. The foolish and the timid, the brave and the clever become interconnected, using empty doctrines to attach themselves to convention and find acceptance in the world.

Consequently the law goes unused, and punishments are not applied to those who deserve execution. Under such conditions, how can punishments and rewards avoid this dual confusion? The substance of affairs has its own logic, but when principles lose their proper measure, the loss of measure is not caused by the law itself -- it is caused by establishing the law yet relying on individual cleverness.

When one abandons the law and relies on cleverness, how can those who receive assignments find their proper duties? When duties do not match the affairs they govern, how can the law avoid failure, and how can punishments avoid becoming burdensome? This is why rewards and punishments fall into confusion, the way of the state goes astray, and the distinction between punishments and rewards is not made clear.