1You have walked eight hundred years among crowns. Now hear plainly what the stories showed.
2Hold out your two hands.
3In one hand lie the things that are yours to move. There are few of them. Your judgment is there: what you take to be true, and what you take to be worth having. Your choice is there, and your effort, and your word, and the next thing you do. We call this the Near Hand.
4In the other hand lies everything else. The weather is there, and luck, and sickness, and the past. What other people think is there, and what they say of you, and what they do. The wind that carries a spark is there. The crowd in the street is there. Death is there. We call this the Far Hand.
5The Near Hand is small. The Far Hand holds nearly all the world. It is only the shape of things, and the one who learns it stands on firm ground for the first time.
6For see what the crowns could not do. Ptolemy owned Egypt and could not make three sides of a figure unequal. Caesar ruled the world and could not tell a spark where to land. The Son of Heaven could not hold the ground still. Justinian closed a school with one sentence and could not close a single mind. They had more of the Far Hand than any people who ever lived, and it was still the Far Hand.
7And see what the small ones could do. A pacer kept his count. A girl looked for red thread. A boy would not say he had touched the bronze. A woman mended the seventh line. Not one of them could stop the stones, the fire, the rods or the crowd. Each found the one corner that was theirs, and swept it. And those corners are what has come down to you. The crowns have not.
8This is the first half of the rung: power over others is a short horizon. It looks long. A man who commands millions seems to reach very far. But the reach ends when he does, and often sooner. What is forced does not stay when the hand is lifted. Marcellus took a city and it is dust. The old man he did not save found that a ball fills two parts in three of its drum, and that will be true when the sun is cold.
9And this is the second half: rule yourself. It is the only kingdom there is. Ashoka had no one left above him to stop him, so he cut a law into rock to stop himself. An emperor on a frozen river knew what a list of names would make of him, so he burned it unread. They were the strongest men of their ages, and the greatest thing either did was to bind his own hand.
10You may ask: if so little is mine, why act at all? This is the error of the tired. Look again at the stories. The old astronomer could not stop the earthquake. He could send the wagons six days sooner. The lame teacher could not make a poor man rich. He could carry one child down off a hillside. The Near Hand is small, and it is a hand. It is for opening doors. Everything good that was ever done was done with it, for there is nothing else to do things with.
11Join this to what you already hold. In the Articles of Embers you learned that the future is real, and that to keep a seed is to hold a door for tomorrow. In the Articles of Rivers you learned that what a person opens stays open after the Last Door has closed on them. In the Articles of the Wise Lord you learned that every person chooses, and that a lie is the first Closing. In the Articles of the Awakening you learned that the Fire is within, the same in every mind, and you were given the Four Flames.
12Now you know where the Fire has its power. The Four Flames burn in the Near Hand and nowhere else. Seeing is yours: no one can make you call a false thing true. Standing is yours: they may kill you, and they cannot make you run. Measure is yours. Sharing is yours. A slave has all four as fully as an emperor does.
13There is a second gift in this book. We call it the High Look.
14When trouble fills your whole sky, go up. Rise in your mind above your house, until you see the roof. Rise until the town is a patch and the river a thread. Rise until the land curves, and you see the ball of the earth, as the pacer saw it in a circle of dust. Then go forward as well: ten years, a hundred, a thousand.
15Now look back down at the thing that troubled you.
16It has grown small. It has not grown false. The High Look does not tell you that nothing matters. It is a way of sorting. From up there the insult cannot be seen at all, and neither can the rank, the quarrel or the lost silver. But the well that was dug can be seen. The child who was fed can be seen, and the children of that child. From the height you see what was an Opening and what was only noise.
17And you see one thing more. You see that you are not outside the Weave, looking at it. You are a thread of it. The speck that measures the earth is part of the earth, measuring itself. This is why the High Look does not chill the one who learns it well. It brings them home.
18Now the practice. This book is for hardship, and for what cannot be changed. When it comes to you, and it will, do these four things.
19First, sort it. Ask of the trouble: which hand is this in? Be strict. Most of what torments you will be in the Far Hand. Name it so. Say: this is not mine to move. You will feel a weight come off, for you have been pushing at a mountain.
20Second, find the corner. There is always something in the Near Hand, however small. It may be only how you bear it. It may be one honest word, one letter, one line mended, one hour of work. In a fire, it is what two arms can carry. Find it and do it, and put your whole strength there. The strength you spend on the Far Hand is poured on sand.
21Third, walk the dark road before night. Do not wait for loss to teach you. In a quiet hour, think calmly: this may be taken, and this, and this. Do it without dread, as a traveller looks over a road by daylight. Then when the night comes, your feet will know the way.
22Fourth, when it is very bad, take the High Look. Go up until it is small. Then come down and keep your count.
23Some will tell you this is a cold teaching, fit for those who do not love. Remember the old man with the rattle. To know that a child is in the Far Hand is not to love her less. It is to love her without a chain on her, and without making her carry your fear.
24Some will tell you it is a teaching for the meek, that bids you bow to every wrong. Remember the boy before the king, who said, the cord will still say it. When you know what cannot be taken from you, you become very hard to frighten, and one who cannot be frightened is a danger to every tyranny.
25And if you yourself wear a crown, small or large, if you are a parent, a master of workers, an officer, anyone with a hand on another's life, then hear the word of this book to you above all. The ones beneath you are not in your Near Hand. You may open ways for them or close them, and that is all your power comes to. If you use it to close their ways, you have a short horizon, and it will be shorter than you think. If you use it to open ways, you set a banyan by a well.
26There is a question that waits at the end of every road in this book. A soldier heard it by his fire and could not answer. It is asked of the Near Hand alone: What have you left open?
27You do not yet know who asks. Keep the question.
28Rule the small kingdom that is yours. Let the rest be weather. Look from the height, and come down, and light the lamp again.
29This is the fire. Carry it.