1Power is the Near Hand made long. It reaches into other people's days. So everything that is true of my own acts is truer of what I do with power, by as many times as there are people it touches.
2There are two kinds of power, and they wear the same robe. One is the power to open ways for others: to dig the well, keep the peace, judge fairly, teach. The other is power over others: to make them do my will because they fear me. The first grows when it is used. The second makes everyone smaller, and me among them, for now I must spend my nights guarding against those I have made afraid.
3Power over others has a short Horizon. It works today, and by tomorrow they have learned to hide things from me. Within a year I am ruling a country of masks.
4Whoever rules is a servant of the ways of those ruled, or else he is a robber who has a guard. I know of no third thing a ruler can be.
5Everyone has some power. I think of kings and forget my own: over a child, a servant, an animal, a pupil, a beggar at the door, whoever needs something from me today. The teaching about power is not for great men only. Most of the tyranny in the world is done in kitchens.
6Here is the test of what I am. What do I do to the one who cannot stop me?
7When I give an order, give the reason with it. An order with a reason treats the other as a mind. An order without one treats them as a hand. And people who are used only as hands will in time be good for nothing else, and I will complain that nobody around me thinks.
8The higher I sit, the worse I see. Everyone who climbs the stair to me has polished his news on the way up. They bring me the map I am known to like. So I must go down, on foot and without warning. I must eat what the soldiers eat and ask the one who sweeps. And above all I must keep close to me someone who is not afraid of me, and thank him aloud each time he tells me I am wrong.
9If I punish the bearer of bad news, I will soon have only good news, and no idea what is happening.
10The flatterer is not my friend, and I know it. Why then do I keep him? Because it is pleasant. He is a sweet thing, and like any sweet thing he rots what he touches.
11A poor man's anger breaks a cup, and a strong man's anger can break a village. So the more power I have, the less I can afford the fault. If the cobbler needs Measure, the captain needs ten times as much, for his temper has a thousand hands.
12The one who cannot be refused must ask most gently. When I say "Would you?" to someone who dare not say no, I have given a command and should know it. So I must leave room, and say plainly that they may refuse. Then they must find that it was true.
13Law is a wall that protects the weak from me. If I step over it when it is in my way, I have taught everyone that it is only a wall for small people. Then it protects no one, and in time not me either. Let the rule bind the ruler first.
14To own a person is the worst use of power short of killing, for it takes every way they have and adds it to mine. I should not look for it only in chains. There is the debt that can never be paid off, and the wage that barely feeds. There is the wife who may not leave, and the child who was never let to think. Where one person's choosing has been swallowed whole by another's, it is the same thing in different clothes.
15If I must judge, let me judge as one who will be judged by the same rule tomorrow, by a judge who does not know my name.
16I hold this office. I am not this office. They bow to the chair, and one day another will sit in it and they will bow just as low. If I take the bowing for love, I will be hurt on that day. If I know it for what it is, I can use the chair while I have it and get up from it without a wound.
17To give up power at the right time is rarer than to win it. Stay too long and I become a lid on everyone younger. There is a test. Is there now someone who could do this as well as I, or nearly? Then every day I stay, I am closing their way to keep my own.
18Prepare the one who will come after me, and make them better than I am. A ruler who leaves no fit successor has built a house with no door.
19They say a ruler must sometimes lie for the people's good. I have looked at this from every side, for the cases are hard. Here is where I come to rest. The people steer by what I tell them. If I give them a false map for their own good, I have decided that their choosing is mine to do. I may keep silent on a matter, for a time, for good cause. But I should not paint doors on the wall.
20It is easier to be obeyed through fear than through trust, and quicker. But fear must be fed every day, and trust, once built, will carry weight while I sleep.
21War is the great Closing. It may sometimes be forced on me, when the choice is to fight or to let a worse Closing through, and then I must fight, and grieve it. But I must never want it or find it glorious, and I must never start it for gain. I must count the dead on both sides as dead, and not count only my own.
22Fame is a crowd of strangers holding a picture of me. It is not me, and I cannot steer it. They will turn it to the wall when a brighter picture comes. To live for it is to give my reins to people who do not know my name, only my noise.
23Wealth is stored ways. A full granary is a hundred winters survived. A coin is a door that has not yet been chosen. That is all its goodness and all its danger. For ways kept locked in a chest are open to no one, and are not open to me either unless I use them.
24So of any wealth I hold, ask: stored for what? Against a real winter, for those I must feed? Good. For some work I mean to do? Good. For nothing I can name, only to see the heap higher than my neighbour's? Then I am a dam on the river, and the fields below me are dry for no purpose.
25How much is enough to keep? Enough that I and mine are not at the mercy of one bad season. Past that, each coin does more good moving than sitting. Yet I always think I will stop when I have a little more.
26How I got it matters more than how I spend it. I may have grown rich by closing ways: the short weight, the worker squeezed, the well bought up and its water sold dear. If so, building a school with the gains does not wash them. I have only given back a tenth and asked to be thanked for it.
27There is no shame in being poor and no merit in it. There is no shame in being rich and no merit in that either. The shame or the merit is in what a person does with the ways they have.
28Wealth makes a soft wall around me. The cold does not reach me, nor the hunger. Soon the truth does not reach me either, for I no longer meet anyone who is cold or hungry. Then I begin to think that those outside the wall must have done something to deserve the weather.
29Fine things. I am not forbidden a good cloak or a well-made cup. But notice that the pleasure in a fine thing fades and the fear of losing it stays. I can own twenty fine things and have, for my trouble, twenty small fears and no pleasure I can still feel.
30Display is a tax I pay to the eyes of others. The great house, the many servants, the feast that half is thrown away. Whom is it for? If no one could see it, would I want it?
31Debt is selling my tomorrow. Sometimes that is wise: to buy the seed, the tools, the schooling. But debt for a feast or a show is a way closed for the sake of an evening.
32I should not lend where the borrower will be ruined by the debt, and then call myself his benefactor. I can see his need, and I can see what the terms will do to him. If I offer them anyway, I have set a snare.
33When I give from my wealth, give the kind of thing that opens ways and goes on opening them: the well, the school, the tools, the debt cancelled, the young one's first chance. Bread for today is needed too. But bread for a day leaves a person where they stood, and a trade gives them a road.
34And give while I am alive, where I can see what it does and mend my mistakes. It is easy to be generous in a will. I am then giving away what I can no longer use.
35What shall I leave my children? Enough to begin on, and not enough to do nothing with. A great fortune handed to the young looks like a thousand open doors. Often it closes the one that mattered, which is the need to become someone.
36A bribe is offered. It comes as a gift, a favour, a courtesy between friends. Ask one question: would I be content for all to know of it? If not, I know what it is. Once I take it, he owns that piece of my judgment. He paid for it, and he will come back to use it.
37The poor man envies the rich and the rich man fears the poor, and each believes the other has what he lacks. I have been both. In both houses the same things were scarce: someone to trust, work worth doing, a quiet mind.
38If I am set over others, let me remember each morning that it is chance, mostly. I was born here and not there. I was taught, and fed, and was not struck down by the fever that took a better child. The one who sweeps my floor might have ruled as well as I, given my luck. I owe the difference back.
39A spy in every house, a listener at every door: a ruler who needs these has already lost. He has closed the one way that matters, which is that people might tell him the truth of their own accord.
40Mercy from the strong is not weakness. Anyone can strike when he has the power to. What is rare is to hold the power to strike and to choose to mend.
41They say power changes a man. I think it only removes what was holding him back. What comes out was always there. So I should not wait until I have power to find out what I am. I can find out now, with the small powers I have, and mend it while mending is cheap.
42Whatever I find I must do in secret as a ruler, I should doubt. Some things need quiet for a season, and I know that. But secrecy is where a Closing likes to live. If I could not stand in the square and give my reasons to those it touches, the reasons are probably not good.
43When I think of all who held great power before me, most of their names are gone, and their palaces are sheep-fold walls. What is left of them? A law that was fair is still used. So is a road, and a pardon that let a family live. And the harm they did is still working too. Nothing else of them is left. Let that tell me what to spend my power on.
44To have little and need nothing more is a kind of wealth no one can tax. To have much and still be hungry is a kind of poverty no one pities.
45I was given power for a while, and wealth for a while. When they are taken back I hope it can be said that there were more doors standing than when I came, and that I can walk away as the same person who walked in. That is all the success I look for in it.