Wherefore does the ancient sage have it that "The wise delight in the rivers, the virtuous delight in mountains. The wise exert themselves, the virtuous rest. The wise are joyful, the virtuous are longevous."? Heaven alone is the longest-lasting of all, and it towers over man as man over a mite, but Heaven is tethered to the Pole Star, and there it rests. It may turn day and night, for which reason we might say that it moves, but its manifestations are predictable down to the finest detail, for which reason we say that it rests. Therefore, while Heaven may have motions, its motions are constant. It is the constancy--not the motions--of Heaven that empowers it to tower so. For what use are motions that are chaotic and devoid of direction and grounding? It is its constancy that empowers it to live forever, to shine eternally, to delight in its perfection. Such is the Virtue of Heaven.
So Virtue starts and ends in Heaven. Overflowing from the highest fount of Heaven, it falls down to the Earth and nourishes the land and its material, giving rise to the myriad living and nonliving things and powering their ambulance through the myriad transformations. Man arises out of the Earth--for the most eminent sages of which I am aware are all in agreement that man is originally made from mud--and he too becomes a receptacle for the overflowing Virtue of Heaven. But when that Virtue flows into the mold of man it makes first a single concretion of man, who embodies perfectly the idea of man in all his Virtue and with the highest degree of fidelity, that is the Emperor, and the Emperor's Virtue is passed on from him to his progeny throughout myriad ages. From this infinite generation all of the human world springs and all of the human world and everybody in it, every man, woman and child, becomes by proxy a receptacle for the overflowing Virtue of Heaven, insofar as they know how to channel it.
Today the Emperor sits on a shimmering throne that faces south and commands all of the land within the four seas, but do you know why? It is owing to his Virtue which was passed on to him from its ancient fount, through the very first Emperor, whose name has come down to us as the Knight of Heaven, but who is also worshiped in many solemn temples with a more respectful title so as to show deference before his tall greatness. He was elected by Heaven from the very inception of his being to be a perfect receptacle of the Virtue of Heaven, and through the heroic deeds he performed he spread that Virtue to all the human world. Overflowing from him as it did originally from Heaven, that Virtue then cascaded down through the ages, through the progeny of the Knight of Heaven, to even the founder of this country who was sent to our pitiful realm under the watchful eye of the Knight of Heaven and with his blessing. The first Emperor of this country, the Honorable Ancestor, is said to have been a son of the Knight of Heaven sent by him from the Native Heaven, and because the Virtue of that high source was so strong in him, nearly a hundred great lords who were scions of the Knight of Heaven's house went unto him to render their services, and so was our Realm born. In such a manner Virtue was delivered into our realm and our age, despite our remoteness from the Knight of Heaven and the original fount of Virtue. This is what is meant by "the virtuous are longevous", for Virtue perpetuates itself in all its power throughout the myriad ages through the generative process. Virtue is the ancient dignity. So the Knight of Heaven, despite springing forth in a remote epoch, still lives today even in our realm and our age, towering like a mountain, and we who live in the shadow of that mountain preserve his Virtue, that it may be transmitted to all ages hereafter--for nothing less than this everlasting Being is worthy of such a perfect Lord and Sage as he is.
This is the reason why the Emperor is, as he is often called, the "one man under Heaven", and why when speaking in a formal manner he refers to himself as "I, lonely one." Being the one man, he is like the axle of a wheel, and all the human world moves around him, receiving from him its own motive power, just as the spokes and rim of the wheel move about and receive their motive power from the axle. This should be obvious. But what is not so obvious, what sometimes confounds men and causes them to doubt the true power and legitimacy of the Emperor, is the question of where the Emperor derives his own motive power, for the Emperor is, just like us and all men, a mortal, despite being the vessel of a refined spirit. He cannot turn the human world about him of his own power, or by virtue of himself, but must borrow that power from a higher sphere. For the human world is, in a way, a sphere inside of a sphere, or a wheel inside of a wheel. It is a microscopic world that is contained inside a macroscopic one, and just as when one loads goods onto a cart, the goods are moved when the cart moves--or you could say the goods then move by virtue of the cart's moving--just so does the human world move because of its being loaded inside the cosmos, it moves by virtue of the cosmos's moving. But naturally this metaphor is imperfect, because the human world, just like the cosmos itself, moves in the manner of a wheel, that is, circularly and not rectilinearly, and so the transference of the motive element is concentrated upon a single point, the axle. This axle is the Emperor of the human world. The Emperor is the sole receptacle of the overflowing Virtue of the higher spheres, and through him and by Virtue of him, the rest of the human world moves.
But the human world is filled with all kinds of people who are arranged in a manner cascading down from the Emperor, as steps in a pyramid. There is, besides the Emperor, his own family that surrounds him, and below them are his immediate retainers. Below them are, in turn, the more distant and less excellent retainers, who impose his will in the diverse regions of the realm. The above make up the class of people that are in service to the Emperor, filling such various roles as warriors, priests, controllers, accountants, secretaries, and so on. Below them there is the other class of common citizens, which includes the artisans, musicians, carpenters, workers of iron, silver and gold and makers of fine articles. Still lower are the farmers, herdsmen, foresters, hunters and others who exert their bodies to cultivate the Earth and maintain equilibrium with Nature. Finally there at the very bottom are the ones who make a living through commerce, either selling goods that were produced by others, or else selling their bodies to labor blindly under the wills of others. (When people talk about "slaves", they are usually referring to this latter kind, that sell their bodies for food and lodging, but in reality the former kind, who sell the things produced by others, are equally "slaves") Towering above all the different strata of people, when the Emperor and his wise men tell them, "Cultivate ye virtue," what do they actually mean? They cannot mean that the people should become as the Emperor is himself--and besides, there can be only one who is as luminous as the Emperor. And yet they are supposed to be virtuous like the Emperor. So how then does Virtue cascade down from the Emperor to them? How does the Emperor make them like himself, but not the same as himself?
This is where the principle of Justice comes to the fore--Justice, whom we might liken to the faithful and loving wife of Virtue. Virtue, as we said, means dwelling constantly in what one is, which is why it is a species of immortality. But let us not forget, then, that Virtue depends on that term, 'what one is'. It is appropriate to talk about the Virtue of Heaven, but when we wish to move adjacently to a discussion of human Virtue, we come up to an ontological cliff: while Heaven is one, humans are many and diverse. So when we say 'human Virtue', we have in mind only an abstraction that is gathered together for our convenience, and we do not have in mind the same kind of Virtue as when we say the 'Virtue of Heaven'. Virtue cannot be equal and the same everywhere. Justice, then, emerges as the principle which divides and apportions Virtue in accordance with the diverse natures of all things. She works alongside Virtue to ensure that everything grows to its own fullness in its own time and on its own terms. And it is only by her Heavenly wisdom and her skillful hand that everything is able to grow into what it is, treading on its own territory which Heaven has allotted to it and not infringing upon the territory of others or stealing what Heaven has allotted to others. When infringements do take place, Justice records them in her immortal register as what men call 'sins', and these are not forgotten even after the passage of a million ages no matter how small or big they are, but eventually must be reckoned with in one form or another. The reason they are not forgotten even after a million ages is that, if it were otherwise, then Virtue would not be able to have faith in its own right--so it would begin to erode by the passing infringements of others and would perish, falling short of its immortal nature.
In our realm, just as it is in the Kingdom of Heaven, there cannot be two Emperors, just as a knight cannot have two lords, or a lady two husbands, and so on. This is the incarnation of Justice, for if it were otherwise, then the rights whereby Virtue dwells confidently in its native home, as allotted by Heaven, would be infringed upon. The Virtue of the Emperor, whereupon the entire human world and its health rest, therefore, when it cascades down to the myriads of common people, takes on different and complimentary forms as divided up by the Emperor's Justice and informed by his wisdom. So it is that the common people are sorted according to the intelligibility of their diverse natures into the strata we listed above, the categories of family, ancestry and sex, as well as the virtual categories of host and guest, lord and retainer, master and servant, teacher and student, etc., and by that very same Justice no one category or stratum infringes upon the other, but all delight in their harmony, as when the strings of a lute are both well-tuned and strummed by an experienced hand. When all things are so ordered, then the cascading Virtue fills up each cup according to its own volume, not too little that it is insatiate, nor too much that it spills over. When all things are so ordered, then and only then may mankind call itself 'pious', for then and only then does mankind show the respect to Creation that its Creator deserves (and what is the essence of religion but this?). Though this truth has become adumbrated today among many sectors of the people, the esteemed framers of our realm understood it well, as they were true scions of the Knight of Heaven and possessors of his most ancient wisdom, which is why they set things up in the pattern that they did. And because they did so, our realm too will be long-lived.
To generalize, religious Piety arises out of the harmonious unity of Virtue and Justice. To borrow a very poignant metaphor, Virtue is the seed, Justice is the soil that nourishes the seed, and Piety is the fruit that the plant bears when it has grown to maturity. This is what is meant by 'cultivating Virtue'. And with Piety come also all the things in life which are conducive to health and good fortune, among them peace, harmony, propitious weather, victory on the battlefield, abundant harvests and aversion of disease and natural disasters--for these are the boons the gods provide us in return for our Piety.
Of course, one may wish to bring up, a strict and reverent observance of religious rituals and rites is also necessary for mankind to call itself 'pious', and one would indeed be correct on that point, but rituals and rites are merely the form Virtue takes when it is put into practice in a concrete fashion. When Virtue and Justice prevail in the realm, then it goes without saying that the rites and rituals will be carried out with the highest degree of solemnity, grandeur and beauty--in fact, the latter follows naturally and spontaneously from the former. However, in a realm where Virtue and Justice do not prevail, but are neglected and downtrodden, then not even the highest strictness and attention to rituals and rites can do any good, for they will be like crude plastic copies of things that grow naturally, like dead animals that have been stuffed and embalmed to make them seem for ever alive, but only on the surface. That is why the Sage does not obsess over rites and rituals--he does not need to, for so long as he has Virtue and Justice, he has ritual propriety also without even trying. Those small men who do obsess over rites in a very vocal and explicit manner only do so because they hope to use outer appearances to mask their underlying deficiency of Virtue. Such men deviate greatly from the way of the Sage, and if one ever tells you he is a Sage or a follower of Sages, you can know easily that he is lying.