眾 (Zhòng) — The Crowd

Say "jong," falling. Nine appearances across six chapters — and until this entry it was rendered four different ways, including once as nothing at all.

Locked: 眾 → "the crowd" (of people) / "the many" (of things). (Not "the masses," not "the multitude," not "the people.")

The word had drifted into four Englishes: all in Chapter 1, dropped entirely in Chapter 8, the masses six times in Chapter 20, the many in Chapter 21. The drop is the worst of them — Chapter 8's 處眾人之所惡 (it dwells where the crowd will not go) had become simply "it seeks the lowest places," which keeps the water and loses the people the line is measuring the water against.

The character, read slowly — worked and watched

The Shuowen Jiezi (~100 CE) analyses 眾 as 多也。从乑目 — many; from 乑 and 目 — where 乑 is a stack of three 人 (rén — person) and 目 is an eye.

But the oracle-bone form is more specific and more uncomfortable. There the element above the people is 日 (rì — the sun), and the figures beneath it are labourers: a gang of people working in the open, under the sun. The eye of the later graph appears to be the sun's replacement, and it does not soften the picture — it adds an overseer. Either way, 眾 in its earliest use names not simply a lot of people but the many who are worked, and watched while working.

Three people is enough. Classical Chinese uses three for innumerable — the same convention that makes 森 (three trees) a forest.

This matters for the register. "The masses" imports a nineteenth-century class politics Laozi has no word for, and hands the reader Marx on the way to a text about water. But the oracle bone is a reminder that the neutral-sounding alternatives can under-translate too: 眾 is not an abstract plurality. It is a crowd of specific bodies with someone standing over them.

The evidence — the crowd is what the sage is not

Chapter 20 is the word's home, and it uses 眾人 six times as one half of a contrast, with 我 (wǒ — the self seen) as the other:

眾人熙熙 · 眾人皆有餘 · 眾人皆有以 the crowd is merry · the crowd all has surplus · the crowd all has purpose

Against which: 我獨若遺 (I alone seem to have been left out), 我獨昏昏 (I alone am dim), 我獨頑似鄙 (I alone am stubborn and seem crude). The crowd is bright, full, and busy; the speaker is dim, empty, and useless. The chapter needs the crowd to be genuinely enviable for its reversal to cost anything, which is one more reason to avoid a word that pre-judges them.

Chapter 8 measures water by them. 處眾人之所惡 — it dwells in what the crowd finds distasteful. 惡 (è) is to dislike, to find repugnant. Water's virtue is located precisely where the crowd will not stand.

Chapter 64 sends the sage back to them. 學不學，復眾人之所過 — learning to be unlearned, returning to what the crowd has passed by. Not above the crowd; back over the ground they walked past.

Chapter 31 counts the dead. 殺人之眾，以悲哀泣之 — when the killed are many, weep for them in grief. Here 眾 is predicative — many — and the line is one of the most humane in the book.

And twice 眾 modifies things, not people. Chapter 1's 眾妙之門 (the gate of all subtleties) and Chapter 21's 眾甫 (the origin of the many). In both, "the crowd" would be absurd and the many or all is right.

The lock: what is set aside, and why

"The masses" carries a modern political charge — a bloc, a demographic, an object of policy — and a faint condescension the Chinese does not have. Chapter 20's crowd is merry at a spring festival, not a proletariat.

"The multitude" fails the hymn test outright. The multitudes is King James English, and it arrives with loaves and fishes attached.

"The people" belongs to a different and far more common character: 民 (mín), which appears in thirteen chapters and means the governed populace — the ones a ruler acts upon (愛民治國, 民之難治, 使民不爭). 眾 is a plurality; 民 is a political relation. Chapter 17's 百姓 (bǎi xìng — the hundred surnames) is a third thing again. Blurring them costs the political chapters their precision.

"Everyone" is a reasonable near-miss and is right in some lines — it is arguably the best English for Chapter 8 — but it loses the massed quality that Chapter 20 depends on. A crowd moves together; everyone does not.

The working register

of people, as a body → the crowd (眾人熙熙 → "the crowd is merry"; 處眾人之所惡 → "where the crowd will not go")
of things, as a modifier → all or the many (眾妙之門 → "the gate of all subtleties"; 眾甫 → "the origin of the many")
as a bare predicate → many (殺人之眾 → "when the killed are many")

Never "the masses," "the multitude," and never the word that belongs to 民.

The tension, left open

Is Laozi contemptuous of the crowd, or one of them?

Chapter 20 can be read either way, and the reading changes the whole voice of the book. Take 我獨 (I alone) as pride and the chapter is an aristocrat's complaint: the crowd is shallow, I am deep. Take it as loneliness and the chapter is an admission: everyone else knows how to live and I do not. The Chinese supports both, and the same six-fold contrast carries them equally.

Two things weigh toward the second. The self-descriptions are not flattering — 昏昏 (dim), 頑 (stubborn), 鄙 (crude), 若遺 (as if left out) — and Laozi elsewhere claims 愚 (yú — simple, foolish) for himself as a good. And Chapter 64 has the sage return to what the crowd walked past, which is a movement toward them rather than away.

But Chapter 20 also says 我獨異於人 — I alone am different from people — and difference is not humility. We keep "the crowd," which is neutral enough to let a reader hear either, and we do not decide for them.