The Legalist chancellor who helped the First Emperor unify the institutions
Li Si began as a minor clerk in Chu, studied the art of statecraft under Xunzi, entered Qin as a retainer of Lü Buwei, and won Ying Zheng’s favor with his "Memorial Against the Expulsion of Guests." As chancellor after unification, he was the chief architect of the imperial institutions: pressing for commanderies and counties over enfeoffment, overseeing the standardization of the script into small-seal, and unifying weights, measures, and axle-gauges — and he also drafted the order to burn the books. After the First Emperor died, coerced by Zhao Gao he took part in the Shaqiu conspiracy, installing Huhai, and was then framed step by step by Zhao Gao, finally cut in two at the waist in Xianyang on a charge of "treason," his three clans exterminated. On the execution ground, his last words to his son were a wish to walk out the east gate of Shangcai once more with a yellow dog to chase the cunning hare — a wish he could never fulfill.
As a young minor clerk, Li Si saw that rats in the privy ate filth and fled at the approach of men or dogs, while rats in the granary ate stored grain, lived under a great roof, and feared no man or dog. He sighed: "Whether a man is worthy or not is like the rat — it depends only on where he places himself!" This sigh drove his whole life: from a commoner of Shangcai to chancellor of Qin, it also pushed him to sign the altered edict on the night of Shaqiu.
Before being cut in two, Li Si turned to his second son, condemned with him, and said: "I wished to walk out the east gate of Shangcai with you once more, leading a yellow dog to chase the cunning hare — but can it be had now?" From the granary-rat sigh to the yellow-dog sigh is a closed loop: the man who gave up everything to be a granary rat remembered the freedom of the privy rat only at his execution. Sima Qian recorded both sighs, writing the cost of the philosophy of position as plainly as could be.