Sources of Chinese Tradition: Volume 2: From 1600 Through the Twentieth Century, Second Edition

Although the Manchu conquest of China might have been expected to produce, under foreign rule, dramatic changes in Chinese life, it is a sign of the powerful inertial force of Chinese civilization—the magnitude of the society and the survival power of both its people and its culture—that so much of traditional thought and institutions persisted into the new era and, in fact, even lent stability and strength to the new regime. It is also a credit to the adaptability of the Manchus to their new situation.

A key instance of this political and cultural survival was the early resumption of the civil service examination system, with the same basic curriculum that had been adopted, under Neo-Confucian influence, in the Mongol and Ming periods. Nothing else so radically conditioned the intellectual life of Qing China, since this curriculum based on the Four Books and Five Classics provided both the common denominator for educated discourse and the ground for further advances in classical scholarship, which became, in the Qing period, the greatest achievement of the cultural elite.

Although in principle education was open to all, classical learning remained accessible only to the more leisured classes; commoners, most of them heavily engaged in manual labor, could not indulge in such time-consuming pursuits. True, basic literacy and popular culture shared many of the same Confucian values on the moral level, but farmers and craftsmen could only admire, and did not often share in, the higher forms of culture respected among the elite.

Scholar-officials, however, had their own problems. As Confucian loyalists and survivors from the Ming, their consciences kept many of them from serving the new dynasty. At the same time, as upholders of Confucian ideal standards who blamed the fall of the Ming dynasty on its own lack of political virtue, the four major thinkers represented below, instead of commemorating and eulogizing, engaged in a searching critique not just of the Ming but of dynastic rule down through the ages—a critique of unprecedented depth and incisiveness. Given, however, the unchallengeability of Qing power and authority in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the fuller significance and effect of this critique of dynastic rule was not felt until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries—if, indeed, it is not still to be felt.

Of these same thinkers, three (Huang Zongxi, Lü Liuliang, and Gu Yanwu) were recognized as outstanding scholars in their own time, while Wang Fuzhi worked in great isolation and became widely appreciated only much later. Lu’s fate, however, was ironic. In the first decades of the Qing he was a powerful force in the revival of the Zhu Xi school and influenced leading Neo-Confucians who played a major role in the Kangxi emperor’s promotion of an official Zhu Xi orthodoxy. Yet when Kangxi’s successor discovered the politically subversive character of Lü’s commentary on Zhu Xi’s Four Books (see chapter 21) he engaged in a ruthless and almost totally successful proscription of Lü’s works.

Meanwhile, alongside the promotion of the official orthodoxy, a broad movement of critical textual scholarship was developing, which, intellectually speaking, became the dominant scholarly trend (known as the Han Learning or Evidential Learning). Gu Yanwu was generally regarded as the progenitor and towering example of this movement, and his prestige endured into the twentieth century.

In terms of their official standing and formative role in shaping official orthodoxy and cultural policy, other major figures like Lu Longji, Li Guangdi, and Zhang Boxing (most of them influenced to some degree by Lu Liuliang and identified with the so-called Song Learning), would have to be mentioned, but outstanding though they were in their own day, we pass them by here in favor of others whose significance transcends their own time.

Huang Zongxi (1610–1695) was the son of a high Ming official affiliated with the Donglin party who died in prison at the hands of the eunuchs. At the age of eighteen, after the fall of the chief eunuch, Wei Zhongxian, Huang avenged his father’s death by bringing to justice or personally attacking those responsible for it. Thereafter he devoted himself to study, took part in a flurry of political agitation at Nanjing just before the fall of the Ming dynasty, and then engaged in prolonged, but unsuccessful, guerrilla operations against the Manchus in southeast China. There is evidence that he even took part in a mission to Japan, hoping to obtain aid. After finally giving up the struggle, Huang settled down to a career as an independent scholar and teacher, refusing all offers of employment from the Manchu regime.

Warfare being less total and intensive in those days, Huang was probably not forced to neglect his intellectual interests altogether during those unsettled years. Nevertheless, it is remarkable that his most productive years should have come so late in life. His first important work, Waiting for the Dawn (Mingyi daifanglu), was produced at the age of fifty-two. Thereafter he worked on a massive anthology of Ming dynasty prose and a broad survey of Ming thought, Mingru xuean, which is the first notable attempt in China at a systematic and critical intellectual history. At his death he was compiling a similar survey for the Song and Yuan dynasties. Huang’s range of interests included mathematics, calendrical science, geography, and the critical study of the classics, as well as literature and philosophy. In most of these fields, however, his approach is that of a historian, and this underlying bent is reflected in the fact that his most outstanding disciples and followers in the Manchu period also distinguished themselves in historical studies. Huang was an independent and creative scholar who questioned the predominant Neo-Confucian emphasis on individual virtue as the key to governance and instead stressed the need for constitutional law and systemic reform.

Huang characterized dynastic rule as inherently “selfish,” rather than conforming to the Confucian ideal of governance in the public interest or common good (gong), and he also reaffirmed the traditional (especially Mencian) emphasis on the critical remonstrating function of conscientious ministers. Yet he went further to insist on having a prime minister as executive head of the government (rather than the emperor, as was the case in the Ming period) and also on having schools at every level (including the capital) serve as organs of public discussion, with the emperor and his officials required to attend and listen to the airing of major public issues.

The crises of the late Ming-early Qing evoked from other scholars, like Gu Yanwu, Lu Liuliang, and Tang Zhen, similar critiques of the dynastic system based on Confucian principles. None, however, produced as systematic and comprehensive a statement, expressed in such forceful language, as Huang. Unfortunately, under the strong, efficient rule of the Qing dynasty Huang’s forthright critique could be circulated only among a few scholars discreet enough not to publicize it widely or attract official repression. Only in the declining years of the Qing dynasty did reformers, both monarchist and republican, succeed in reprinting and circulating it as a native manifesto for constitutional change.

In the beginning of human life each man lived for himself and looked to his own interests. There was such a thing as the common benefit, yet no one seems to have promoted it; and there was common harm, yet no one seems to have eliminated it. Then someone came forth who did not think of benefit in terms of his own benefit but sought to benefit all-under-Heaven and who did not think of harm in terms of harm to himself but sought to spare all-under-Heaven from harm. Thus his labors were thousands of times greater than the labors of ordinary men. Now to work a thousand or ten thousand times harder without benefiting oneself is certainly not what most people in the world desire. Therefore in those early times some men worthy of ruling, after considering it, refused to become princes—Xu You and Wu Guang² were such. Others undertook it and then quit—Yao and Shun, for instance. Still others, like Yu,³ became princes against their own will and later were unable to quit. How could men of old have been any different? To love ease and dislike strenuous labor has always been the natural inclination of man.

However, with those who later became princes it was different. They believed that since they held the power over benefit and harm, there was nothing wrong in taking for themselves all the benefits and imposing on others all the harm. They made it so that no man dared to live for himself or look to his own interests. Thus the prince’s great self-interest took the place of the common good of all-under-Heaven. At first the prince felt some qualms about it, but his conscience eased with time. He looked upon the world as an enormous estate to be handed on down to his descendants, for their perpetual pleasure and well-being. . . .

This can only be explained as follows: In ancient times all-under-Heaven were considered the master⁴ and the prince was the tenant. The prince spent his whole life working for all-under-Heaven. Now the prince is master and all-under-Heaven are tenants. That no one can find peace and happiness anywhere is all on account of the prince. In order to get whatever he wants, he maims and slaughters all-under-Heaven and breaks up their families—all for the aggrandizement of one man’s fortune. Without the least feeling of pity, the prince says, “I’m just establishing an estate for my descendants.” Yet when he has established it, the prince still extracts the very marrow from people’s bones and takes away their sons and daughters to serve his own debauchery. It seems entirely proper to him. It is, he says, the interest on his estate. Thus he who does the greatest harm in the world is none other than the prince. If there had been no rulers, each man would have provided for himself and looked to his own interests. How could the institution of rulership have turned out like this?

In ancient times men loved to support their prince, likened him to a father, compared him to Heaven, and truly this was not going too far. Now men hate their prince, look on him as a “mortal foe,”⁵ call him “just another guy.”⁶ And this is perfectly natural. But petty scholars have pedantically insisted that “the duty of the subject to his prince is utterly inescapable.”⁷ . . . As if the flesh and blood of the myriads of families destroyed by such tyrants were no different from the “carcasses of dead rats.”⁸ Could it be that Heaven and Earth, in their all-encompassing care, favor one man and one family among millions of men and myriads of families? . . .

If it were possible for latter-day princes to preserve such an estate and hand it down in perpetuity, such selfishness would not be hard to understand. But once it comes to be looked upon as a personal estate, who does not desire such an estate as much as the prince? Even if the prince could “tie his fortune down and lock it up tight,”⁹ still the cleverness of one man is no match for the greed of all. At most it can be kept in the family for a few generations, and sometimes it is lost in one’s own lifetime, unless indeed the life’s blood spilled is that of one’s own offspring. . . .

It is not easy to make plain the position of the prince, but any fool can see that a brief moment of excessive pleasure is not worth an eternity of sorrows.

Suppose there is someone who, in serving the prince, “sees [what to do] without being shown and hears without being told.”¹⁰ Could he be called a [true] minister? I say no. Suppose that he sacrifices his life in the service of his prince. Could he then be called a [true] minister? I say no. “To see without being shown and hear without being told” is “to serve [one’s prince] as one’s father.”¹¹ To sacrifice one’s life is the ultimate in selflessness. If these are not enough to fulfill this duty, then what should one do to fulfill the Way of the Minister?

The reason for ministership lies in the fact that the world is too big for one man to govern, so governance must be shared with colleagues. Therefore, when one goes forth to serve, it is for all-under-Heaven and not for the prince; it is for all the people and not for one family.

When one acts for the sake of all-under-Heaven and its people, then one cannot agree to do anything contrary to the Way even if the prince explicitly constrains one to do so—how much less could one do it without being shown or told! And if it were not in keeping with the true Way, one should not even present oneself to the court—much less sacrifice one’s life for the ruler. To act solely for the prince and his dynasty and attempt to anticipate the prince’s unexpressed whims or cravings—this is to have the mind of a eunuch or palace maid. “When the prince brings death and destruction upon himself, if one follows and does the same, this is to serve him as a mistress or some such intimate would.”¹² That is the difference between one who is a true minister and one who is not.

But those who act as ministers today, not understanding this principle, think that ministership is instituted for the sake of the prince. They think that the prince shares the world with one so that it can be governed and that he entrusts one with its people so that they can be shepherded, thus regarding the world and its people as personal property in the prince’s pouch [to be disposed of as he wills].

Today only if the toil and trouble everywhere and the strain on the people are grievous enough to endanger one’s prince do ministers feel compelled to discuss the proper means for governing and leading the people. As long as these do not affect the dynasty’s existence, widespread toil, trouble, and strain are regarded as trifling problems, even by supposedly true ministers. But was this the way ministers served in ancient times, or was it another way?

Whether there is peace or disorder in the world does not depend on the rise or fall of dynasties but upon the happiness or distress of the people. . . . If those who act as ministers ignore the “plight of the people,”¹³ then even if they should succeed in assisting their prince’s rise to power or follow him to final ruin, they would still be in violation of the true Way of the Minister. For governing the world is like the hauling of great logs. The men in front call out, “Heave!,” those behind, “Ho!”¹⁴ The prince and his ministers should be log-haulers working together.¹⁵ . . .

Alas, the arrogant princes of later times have only indulged themselves and have not undertaken to serve the world and its people. From the countryside they seek out only such people as will be servile errand boys. Thus from the countryside those alone respond who are of the servile errand-boy type; once spared for a while from cold and hunger, they feel eternally grateful for his majesty’s kind understanding. Such people will not care whether they are treated by the prince with due respect (lit., according to the proper rites governing such a relation) and will think it no more than proper to be relegated to a servant’s status. . . .

It may be asked, Is not the term minister always equated with that of child?¹⁶ I say no. Father and child share the same vital spirit (psycho-physical force, qi). The child derives his own body from his father’s body. Though a filial child is a different person bodily, if he can draw closer each day to his father in vital spirit, then in time there will be a perfect communion between them. An unfilial child, after deriving his body from his father’s, drifts farther and farther from his parent, so that in time they cease to be kindred in vital spirit. The terms prince and minister derive from their relation to all-under-Heaven. If I take no responsibility for all-under-Heaven, then I am just another man on the street.¹⁷ If I come to serve him without regard for serving all-under-Heaven, then I am merely the prince’s menial servant or concubine. If, on the other hand, I have regard for serving the people, then I am the prince’s mentor and colleague. Thus with regard to ministership the designation may change.¹⁸ With father and child, however, there can be no such change.

Until the end of the Three Dynasties there was Law. Since the Three Dynasties there has been no Law. Why do I say this? Because the Two Emperors and Three Kings¹⁹ knew that all-under-Heaven could not do without sustenance and therefore gave them fields to cultivate. They knew that all-under-Heaven could not go without clothes and therefore gave them land on which to grow mulberry and hemp. They knew also that all-under-Heaven could not go untaught, so they set up schools, established the marriage ceremony to guard against promiscuity, and instituted military service to guard against disorders. This constituted Law until the end of the Three Dynasties. It was never laid down solely for the benefit of the ruler himself.

Later rulers, once they had won the world, feared only that their dynasty’s lifespan might not be long and that their descendants would be unable to preserve it. They set up laws in fear for what might happen, to prevent its coming to pass. However, what they called “Law” was laws for the sake of one family and not laws for the sake of all-under-Heaven. . . .

The Law of the Three Dynasties “safeguarded the world for the sake of all-under-Heaven.”²⁰ The prince did not try to seize all the wealth of the land, high or low, nor was he fearful that the power to punish and reward might fall into others’ hands. High esteem was not reserved for those at court; nor were those in the countryside necessarily held in low esteem. Only later was this kind of Law criticized for its looseness, but at that time the people were not envious of those in high place, nor did they despise humble status. The looser the law was, the fewer the disturbances that arose. It was what might be called “Law without laws.” The laws of later times have “safeguarded the world as if it were something in the [prince’s] treasure chest.”²¹ It is not desired that anything beneficial should be left to those below but rather that all blessings be gathered up for those on high. If [the prince] employs a man, he is immediately afraid that the man will act in his own interest, and so another man is employed to keep a check on the other’s selfishness. If one measure is adopted, there are immediate fears of its being abused or evaded, and so another measure must be adopted to guard against abuses or evasions. All men know where the treasure-chest lies, and so the prince is constantly fretting and fidgeting out of anxiety for its security. Consequently, the laws have to be made tight, and as they become tighter they become the very source of disorder. These are what one calls “un-Lawful laws.”

Some say that each dynasty has its own laws and that succeeding generations of the royal house have a filial duty to follow the ancestral laws. Now “un-Lawful laws” are originally instituted because the first prince of a line is unable to curb his own selfish desires. Later princes, out of the same inability, may break down these laws. The breaking down may in itself do harm to all-under-Heaven, yet this does not mean that the original enactment of the laws did no such harm. Yet some still insist that we get involved in this kind of legalistic muck, just to gain a little reputation for upholding the regulations²²—all of which is just the “secondhand drivel” of vulgar Confucians.²³ . . .

Should it be said that “there is only governance by men, not governance by law,”²⁴ my reply is that only if there is governance by law can there be governance by men. Since un-Lawful laws fetter men hand and foot, even a man capable of governing cannot overcome inhibiting restraints and suspicions. When there is something to be done, men do no more than their share, content themselves with the easiest slapdash methods, and can accomplish nothing that goes beyond a circumscribed sphere. If the Law of the early kings were still in effect, there would be a spirit among men that went beyond the letter of the law. If men were of the right kind, all of their intentions could be realized; and even if they were not of this kind, they could not slash deep or do widespread damage, thus harming the people instead [of benefiting them]. Therefore I say that only when we have governance by Law can we have governance by men.²⁵

The origin of misrule under the Ming lay in the abolition of the prime ministership by [the founder] Gao Huangdi.²⁷

The original reason for having princes was that they might govern all-under-Heaven, and since all-under-Heaven could not be governed by one man alone, officials were created for the purpose of governing. Thus officials shared the function of the prince.

Mencius said, “The Son of Heaven constituted one rank, the duke one, the marquis one, and viscounts and barons each one of equal rank—five ranks in all. The ruler constituted one rank, the chief minister one, the great officers one, the scholars of the highest grade one, those of the middle grade one, and those of the lowest grade one—six ranks in all.”²⁸ In terms of external relationships,²⁹ the Son of Heaven was removed from the duke to the same degree that the duke, marquis, earl, and viscount and baron were in turn removed from each other. As to internal relationships,³⁰ the prince was removed from the chief minister to the same degree as the chief minister, great officers, and scholars were in turn removed from each other. Rank did not extend to the Son of Heaven alone and then stop, with no further degrees of rank.

In ancient times during the regencies of Yi Yin and the Duke of Zhou,³¹ these men, in serving as prime ministers, acted for the emperor, and it was no different from the great officers’ acting for the chief ministers, or the scholars acting for the great officers. In later times princes were arrogant and ministers servile, so that for the first time the rank of emperor fell out of line with those of the chief ministers, great officers, and scholars. . . .

In ancient times the prince treated his ministers with such courtesy that when a minister bowed to the emperor, the emperor always bowed in return.³² After the Qin and Han this practice was abandoned and forgotten, but still when the prime minister presented himself to the emperor, the emperor rose from the throne, or, if he were riding, descended from his carriage.³³ When the prime ministership was abolished there was no longer anyone to whom respect was shown by the emperor. Thus it came to be thought that the Hundred Offices³⁴ were created just for the service of the prince. If a man could serve the prince personally, the prince respected him; if he could not, the prince treated him as of no account. The reason for having officials being thus corrupted, how could the reason for having princes be understood?

In ancient times the succession passed not from father to son but from one worthy man to another. It was thought that the emperor’s position could be held or relinquished by anyone, as was the prime minister’s. Later the emperor passed his position to his son, but the prime minister did not. Then, even though the sons of emperors were not all worthy to rule, they could still depend on the succession of worthy prime ministers to make up for their own deficiencies. Thus the idea of succession by a worthy man was not yet entirely lost to the emperors. But after the prime ministership was abolished, the moment an emperor was succeeded by an unworthy son, there was no worthy person at all to whom one could turn for help. Then how could even the idea of dynastic succession be maintained?

It may be argued that in recent times matters of state have been discussed in cabinet, which actually amounted to having prime ministers, even though nominally there were no prime ministers. But this is not so. The job of those who handled matters in the cabinet has been to draft comments of approval and disapproval [on memorials] just like court clerks. Their function was inconsequential enough to begin with, yet worse still, the substance of the endorsement came from those closest to the emperor³⁵ and was then merely written up in proper form. Could you say that they had real power?

I believe that those with the actual power of prime ministers today are the palace menials. Final authority always rests with someone, and the palace menials, seeing the executive functions of the prime minister fall to the ground, undischarged by anyone, have seized the opportunity to establish numerous regulations, extend the scope of their control, and take over from the prime minister the power of life and death, as well as the power to award and confiscate, until one by one all these powers have come into their own hands. . . .

The best that could be done by the worthy men in these cabinets was to talk about “following the ancestral example.” This was not because the ancestral example was always worthy to be followed but because no one took the position of these men seriously, so they were forced to use the prestige of the royal ancestors as a means of restraining their rulers and thwarting the palace menials. But the conduct of the royal ancestors was not always what it should have been, and the craftier of the palace menials could find a precedent for each of their own bad practices, saying they were “following the ancestral example.” So the argument about following ancestral law became absurd. If the prime ministership had not been abolished, the practices of wise kings and ancient sages could have been used to mold the character of the ruler. The ruler would have had something to fear and respect, and he would not have dared to flout it.

Schools are for the training of scholar-officials. But the sage kings of old did not think this their sole purpose. Only if the schools produced all the instrumentalities for governing all-under-Heaven would they fulfill their purpose in being created. . . . Indeed, schools were meant to imbue all men, from the highest at court to the humblest in country villages, with the broad and magnanimous spirit of the classics. What the Son of Heaven thought right was not necessarily right; what he thought wrong was not necessarily wrong. And thus even the Son of Heaven did not dare to decide right and wrong for himself but shared with the schools the determination of right and wrong. Therefore, although the training of scholar-officials was one of the functions of schools, they were not established for this alone.

Since the Three Dynasties, right and wrong in the world have been determined entirely by the court. If the Son of Heaven favored such and such, everyone hastened to think it right. If he frowned upon such and such, everyone condemned it as wrong. . . . Rarely, indeed, has anyone escaped the evil tendencies of the times; consequently, people are apt to think the schools of no consequence in meeting the urgent needs of the day. Moreover, the so-called schools have merely joined in the mad scramble for office through the examination system, and students have allowed themselves to become infatuated with ideas of wealth and noble rank. . . .

Consequently the place of the schools has been taken by the academies.³⁶ What the academies have thought wrong, the court considered right and gave its favor to. What the academies have considered right, the court thought must be wrong and therefore frowned upon. When the [alleged] “false learning” [of Zhu Xi] was proscribed [in the Song]³⁷ and the academies were suppressed [in the Ming],³⁸ the court was determined to maintain its supremacy by asserting its authority. Those who refused to serve the court were punished, on the charge that “they sought to lead scholar-officials throughout the land into defiance of the court.”³⁹ This all started with the separation of the court and the schools and ended with the court and schools in open conflict. . . .

When the school system was abandoned, people became ignorant and lost all education, but the prince led them still further astray with temptations of power and privilege. This, indeed, was the height of inhumanity, but still he made people call him by what is now an empty name, “The Prince our Father, the Prince our Father.” As if anyone really believed it!

The prefectural and district school superintendent (xueguan) should not be appointed [by the court]. Instead, each prefecture and district should, after open public discussion, ask a reputable scholar to take charge. . . .

In populous towns and villages far from the city, wherever there are large numbers of scholars, a classics teacher should also be appointed, and wherever there are ten or more young boys among the people, longtime licentiates⁴⁰ not holding office should act as elementary teachers. Thus, in the prefectures and districts there would be no students without worthy teachers.

The Libationer [Rector]⁴¹ of the Imperial College should be chosen from among the great scholars of the day. He should be equal in importance to the prime minister, or else be a retired prime minister himself. On the first day of each month the Son of Heaven should visit the Imperial College, attended by the prime minister, six ministers, and censors. The Libationer should face south and conduct the discussion, while the Son of Heaven too sits among the ranks of the students. If there is anything wrong with the administration of the country, the Libationer should speak out without reserve.

When they reach the age of fifteen, the sons of the emperor should study at the Imperial College with the sons of the high ministers.⁴² They should be informed of real conditions among the people and be given some experience of difficult labor and hardship. They must not be shut off in the palace, where everything they learn comes from eunuchs and palace women alone, so that they get false notions of their own greatness.

In the various prefectures and districts, on the first and fifteenth of each month, there should be a great assembly of the local elite, licentiates, and certified students in the locality, at which the school superintendent should lead the discussion. The prefectural and district magistrates should sit with the students, facing north and bowing twice. Then the teacher and his pupils should bring up issues and discuss them together. Those who excuse themselves on the pretext of official business and fail to attend should be punished. If minor malpractices appear in the administration of a prefectural or district magistrate, it should be the school’s duty to correct them. If there are serious malpractices, the members of the school should beat the drums and announce it to the people. . . .

In ancient times the selection of scholar-officials was liberal, but the employment of them was strict. Today the selection of scholar-officials is strict, but the employment of them is liberal. Under the old system of “district recommendation and village selection,”⁴³ a man of ability did not have to fear that he would go unrecognized. Later on, in the Tang and Song, several types of examination were instituted, and if a man did not succeed in one, he could turn around and take another. Thus the system of selection was liberal. . . .

But today this is not so. There is only one way to become an official: through the examination system. Even if there were scholars like the great men of old . . . they would have no other way than this to get chosen for office. Would not this system of selection be called too strict? However, should candidates one day succeed, the topmost are placed among the imperial attendants and the lowest given posts in the prefectures and districts. Even those who fail [the metropolitan examinations] and yet have been sent up from the provinces⁴⁴ are given official posts without having to take examinations again the rest of their lives. Would not this system of employment be called too liberal? Because the system of selection is too confined, many great men live to old age and die in obscurity. Because the system of employment is too liberal, frequently the right man cannot be found among the many holding official rank. . . .

Therefore, I would broaden the system for selecting scholar-officials and choose men [not only] through the regular examinations [but also] through special recommendations, through the Imperial College, through the appointment of high officials’ sons, through [a merit system for] junior officials in prefectures and districts, through special appointments, through specialized learning, and through the presentation of memorials. And the strictness in the employment of these men might be correspondingly elaborated upon.

Though not considered, like Huang Zongxi, one of the Three Great Scholars of the early Qing period, Lü is without question a figure to be reckoned with. An active partisan in the unsuccessful resistance to the Manchus, Lü subsequently refused all invitations to serve them and went down in history as a symbol of unremitting hostility to China’s foreign conquerors. He is known also, however, as the most articulate spokesman of the orthodox Neo-Confucian revival, which came to be identified ideologically with the very dynasty he struggled against.

Lü was born in 1629; his home, like Huang Zongxi’s, was in eastern Zhejiang province, an area rich in history and culture, and especially in historians and philosophers. His family were well-established members of the educated elite who had been scholar-officials for generations and local leaders known for their philanthropy and sense of community responsibility. From an early age, instead of looking upon his study of the Neo-Confucian curriculum as routine, he described himself as deeply impressed and inspired by the works of Zhu Xi. Several scholars have noted the religious intensity with which he took to Zhu Xi as his guide in life. Along with this went a deep sense of loyalty to the Ming, despite increasing signs of the dynasty’s weakness and eventual collapse. With other members of his family and the community, he took part, even at a young age, in the resistance movement carried on in his region against the Manchus, but when that proved futile, in 1647 he gave it up and returned home to a more normal pattern of life.

This pattern included passing the first level of civil service examinations, which he did in 1653, thus maintaining his family’s membership in the ranks of the official literati, with the status of shengyuan, i.e., a stipendiary or licentiate, officially registered as a candidate for the higher examinations and some form of public service. He remained in this privileged status for thirteen years, during which he quickly made a name for himself as a scholar and in his sideline occupation as an editor of examination essays. The latter sold well, given the reading public’s special orientation toward literature useful for official careers, and also given his own talents for philosophical analysis, lucid exposition, and literary style.

As a conscientious Neo-Confucian, however, Lü could not be insensitive to the ambiguities of his situation. His privileged status as a stipendiary was difficult to justify in one whose Ming loyalist, anti-Manchu sentiments, strictly held to, would seem to preclude any semblance of accepting favors from the new dynasty. Thus by 1666 he had decided to take the drastic step of renouncing his official status—no easy thing to do in a society providing few alternative careers for the educated outside of officialdom. That Lu could succeed at all in this decision testifies to his native scholarly talent and resourcefulness at commercial enterprise, and also to his continued willingness to compromise by writing model examination (eight-legged) essays, which he did more or less actively for some years thereafter.

Meanwhile Lü maintained close personal relations with some of the leading scholars of his day. Though strong-minded, irascible—and, some said, arrogant—he was respected by other prominent figures in the revival of Neo-Confucian orthodoxy, whose thinking he deeply influenced, and it was not for lack of opportunities to enjoy state patronage that he withdrew increasingly from most social involvements, and eventually, as a tactic in resisting pressure upon him to accept distinguished-scholar status at the Manchu court, he took the Buddhist tonsure. There is no indication that this represented a religious conversion or a total withdrawal from conventional society. Up until his death in 1683 Lü continued to work on scholarly projects, republishing Zhu Xi’s works, editing examination essays, and meeting with his students.

Lü’s later degradation at the hands of the Yongzheng emperor, during the years 1728–1733, was the outcome of the failed rebellion of one Zeng Jing (1679–1736), a scholar whose passionate antidynastic sentiments were said to have been inspired by the reading of Lu’s writings. In consequence of this, Lü’s remains were desecrated and an ideological campaign was mounted against him, including the publication under imperial sponsorship of Refutation of Lü Liuliang’s Discourses on the Four Books (Bo Lu Liuliang Sishu jiangyi) and the subsequent banning and burning of his works in the so-called Inquisition of Qianlong.

The following selections are all from Lü’s commentaries or discourses on the Four Books. Thus they are in the form of brief interlinear annotations, not separate essays. But they were read and often accepted as authoritative by many scholars preparing for the civil service examination, until banned after the Zeng Jing case.

What Confucians are conscious of is principle; what heterodox teachings are conscious of is mind. One can only become conscious of principle through the investigation of things and the extension of knowledge; then with the understanding of human nature and of Heaven comes the fullest employment of the mind. If, however, one sets aside the principles of things and tries to look directly into the mind, it makes the investigation of things and extension of knowledge seem superfluous and diversionary. If one thinks of oneself as directly perceiving the substance of the mind, the principles of things amount in the final analysis to no more than useless appendages.

Once there is Heaven [creating], human beings are necessarily born, and once there are human beings, there is sure to be the [moral] nature, and once the nature, there is sure to be this Way of what-ought-to-be. . . . So it is not only the moral imperative that is natural but the following of it. Thus both the imperative and the following of it partake of Heaven’s “unceasingness” [constancy]. If there is something subtle and wondrous about this, it is that the teaching [learning] of the sage seems to be done by man and yet it is naturally and necessarily so. Since it derives from Heaven’s imperative, if, in the unceasingness of the sage there is something natural and inescapable about it, this is the naturalness and inescapability of Heaven’s imperative itself.

The mind coordinates the nature and emotions. The movements of the mind, their coming and going, their loss or preservation, all have to do with the spirituality of the psycho-physical [consciousness], and the subtlety of its control consists in preserving the mind of humaneness and rightness. “Losing the mind” is the loss of control by humaneness and rightness, and “seeking the lost mind” means seeking what should control the mind. If this mind is preserved, then what gives this control is preserved, and principle and the psychophysical [consciousness] are unified. . . . If this mind is lost, then the psychophysical consciousness runs off by itself. Wherefore it becomes imperative to employ the method of inquiry and learning to recover and nourish it through the correcting power of principle, so as to restore unity [between the mind, principle, and things]. . . .

Heterodox teachings also seek the mind, but having rejected the search for the moral principles in things-and-affairs, what they pursue is no more than the spiritual activity of a [value-free] psycho-physical consciousness, and so they cannot employ the multitude of principles in the mind to deal with things-and-affairs.

All human hearts are the same in having desires and [their corresponding indwelling] principles. For instance, they are the same in their love of goods and sex. However, they should only get what is right for them to love. If one speaks only of their being the same in the love of goods and sex [and not having principles], then human desires can become a source of great disorder in the world. Therefore when Mencius spoke of what makes human hearts the same, he referred to principle, to what is right and proper. Filiality, brotherliness, and commiseration are common principles of what is right and proper; therefore the text [of the Great Learning] speaks of them as norms or standards. Rites, music, penal and administrative systems are also the common principles of what is right and proper; therefore they are called the Way. Extrapolating from these norms one projects the Way, which is the common basis for putting these principles into practice. Therefore, what is spoken of as the Way of the measuring square, refers to taking those common principles of measuring human hearts and making them the means of governance that brings peace to the world. Simply to pursue the satisfaction of the physical appetites and let everyone gratify his own desires is the naturalness and laissez-faire of the Daoists or the expedient adaptability of the Buddhists. It is not the sages’ way of the measuring square.

Some say that schools are not difficult to set up but the well-field system is far from easy to carry out, in witness whereof is the fact that today there are schools but no well-fields.⁴⁵ To this the Master [Zhu Xi] said, “They do not realize that the schools of today are not the same as the schools of antiquity. The latter were set up only after the well-fields had been instituted [to provide the material support prerequisite to education]. For the whole purpose and organization of schools was linked to the well-field system, which is not at all the case with the schools of today.” So if it is easy for one [to be established], it is easy for both, and if it is difficult for one, it is equally difficult for both. There is no difference between them in this.

During the Three Dynasties every measure the sage kings took to provide for the people’s livelihood and maintain the social order, including the enfeoffment, military, and penal systems, no matter how minute in detail or long-range their consequences, were only instituted for the sake of all-under-Heaven and their posterity. . . . Not a thing was done nor a law enacted simply for the ruler’s own enrichment or aggrandizement, nor was their aim in the slightest to secure for their descendants an estate to be held onto forever, for fear of others trying to seize it. Thus in the Mean (Zhongyong) was the sages’ humaneness acclaimed for the warmth of its earnest solicitude [for the people].

After Qin and Han [however] . . . , the underlying motive in government has been purely selfish and expedient, the fear being that otherwise one might suffer the loss of what belonged to one’s family. . . . This is why Master Zhu [Xi] said that for over two thousand years the Way had not been practiced for even a single day.

Lineal succession is founded on the parent-child relationship; the passing on of rulership is founded on the ruler-minister relation. The former derives from [the principle of] humaneness; the latter, from that of rightness. On this basis these two great principles coexisted and were never confused. Thus Heaven’s Position [rulership] was originally conferred on the basis of individual worth.

Heaven gives birth to the people and establishes rulers and ministers for them. Rulers and ministers are for sustaining the life of the people. The minister seeks out a ruler to head the government, and the ruler seeks out the minister to share in the governing. Together they represent Heaven’s presence in the world. Thus the ruler’s position is called “Heaven’s position; official emoluments are called Heaven’s emoluments.” Heaven’s order and Heaven’s justice are not something the ruler and minister can take and make their own. Though there is a definite difference in the honor done to ruler and minister, it is still only a difference of one degree in the relative distance between them.

The rightness (yi) of the ruler-minister relation is of the first importance in the world (yu zhong diyi shi). It is the greatest of the human moral relations. If one does not keep to this principle, then no matter what one’s accomplishments or meritorious deeds, they will count for nothing against the guilt so incurred.

Ruler and minister come together in agreement on what is right (yi). If they can agree on what is right, they can form the relation of ruler-minister; if not, they should part, as is the case in the relation between friends. It is not like father and son, or older and younger brother [i.e., a blood relation that cannot be changed]. If they do not agree, there is no need for personal resentment or recrimination. If their commitment is not the same, their Way cannot be carried out, and it is best to part.

Parting is in accordance with the rite of ruler and minister, not a departure from that relation. It was only in later times, with the abandonment of the enfeoffment system and adoption of centralized prefectures and counties, that the world came under the control of one ruler and consequently there was “advancement and retirement” [from office] but no parting. When the Qin abandoned the Way, they established the “rite” of honoring the ruler and abasing the minister, and created an unbridgeable gap between the one on high and the other below, giving the ruler complete control over the minister’s advancement and retirement, while leaving him nowhere to go. That was when the relation of rightness between ruler and minister underwent a complete change.

After the Three Dynasties, rulers and ministers forgot about Heaven. Rulership came to be thought of as for one’s own self-gratification. Ministers thought that life and death, reward and punishment, were all at the ruler’s disposal and it could not be otherwise. Thereupon the ruler became honored and the minister abased, with the two completely separated. Government, insofar as it now involved a sharing of power and prestige, could not possibly be shared. Thereupon usurpations and assassinations followed; a world of selfishness and expediency was produced. Cut off from Heaven, rulers did not understand that rites come from Heaven, ministers did not realize that fidelity [loyalty] is rooted in the moral nature, that the nature is Heaven, that Heaven is the moral imperative [and political mandate], that it is principle, and the nature is principle.

[In ancient times] the whole system of emoluments was based on the usufruct of the land, and likewise the whole system of official ranks was based on it. In Heaven’s creating of the people and providing for rulers and teachers, the basic principle was thus all-embracing. . . . Looked at from the top it might seem to some as if ranks and emoluments were projected downward to the common people; they do not realize that looked at in terms of Heaven’s bestowing of life on the people, the principle originates with the people and reaches up to the ruler.

Both the common man and the Son of Heaven are rooted in the same principle. Speaking of it in terms of rank from the top down, the Great Learning says “from the Son of Heaven down to the common man,” but in terms of principle, in reality, it goes from the common man up to the Son of Heaven. The Son of Heaven’s renewing of the people should proceed on the same principle, and conform to the common man’s regulation of his own family.

This is not only a responsibility that weighs on the ruler. Everyone has his own self [to govern] and therefore there is no one on whom the responsibility does not lie. Just as there are the myriad things and one Supreme Ultimate, so each thing has its own Supreme Norm to follow.

There are many gradations from the Son of Heaven down to the common man, and each in performing his own proper function is different, but the differentiation lies in one’s lot or function and not in the principle. Therefore it is said, “Principle is one and its particularizations diverse. . . .” No matter how low the commoner is, it is the same underlying principle and not a different case. The commoner may not have the official function of ordering the state and bringing peace to the world, but inherent in the fulfilling of his self-cultivation is the principle of ordering the state and bringing peace to the world.

[From de Bary, Learning for One’s Self, pp. 291–292, 312–313, 326–330, 335–341]

Wang Fuzhi (Wang Quanshan, 1619–1692) is now widely recognized as one of the most important thinkers of the Ming-Qing period, but he was virtually unknown during his own lifetime, having been born into a strictly conservative and rather isolated family of scholars in Hengyang, Hunan. Wang’s personal life and official career were shattered by the catastrophic events surrounding the collapse of the Ming dynasty. In 1642, after succeeding in the provincial (juren) examinations, he set off for Beijing and the jinshi sessions, but marauding peasant rebels forced him to turn back, and when Zhang Xianzhong’s peasant army took Hengyang the following year, Wang’s family became a target of the insurgents. After the fall of Beijing in 1644, Wang took an active part in anti-Manchu resistance but was defeated when he raised troops in Hunan, and though he subsequently held a minor post at the southern “imperial” court of the Yongli pretender, he soon became a victim of factional strife and was forced to resign in 1650. Still only thirty-one years old, from then until his death some forty years later, he withdrew into the hills of Hunan and a life of scholarship. Fiercely loyal to the Ming, he refused either to serve the Qing or to rally to such dubious opponents of the alien regime as Wu Sangui, when the latter proclaimed a “Zhou” dynasty in Hengyang, in 1678.

Wang never, however, relinquished his hopes of a Chinese recovery, even though he had to content himself with expressing his ideas through a prodigious amount of writing that covered the entire range of traditional Chinese scholarship. His passionate commitment to Chinese civilization and its destiny shines forth through all his studies and, along with his fiery patriotism and savage criticism of barbarians, was responsible for the vast majority of his work remaining unpublished until the latter half of the nineteenth century. (Some was banned, but most was concealed from Qing officialdom by his family.) Yet once such writings as The Yellow Book (Huang shu), A Strange Dream (E meng), On Reading [Sima Guang’s] Comprehensive Mirror (Du Tongjian lun), and On the History of the Song Dynasty (Song Lun) had been published, they attracted the attention of both reformers and revolutionaries, who saw in Wang an early exponent of Chinese nationalism. Zeng Guofan, Tan Sitong, Liang Qichao, Zhang Binglin, and Mao Zedong were among those who declared their admiration for him.

Three imperatives animate Wang’s writings: the crucial need to return to the sound philosophical basis provided by the “true doctrines” of the early Song Confucian Zhang Zai; an urgent necessity to learn the lessons that the study of Chinese history could reveal; and a primordial duty to preserve Chinese culture and civilization from alien encroachment and indigenous debasement.

Indeed, the philosophical basis of all Wang’s thought was his own rational development of the monistic cosmology first worked out by Zhang Zai, whom he acknowledged as his master. Zhang had been one of the Song thinkers drawn upon for the great Song Neo-Confucian synthesis completed by Zhu Xi in the twelfth century, but, according to Wang, Zhang’s contribution to the genuine Confucian tradition had been accorded too little importance in the Cheng-Zhu system. Moreover, Wang Yangming and his followers had subsequently perverted Confucianism, and it was their influence that had resulted in the moral anarchy and social chaos that led to the ruin of the Ming dynasty. For Wang Fuzhi the realms of philosophy (both cosmology and ethics), history, and politics were dimensions of the same universal phenomenon, evolving as integrally related parts of the one great process of change. It was doubtless his desire to understand this process of universal change and, in particular, the cataclysmic changes of his own times that led him to devote himself to an extensive study of the Classic of Changes and Zhang Zai, whose entire system of thought was, as Wang himself remarked, inspired by this classic.

Following Zhang Zai, Wang built his philosophy on the identification of material-force (qi) with the Supreme Ultimate, the term that had become part of the Neo-Confucian vocabulary and was generally synonymous with the Way, either as the origin of the universe, as universal laws, or as the Absolute. Zhang had preferred to use the terms Supreme Void (Taixu) to describe its aspect as original, unformed substance and Supreme Harmony (Taihe) to refer to the complex but coherent process of activity and tranquillity, agglomeration and dispersal, in the harmony of yin and yang that constitutes the Way. In this universe of continuous change, Wang emphasizes the significance of the trend of material conditions (shi), which are the product of the evolving material-force (qi) and principles (li), in which the importance of the time factor is crucial. His concept of shi (translated here as “trend” or “condition,” depending on context) dominates both his historical criticism and his assessment of political institutions. It explains the rational empiricism of his proposals for reform and his firm rejection of any notion of reviving the well-field system or the enfeoffment system as anachronistic (despite his Song master’s advocacy of them!).

In responding to the critical problems of Ming China, Wang’s proposals were generally moderate, tempered by an awareness of what was feasible in the prevailing conditions and his conviction that change should always be gradual if the proper equilibrium (zhen from the Classic of Changes) were to be achieved and maintained. Having identified the systems of land taxation and distribution as the root of social and political disorder, he outlined original ways of improving the country’s agricultural basis and restoring peasant prosperity. Perceiving the growth of commerce as a threat to the class structure of traditional Chinese society, he advocated repressive taxation on merchants. Arguing that imperial despotism had been a dominant factor in the decline of the Ming, he, like Huang Zongxi, proposed ways of restoring the balance of power shared between the emperor and his ministers—in particular, the restoration of the office of prime minister as the first step in a general decentralization throughout the administration that would put more power in the hands of scholar-officials. The latter were, according to Wang, the ultimate guarantors of the country’s political health, and the Donglin activists of the late Ming had incarnated this role in their struggle with the inner court. As did such contemporaries as Huang and Tang Zhen, Wang severely criticized selfish and decadent emperors without ever calling the institution of monarchy itself into question. At the core of his proposals lay the aim to revive ministerial power and prestige, which had been dramatically eroded during the Ming.

Wang’s proposals were never adopted or implemented, but he anticipated, in reply to a hypothetical critic, the objection that “at present, with the country overwhelmed and the dynasty cut off, to recount too much the errors of the past will simply arouse resentment. This is ‘bolting the stable door after the horse has gone.”’ Wang’s answer was this: “Confucius, in writing the Spring and Autumn Annals, made many subtle criticisms of the reigns of Duke Ding and Duke Ai [who ruled Confucius’s state of Lu during his lifetime]. At the time when one speaks, no one understands one. In setting forth what I have understood, I am also trying to advise future generations.” (Huang shu, postface)

In the Supreme Void all is being; but it has not yet taken form. The qi (material-force) is self-sufficient through agglomeration and dispersion, change and evolution; its original substance is neither diminished nor increased. The sun and moon in their risings and settings, the four seasons in their comings and goings, the various creatures in their life and death, together with the wind and the rain, dew and thunder, flourish when the time is ripe and decline when the time is ripe. In this they are one: they are all temporary forms. . . .

. . . When the qi agglomerates, its existence is visible, but when it is dispersed one may suspect that it is nonexistent. Once it has agglomerated and assumed forms and images, then as regards talents (cai), matter (zhi), nature (xing), and feelings (qing), all accord with their own categories. They accept what is similar and oppose what is different; thus all things flourish in profusion and form their several categories. Moreover, the formation of each of these categories has its own organization. So it is that dew, thunder, frost, and snow all occur at their proper times, and animals, plants, birds, and fish all keep to their own species. There can be no frost or snow during the long summer days, nor can there be dew or thunder in the depths of winter. Nor can there be between man and beast, plant and tree, any indiscriminate confusion of their respective principles.

Those who give a wrong explanation of the Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate say that in the Supreme Ultimate there was originally no yin or yang, that yang was first produced by its movement and yin from its quiescence . . . but movement and quiescence are the movement and quiescence of yin and yang. . . . It is not the case that there is first movement and afterward the yang, first quiescence and afterward the yin.

When the qi disperses, it returns to the Supreme Void and reverts to the original substance of its state of fusion. There is no destruction. When it agglomerates and brings life to various things, this arises from the eternal nature of its state of fusion. Nothing new is born or reared. . . . The agglomeration and dispersion of qi constitutes the life and death of things. When it emerges they come, and when it withdraws they go. All this is the natural effect of principles and conditions (shi). It cannot be stopped. One cannot, by according with it, become eternal. One cannot, by direction, accelerate the process of dispersion. One cannot, by intervention, delay it. This is why the gentleman is unconcerned about life and death. . . . To achieve the correct norm (zhen) in life and death in following out the Human Way is the outstanding doctrine of Master Zhang, who developed the heritage of earlier sages in order to refute the Buddhists and Daoists and rectify the mind of men. Because he spoke of agglomeration and dispersion and of dispersion followed by a further agglomeration, Zhu Xi criticized this as “samsara.” My own humble opinion is that it is, on the contrary, Master Zhu’s theory that is closer to what the Buddha said about nirodha. . . . The Classic of Changes also says, “Above forms it is called the Way. Below forms it is called the actual phenomenon (or concrete thing).” By the former is meant “that which is clear and penetrating and cannot take the form of images.” So actual phenomena are formed and destroyed, while that which cannot take the form of images is lodged within them as their function. As it is never formed, so it is never destroyed. The actual phenomenon wears out, but its Way never ends. . . . In autumn and winter the qi of life is stored in the earth, and though the branches and leaves of trees are withered their roots are firm and flourishing. So it is not the case that in autumn and winter they are destroyed once and for all with nothing remaining. If a fire is made of a cartload of firewood, it is consumed in one blaze and becomes flame, smoke, and ashes. But wood reverts to wood, water to water, and earth to earth: it is simply that they become so minute and subtle that man cannot see them.

The world consists of nothing but actual physical phenomena or concrete things. The Way is the Way (or Ways) of actual phenomena, but one cannot describe the actual phenomena as phenomena of the Way. “When the Way is nonexistent, so is the actual phenomenon” is something that anyone is capable of saying. But if the phenomenon exists, why worry about its Way not existing? The sage knows what the gentleman does not, and yet ordinary men and women can do what the sage cannot. It may be that people are not clear about the Way of some particular phenomenon, and so the thing is not perfected, but the fact that it is not perfected does not mean that it does not exist. “When the actual phenomenon is nonexistent, so is its Way” is something that few people are capable of saying, but it is really and truly so.

The ideal is to be master of the time factor. The next best thing is to anticipate it, and the next best thing after that is to accord with it. The worst thing to do is to go against it. To go against the times is fatal. When one is master of the times, the vagaries of time fluctuate in correspondence to oneself as one controls and adjusts the times. When one anticipates the times, the cardinal principle is, when one sees what is going to happen, to guide and control its realization. When one accords with the times, one complies with that which the times make inevitable in order to save oneself and so escape from disaster.

The ancient institutions were for governing the ancient world and cannot be taken as general rules applicable in the present, so the gentleman does not take them as precedents in his undertakings. One governs the world of today with what is appropriate to it today, but this will not necessarily be appropriate in the world of tomorrow, so the gentleman does not bequeath laws as precedents for posterity. This is why the institutional arrangements regarding the enfeoffment and well-field systems, the attendance of the enfeoffed lords at court, punitive expeditions, the creation of offices, and the allocation of official salaries are not discussed in the Classic of Documents nor by Confucius. How then can those whose virtue is less than that of Shun, Yu, or Confucius dare to state categorically that the information that they have acquired through their studies constitutes a canon valid for all time?! . . . In compiling this book I have been concerned with tracing the origins of success and failure, and [have] done my best to remain in harmony with the fundamentals of the sages’ government, while I have considered each case on its merits in discussing the measures taken and have taken the time factor into consideration in assessing what was appropriate.

The discussion about the enfeoffment system is a good example of a dispute in which the proponents of two extremes engage in profitless argument. The prefectural system has survived for two thousand years without anyone being able to change it, and men of all classes have been content with it throughout that period. This being the [irresistible] trend (shi zhi qu), how could it possibly be so if it were not in accord with principles?! It was Heaven that made it inevitable that men should have rulers. No one caused it to happen: it was a spontaneous process. In the beginning everyone supported those whose virtue and achievements were superior to those of their fellows and served them. Subsequently, he who received overwhelming support was made emperor. All men without exception wish to be honored, and for there to be those who are honored there must be those who serve. This is in the general interest of humankind. He who is content with his position practices its Way, and so the principles behind hereditary succession were created. Though one [a ruler] might be stupid and cruel, he was nonetheless more capable than the drifting masses in the country at large. So this situation continued to exist for several thousand years, and people were content with it. But when the strong and the weak gnawed away at one another, the old ties of the enfeoffment system were completely destroyed, and by Warring States times almost nothing of it survived. How then could it possibly keep the nine regions of the empire in submission or secure the obedience of the various feudal lords and princes? Consequently the states were divided up into commanderies (jun) and prefectures (xian), and men were selected to administer them. The prefectural system existed even in pre-Qin times. All Qin destroyed was [a China that consisted of] seven states. It was not responsible for the destruction of all the fiefs established during the Three Dynasties. So how could one have made the division into commanderies and prefectures, whereby those talented and capable of ruling the people were put in positions of authority where they could exploit their talents for governing the people if this had been contrary to the general interest of all-under-Heaven? Among the ancients the feudal lords handed down their states from generation to generation, and subsequently their officials followed their example and the tenure of office became hereditary. This was a gradual development made inevitable by the prevailing trend. However, as the sons of officials always became officials, and the sons of peasants always remained peasants, and there was no selection and utilization of those who were naturally talented, there were stupid men among the officials and accomplished men among the peasants. The accomplished could not submit to the stupid indefinitely, and so there ensued a struggle between them to gain the chance to rise in the world. This was a violent development made inevitable by the prevailing conditions. The enfeoffment system was destroyed, and the selection of officials through the examination system became the practice.

There are in the world two great lines of demarcation to be drawn: that between Chinese and barbarians and that between the gentleman and the mean man. It is not the case that there was originally no difference between them and that the former kings arbitrarily set up barriers between them. Barbarians and Chinese are born (live) in different lands. Since their lands are different, the climates are different too. Since their climates are different, so too are their habits, and consequently all they know and all they do is different. The noble and the inferior emerge spontaneously among them. It is simply that they are divided by physical frontiers and that their climates are different, and so there must be no confusion. If there is confusion, the destruction of (the order of) the human sector will ensue, and the people of China will suffer from the encroachments of the barbarians and be distressed. If, however, early measures are taken to ward off the barbarians, (the order of) the human sector will thereby be stabilized and human life protected. This is in accord with Heaven. As for the gentleman and the mean man, they are born of different stock. Since they are born of different stock, their physical substance is different. Since they differ in their physical substance, their habits too are different, and consequently all they know and all they do are different. The clever and the stupid emerge spontaneously among them. It is simply that they are born of different stock and have different values, and so there must be no confusion. If there is confusion, then the principles of man are contravened. The poor and weak among the people will suffer from the encroachments (of the mean men) and be distressed. If, however, one prevents the excesses of the mean men, one may thereby preserve the principles of man and enrich human life. This is in accord with Heaven. Alas, the confusion that mean men have created between themselves and gentlemen is no different from that which the barbarians have created between themselves and the Chinese! Some people may toy with the prospect, but the gravity of the harm done thereby is beyond all expectation.

Among mean men the clever and stupid divide themselves into different classes. The stupid are content to rest in their stupidity, and so bring hardship on themselves. The clever use their cleverness to wrong others. The stupid become peasants: they bring hardship on themselves but do not harm others.

The Han regarded laboring in the fields as the equivalent [among commoners] of filial virtue in selecting officials, and the result was that rites and education were gradually destroyed. This is why people say that since the Three Dynasties orderly government has never flourished. It is because confusion has been created between the peasants and gentlemen that the situation has deteriorated. This is even more true of the merchants. The merchants are the clever members of the class of mean men, and their destruction of man’s nature and ruin of men’s lives have already become extremely serious. Their (constitution) is such that they always frequent the barbarians, and their physical substance is such that they always get on well with the barbarians. Consequently, when the barbarians prosper, the merchants are esteemed. . . .

There are, fundamentally speaking, two great lines of demarcation to be drawn in the world, but ultimately they are one. What is this one line of demarcation? It is that between morality and profit. . . .

There are those who are born into villages of profit and grow up in the paths of profit. It is what their elders esteem, what their own flesh and blood predispose them to, and what their hearts long after. Their will and their constitution act on one another, and so too do their minds and spirits. The result is that they are so deeply sunk in profit they cannot be made to move into the stream of gentlemen and Chinese. All are men, but the barbarians are separated from the Chinese by frontiers, while the mean men are differentiated from the gentlemen by their class. One cannot but be strict in drawing the lines of demarcation.

This is why mountain creatures have cloven hoofs and those in the marshes have webbed feet; why the strengths of animals used for riding and animals used for ploughing lie in different directions; why water birds are proper to the south and cold-weather birds to the north. It is not a deliberate suppression of the state of confusion and dispersion that causes this great classification into different species: it is simply that conditions bring it about as the only way that (these creatures) can preserve themselves and ward off disaster. . . .

Therefore the sage, finding that this was true for all creatures and that each species defined its own limits, in controlling the empire and acting as its ruler separated the clever and the stupid, clarified cases where there was doubt, overcame the vicious and evil, and established lofty defensive barriers (between the groups) in order to ward off disaster and enable them to preserve themselves. . . .

Man is like other creatures insofar as he is constituted of yin and yang and eats and breathes, but he cannot be put in the same category as other creatures. The Chinese are like the barbarians insofar as their general physical characteristics are similar and they are both subject to assemblies and divisions, but the Chinese cannot be put in the same category as the barbarians. Why is this? It is because if man does not draw lines of demarcation in order to set himself apart from other creatures, the order of Heaven is violated; if the Chinese do not draw lines of demarcation in order to set themselves apart from the barbarians, terrestrial order is violated. Heaven and earth regulate mankind through such demarcations, and if men are incapable of drawing the lines of demarcation between different groups, human order is violated. This is the way the three orders control the three sectors of Heaven, earth, and humankind. . . .

Now even the ants have rulers who preside over the territory of their nests, and when red ants or flying white ants penetrate their gates, the ruler organizes all his own kind into troops to bite and kill the intruders, drive them far away from the anthill, and prevent foreign interference. Thus he who rules the swarm must have the means to protect it. If, however, a ruler fails to make long-term plans, neglects the integrity of his territory, esteems his own person more than the empire, antagonizes colleagues, creates divisions where none should exist, is driven by suspicion to exercise a repressive control, and weakens the central region, then, while he clings desperately to his privileged status and enjoys the advantages of his position without fulfilling its obligations, disaster strikes and he is incapable of overcoming it. Confronted with an external menace, he is unable to stand firm against it. He can neither keep the succession for his own descendants nor protect his own kind. Such an extinction of the Way of the true king was what the Spring and Autumn Annals mourned. . . .

And so, with a mind full of grief and anger, and a heart full of sorrow, I rectify what went wrong in order to restore the original divisions established by the Yellow Emperor. I look forward eagerly to the advent of an enlightened ruler, who will restore sovereignty to the country, accomplish its mission, and stabilize its frontiers, and thereby guard the central territory and drive off the barbarians forever. Once this were accomplished, then though my body may perish my soul would rejoice.

Gu Yanwu (1613–1682), born in the last years of the Ming dynasty, had already achieved considerable reputation as a scholar when Beijing fell to the Manchus in 1644. The following year he took part in an attempt to defend his native city in Jiangnan (central China) against the invading Qing armies. With the fall of the city his foster mother, who had raised him from infancy, starved herself to death rather than live under the rule of the Manchus, on her deathbed entreating Yanwu never to serve the new dynasty in any official capacity. Gu remained true to her wishes, spending the rest of his life traveling about North China; he worked for brief periods at jobs of an unofficial but often practical nature while carrying on his researches.

During the chaotic days at the end of the Ming, Gu had already become interested in such practical subjects as economics, government, and military defense. The fall of the native dynasty before the Manchu invaders spurred him to pursue these studies with renewed vigor in an effort to find out why the old dynasty had faltered and how its mistakes could be avoided in the future. He bitterly attacked the intuitionism of the Wang Yangming school of Neo-Confucianism, which, he believed, by its subjectivity and scorn for book learning had seriously debilitated the intelligentsia of the late Ming. To combat this effete and empty speculation he insisted that scholars must undertake wide and varied research on practical subjects and return to the simple ethical precepts of early Confucianism. He likewise deplored the inordinate attention to literary elegance and belles lettres that had so often characterized scholars of earlier times, believing that such interests represented only a selfish striving for reputation. When a friend wrote a poem praising him, Gu admonished him with the advice that the writing of such eulogies was no practice for a serious gentleman. “Men must love themselves and each other in higher principles,” he counseled, begging his friend to write no more such poems.⁴⁶

His own works exemplify this new spirit of practical learning. Carrying on the systematic study of phonetics that had developed sporadically in the late Song and Ming, he perfected the inductive method of research, known as Evidential Inquiry (kaozheng), which was to be applied with such effect by textual critics of the later years of the Qing. Besides important works on phonetics, he produced voluminous studies on historical geography and epigraphy. But his best-known and most significant work is undoubtedly his Rizhi lu or Record of Daily Knowledge, a collection of short essays on problems in the classics, government, economics, the examination system, literature, history, and philology. Carefully composed and revised during the years of his travels and based on personal observation, wide reading, and a painstaking collection of evidence, these essays represent not simply a reworking of old material and restating of traditional views but a new and constructive contribution to the subjects dealt with. They are, as he himself said, not old coin but “copper dug from the hills.”

Like many other scholars of the time, Gu believed that one of the fatal weaknesses of the Ming had been an overconcentration of power and authority in the hands of the central government. He therefore recommended a greater decentralization of authority and the strengthening of local self-government in the provinces, as well as clan organization in the local community.

The originality of his researches, and the new critical methodology and practical learning that they embodied, had a marked and beneficent influence upon the men of his age. Under his leadership the way was opened for the great movement of critical research and evaluation that characterized the best of Qing scholarship.

It is a matter of great regret to me that for the past hundred-odd years, scholars have devoted so much discussion to the mind and human nature, all of it vague and quite incomprehensible. We know from the Analects that “fate and humanity (ren) were things that Confucius seldom spoke of” (9: 1) and that Zigong “had never heard him speak on man’s nature and the Way of Heaven” (5: 12). Though he mentioned the principle of human nature and fate in the appendices to the Classic of Changes, he never discussed them with others. When asked about the qualities of a gentleman, Confucius said, “In his conduct he must have a sense of shame” (13: 20), while with regard to learning he spoke of a “love of antiquity” and “diligent seeking,” discussing and praising Yao and Shun and transmitting their tales to his disciples. But he never said so much as a word about the so-called theory of “the precariousness [of the human mind] and the subtlety [of the mind of the Way] or of the [need for] discrimination and oneness” but only said, “sincerely hold fast to the Mean—if within the four seas there be distress and poverty, your Heaven-conferred revenues will come to a perpetual end.”⁴⁷ Ah, this is the reason for the learning of the sage. How simple, how easy to follow! . . .

But gentlemen of today are not like this. They gather a hundred or so followers and disciples about them in their studies, and though as individuals they may be as different as grass and trees, they discourse with all of them on mind and nature. They set aside broad knowledge and concentrate upon the search for a single, all-inclusive method; they say not a word about the distress and poverty of the world within the four seas, but spend all their days lecturing on theories of “the precarious and subtle,” “discrimination and oneness.” I can only conclude that their doctrine is more lofty than that of Confucius and their disciples wiser than Zigong, and that while they pay honor to the school of Eastern Lu [Confucius] they derive their teachings on the mind directly from the two sage emperors Yao and Shun. . . .

What then do I consider to be the way of the sage? I would say “extensively studying all learning”⁴⁸ and “in your conduct having a sense of shame.”⁴⁹ Everything from your own person up to the whole nation should be a matter of study. In everything from your personal position as a son, a subject, a brother, and a friend to all your comings and goings, your giving and taking, you should have things of which you would be ashamed. This sense of shame before others is a vital matter. It does not mean being ashamed of your clothing or the food you eat, but ashamed that there should be a single humble man or woman who does not enjoy the blessings that are his due. This is why Mencius said that “all things are complete in me” if I “examine myself and find sincerity.”⁵⁰ Alas, if a scholar does not first define this sense of shame, he will have no basis as a person, and if he does not love antiquity and acquire broad knowledge, his learning will be vain and hollow. These baseless men with their hollow learning day after day pursue sagehood, and yet I perceive that with each day they only depart further from it.

[From “A Letter to a Friend Discussing the Pursuit of Learning,” Tinglin shiwen ji 3: 1a—2b—BW]

Ever since I was young I have enjoyed wandering about looking for old inscriptions on metal or stone, although I could not understand them very well. Then when I read Ouyang Xiu’s Record of Collected Antiquities (Jigu lu) I realized that many of the events recorded in these inscriptions are verified by works of history so that, far from being merely bits of high-flown rhetoric, they are of actual use in supplementing and correcting the histories. For the past twenty years I have traveled widely about the country, and whenever I visited some famous mountain or great commercial center, the site of an ancestral shrine or Buddhist temple, I never failed to clamber up to the steepest peak, to search the darkest valley, feeling out the toppled stone markers, tramping about the underbrush, cutting down the old tangled hedges, and sifting through the rotted earth. Anything that was legible I made a copy of by hand, and when I came across an inscription that had not been seen by my predecessors I was so overjoyed I could not sleep. I can never forget that with each day that passes more of these remaining inscriptions of the men of ancient times disappear. Most men of later times will probably not share my interest in these things, yet even if they should, in the course of several centuries how many of these inscriptions will have vanished away! . . . Thus it is still my hope that other men who share my love will carry on my work and make further recordings of their own.

He who is called the Son of Heaven holds supreme authority in the world. What is the nature of this supreme authority? It is authority over all the world, which is vested in the men of the world but which derives ultimately from the Son of Heaven. From the highest ministers and officials down to the regional magistrates and petty officers, each holds a share of this authority of the Son of Heaven and directs the affairs of his charge, and the authority of the Son of Heaven is thereby magnified in dignity. In later ages there appeared inept rulers who gathered all authority into their own hands. But the countless exigencies of government are so broad that it is quite impossible for one man to handle them all, so that authority then shifted to the laws. With this a great many laws were promulgated to prevent crimes and violations, so that even the greatest criminals could not get around them, nor the cleverest officials accomplish anything by evading them. People thereupon expended all their efforts in merely following the laws and trying to stay out of difficulty. Thus the authority of the Son of Heaven came to reside not in the officials appointed by the government but in their clerks and assistants [who were familiar with the laws]. Now what the world needs most urgently are local officials who will personally look after the people, and yet today the men who possess least authority are precisely these local officials. If local officials are not made known to the higher authorities, how can we hope to achieve peace and prosperity and prolong the life of the nation?

If one understands why the enfeoffment system (fengjian) was transformed into the system of centralized bureaucratic local administration (junxian), one can understand why the evils of the bureaucratic system must be transformed in turn. But can the bureaucratic system be transformed back into the enfeoffment system? I say not. If, however, a sage were to arise who could infuse the spirit of the enfeoffment system into the body of the bureaucratic system, all-under-Heaven would be well governed. . . . [6a]

By elevating the rank of senior local officials, giving them authority over the means of production and the regulation of the people, abolishing the posts that oversee them, making their positions hereditary, and allowing them to select subordinates by their own methods, what I have called “infusing the spirit of the enfeoffment system into the bureaucratic system” might be accomplished and order fashioned out of the evils of the past two thousand years. . . . [7a]

My proposal is to transform the county magistrate into an official of the fifth rank and change his title to “district magistrate.” Those who fill this position should be natives of the area within a thousand li of the county in which they serve and be familiar with local customs. At first they are to be called “probationary magistrates.” If after three years they show themselves to be equal to the post, their appointments are to be regularized [and if they succeed in three more three-year terms] they are to be appointed for life. Those magistrates who retire because of age or illness are to be succeeded by their sons or younger brothers. If they have no descendants, they should select their own successors. . . . Thereafter the same procedure shall be followed for the successors.. .. [7a]

Now, caring for the people is like the work of a family in raising domestic animals. One family member is assigned the task of tending the horses and oxen, and another grows the fodder. If, however, the master’s hired foreman is sent to oversee them, he will not even be able to calculate the amount of fodder without consulting the master, and the horses and oxen will waste away. With my program, it would not be this way. I would select as groom one who is diligent and skillful, give him full charge of the horses and oxen, and grant him land, the produce of which would always exceed the fodder needs of the animals. If the animals grow fat and reproduce, I would reward the groom; if not, I would flog him. [8a]

The reason the empire’s troubles have become so numerous is that the master, not trusting his grooms, has sent servants to oversee them. Not trusting even these, the master has become confused as to what his own eyes and ears tell him. But if one truly loves his horses and oxen, he will not calculate the cost of the fodder. If a horse is tended by a single groom, it will grow fat. If the people are governed by a single official, they will be content. . . . [8a]

Some will object: “If there are no supervisory officials, won’t the magistrates serve only their own interests?” Or: “Isn’t it improper that their power be passed down to their lineal descendants?” Or: “Won’t men who come from within a thousand li of the county in which they serve tend to favor their own relatives and friends?” I say, however, that the reason so many magistrates today abuse their office for their own private gain is precisely because they come from so far away. If they were required to be residents of the same place, then even if they wanted to abuse their office for private gain, they would be unable to do so. . . . [8b]

It is every man’s normal disposition to cherish his own family and to favor his own children. His feelings toward the ruler and toward all other men are inevitably not as strong as his feelings toward his own kin. It has been this way as far back as the Three Dynasties. The ancient sages availed themselves of this spirit and made use of it. Out of the self-interest of everyone throughout the empire they formed a public spirit of one accord in the ruler, and thus the empire was in good order. [9a]

Accordingly, if we let the county magistrate take a personal interest in his hundred li of territory, then all the people in the county will become in effect his children and kin, all the lands of the county in effect his lands, all its walls his defenses, and all its granaries his storehouses. His own children and kin he will of course cherish rather than harm; his own fields he will manage well rather than abandon; his own defenses and storehouses he will mend rather than neglect. Thus what is viewed by the magistrate as “looking out for my own” will be viewed by the ruler as “acting responsibly,” will it not? The proper governance of the empire lies in this and nothing else. [9a]

With the firm establishment of the Qing (Manchu) dynasty in the latter half of the seventeenth century, there was a marked change in the climate of Confucian thought. The reaction against the subjectivism and idealism of the Wang Yangming school continued. At its door was laid the blame for all the weaknesses of the Ming regime, while, on the other hand, the philosophy of Zhu Xi underwent a strong revival in scholarly circles with Manchu patronage.

The most significant change, however, developed not along lines of the old philosophical rivalries but rather from those who pursued two important tendencies manifested by the thinkers just discussed, that is, the striving for breadth of learning and the insistence upon practicality of thought. Indeed, the trend toward “broad learning” and the critical study of the classics and history, as embodied in classical scholarship known as “investigative” or “evidential” learning, was itself thought of as “substantial or practical learning” (shixue). And in the field of classical study no movement had such influence or achieved such remarkable results as the school of Han Learning, whose name derives from the fact that this group, dissatisfied like Gu Yanwu with the metaphysical speculations of both the Song and the Ming, turned back to the studies of Han dynasty scholars and commentators as guides to the classics. In other words, by the seventeenth century Confucian thought had come around full circle; whereas the most creative minds of the Song had been ready to forgo the meticulous scholarship of the Han and Tang commentators in the interests of a more vital and expansive approach to the classical tradition, Qing scholars were now ready to return to historical and exegetical studies as a corrective to the freewheeling and often conflicting interpretations of the Neo-Confucian schools.

In this process scholars in the Han Learning movement made contributions of lasting value to our knowledge of the Confucian classics. A discovery that had important repercussions on Neo-Confucian cosmology, for instance, was that of Hu Wei (1633–1714). Following a line of investigation opened up by Huang Zongxi and his son, he demonstrated that the diagrams attached to the Classic of Changes, upon which the Neo-Confucians had based their theories, were late accretions of Daoist provenance rather than integral parts of the original work. Of equal significance to Confucianism as a state cult was the demonstration by Yan Roju (1636–1704) that portions of the so-called ancient text of the “Documents of the Shang Dynasty” in the Classic of Documents, which had been used for centuries in the official examinations, were later forgeries. Progress was also made by these and other scholars in reexamining the date and authorship of such texts as the Great Learning, which had been one of the Neo-Confucian Four Books, as well as in the study of historical geography, philology, phonetics, epigraphy, and other branches of knowledge having a bearing on the classics.

Considering the number of scholars who contributed to these researches (though not as a formal group), there can be no doubt that the Han Learning represented a truly broad movement in Qing thought toward a kind of critical scholarship that anticipated modern Western methods and produced a body of systematic, empirically verified knowledge. Nevertheless, it was also marked by a kind of fundamentalist urge to recover an original Confucian teaching purified of any later additions, which was bound to be less productive of new philosophical speculations.

Of these limitations in the Han school’s work, other thinkers, less representative of the mainstream, were partly aware. There was, for instance, the so-called Eastern Zhejiang historical school stemming from Huang Zongxi, which stressed the value of studying recent history as well as ancient. Its leading representatives, such as Wan Sitong (1638–1702), Quan Zuwang (1705–1755), and Zhang Xuecheng (1738–1801), kept alive the Confucian view of historical studies as having a practical bearing on the conduct of government, but as they had little status or influence in the ruling regime, their efforts were devoted largely to upholding the value of private, unofficial historical writing as compared to state-sponsored projects. In this way they sought to preserve records of the Ming dynasty that might supplement or correct the Manchu version of recent events, and they drew attention to the value of local histories or gazetteers and many other types of records that might contribute to a fuller, deeper understanding of history than official accounts provided.

Another movement that stressed practicality of thought is identified with Yan Yuan (1635–1704) and Li Gong (1659–1733), who were critical of the Neo-Confucian metaphysics of the Cheng-Zhu school but equally so of their own contemporaries pursuing the Han Learning. Toward the latter their attitude was reminiscent of Wang Yangming’s condemnation of book learning and classical scholarship as a distraction from the real business of life. Toward the former they had specific objections on philosophical grounds, in that they considered the Cheng-Zhu system to have been deeply influenced by Buddhist and Daoist quietism. The distinction that it had made between the physical nature of man and his Heaven-bestowed moral nature, Yan Yuan argued, had fostered the belief that one’s physical desires had to be repressed so that one’s ideal nature might be recovered or restored through the meditative discipline of quiet-sitting. Yan contended that this erroneous view derived from the Cheng-Zhu school’s dualism between principle (li) and material-force (qi), according to which the moral nature was constant despite differences in its physical embodiment. Like Huang Zongxi and Wang Fuzhi, Yan Yuan insisted that there were no principles apart from their physical embodiment and that moral perfection could not be achieved except through the full development of the actual nature in the conduct of everyday life. True to the fundamentalist urge, however, “practicality” for him meant training in the classical arts like rites, music, archery, charioteering, writing, and arithmetic.

Dai Zhen (1724–1777), possibly the most representative thinker and scholar of the Qing dynasty, pursued Yan’s line of thought further. He was especially concerned with the problem of how the truth or principles of things may be ascertained. The Neo-Confucians, by asserting that the principles of things were also contained in the mind and attainable by self-reflection, had, according to this view, led people away from the study of things into introspection and mysticism. What they called “principle” might be purely subjective, whereas in fact principle could only be found in things and studied objectively. This required careful observation and analysis, followed by submission of the results to some kind of public test in order to determine whether or not the results were confirmed by the observations of others. In practice, however, the “things” studied by Dai Zhen were for the most part the “affairs” of men with which the Confucian classics were concerned. In this respect Dai represented also the best traditions of the school of Han Learning, for he distinguished himself in the same type of classical scholarship: philology, phonology, historical geography, and mathematical history.

In the end, the very attempts of Qing Confucians to disinherit themselves from Song and Ming metaphysics demonstrated how much, after all, they were children in spirit of the Neo-Confucians. Theirs was not a movement to break the bounds of Confucian tradition and establish themselves on new intellectual ground. Their fundamental impulse was instead to return, to recover, to restore the ancient Way in its original purity. Whereas the early Neo-Confucians of the Song had thought of themselves as reviving and reconstituting the old order in its fullness, after centuries of disintegration and perversion under the Han and Tang dynasties, the critical spirit of the Han Learning became an instrument for redefining, with greater precision perhaps, the authentic tradition deriving from the Master of old. This was a slimming, paring-down process, to rediscover the Way in its irreducible, original form, stripped of all the questionable elements that the expansive Cheng-Zhu school had tried to incorporate in its new synthesis. Of even the rarest, most critical, most independent of scholars, such as Cui Shu (1740–1816), was this true. Though Cui dug deeper and deeper into the past and rejected even Han scholarship in his search for the authentic roots of Confucianism, his achievements in historical study and textual criticism only served as a testimonial of his undiminished faith in Confucius’s original teaching as the source of what was worth learning.

Probably in every age certain intellectuals feel frustrated or unappreciated because their best talents, most compelling interests, or deepest concerns are not in accord with the high-cultural paradigms of their day. Dai Zhen (1724–1777) and Zhang Xuecheng (1738–1801) were such figures. They often are paired in present-day discussions of Chinese scholarship because, in different ways, they exhibit a capacity for theoretical exploration and insightful generalization that has become more valued in the modern period than it was by their contemporaries of the mid-eighteenth century in China—the so-called High Qing period during which “evidential” (kaozheng) research on the concrete meanings of words and phrases in ancient texts reigned supreme.

Dai Zhen, like Zhang Xuecheng, came from an undistinguished family background and, being largely self-taught, lacked facility in writing the sorts of essays necessary to qualify for bureaucratic office through the civil service examinations. Unlike Zhang, however, he eventually attained great renown, both at court and in learned society at large, as consummate in applying knowledge of such fields as phonology, etymology, geography, mathematics, and astronomy in the comparative elucidation of classical texts. Though a paragon in this respect, Dai parted ways with contemporaneous arbiters of scholarly value in his profound realization that, having determined the authentic contents of, and lexical meanings in, those ancient canons, one still needed to theorize—albeit from a firm basis in precise, factual knowledge—in order to grasp the primordially unwritten Way of the Sages. That is, he came to feel ever more strongly that the study of archaic language in pursuit of a lost, lived reality had to proceed in tandem with deliberate moral-philosophical interpretation.

It was Dai’s commitment to the latter that elicited dismay and disapproval among his peers and that inhibited the circulation of his major, philologically well-grounded but unmistakably philosophical treatises, the Inquiry Into Goodness (Yuan shan) completed in 1766, and the Evidential Study of the Meaning of Terms in the Mencius (Mengzi ziyi shuzheng), completed early in 1777. It also was Dai’s commitment to the latter that further disquieted even those who still held some interest in speculative philosophy, because it entailed not just the fashionable dismissal, so far as solid scholarship was concerned, of metaphysically oriented “Song Learning.” It led Dai into serious, penetrating criticisms of key concepts in Neo-Confucianism, especially those introduced by the core Song Learning figures, Cheng Yi (1033–1107) and Zhu Xi (1130–1200), which the Qing government (like the Yuan and Ming governments before it) maintained as its official orthodoxy but which Dai felt had widely misrepresented the outlook of the ancient sages for hundreds of years. In this, Dai resurrected, brought into sharper focus, and further developed critiques that otherwise seemed to have been left behind in the works of certain seventeenth-century thinkers.

In the first of the selections excerpted below, we find an exposition of the methods and principles of Evidential Inquiry that earned Dai such great esteem among classicists in his own time. The second encapsulates the main ideas in the endeavor that mattered most to him, his text-critical moral philosophy. Through Dai’s highly allusive prose we can discern several points that were integral to his re-vision:

First, he objects that, under Buddho-Daoist influence, Confucians since the Song period have regarded Heaven (tian) as a vacuous, void, insubstantial state unto itself; thus, in positing principle (li) as that which accounts for the regularity in Heaven’s Way, they have rendered both the Way and principle abstract, reified, and remote from the ordinary, corporeal lives of human beings. Especially insidious is that, as Chan Buddhism has been clothed in Confucian terms, the Way has been suspended in a state “beyond good and evil,” that is, beyond valuation itself. As a consequence, Neo-Confucian urgings that the Way and principle be accessed by cultivating the mind amount to urgings that we make our minds as vacuous as their conception of Heaven.

Again succumbing to Buddho-Daoist influence, Dai Zhen charges, Neo-Confucians from the Song onward have regarded ordinary human desires, emotions, and strivings as obstructions to the union of Mind and Void and thus have disparaged them, creating a dichotomous separation between lofty li and the material- or vital force (qi) that constitutes, in their view, a spiritually impeding physical reality. Moreover, principle having been so idealized, so removed from what people can verify with their sense faculties, it had become identifiable only subjectively and thus amenable to manipulation in the self-service of any who might facilely claim the privileged insights of “learning.”

Dai did not object to distinguishing intangible Heaven from the tangible world, but he thought it was fatal to true Confucianism if the two were seen as separate orders of being, rather than as two dimensions of a continuous process of transformation within a single reality, composed wholly of valid qi. For Dai, the unfailing process whereby formed, determinate things, such as human beings, are generated from the unformed dimension of reality is the ultimate good, and the regular patterns within that process are principle, fully present and discernible in all phenomena, from affairs to concrete things. Moreover, principle most assuredly is present in even the most commonplace desires, feelings, and strivings that serve—in appropriate measure—to fulfill life, which is the greatest goodness in the transformative circulation between Heaven and the phenomenal realm. Principle being objectively perceptible pattern, not subjectively assertable idea, Dai holds, it should be determined through careful, convergent study and observation by many conscientious inquirers, not through quiet contemplation or autocratic declaration by an unlearned few.

The degree to which such monistic, “materialist,” anti-authoritarian views, positive valuation of the lives of ordinary people, and quasi-scientific conceptions of inquiry were regarded as radically heterodox in eighteenth-century China has perhaps been exaggerated by Dai’s admirers in modern times. One can say, however, that Dai’s persistence in a mode of scholarship that he knew would not please contemporaries is testimony to the enduring vitality of Confucian moral philosophy under adverse cultural conditions.

When I was young my family was poor and could not provide me with a private tutor. I heard that among the sages there had been Confucius, who set in order the Six Classics for men of later ages. Having sought out one of those classics, I opened it to read, only to find myself completely at a loss. I pondered that [experience] for a long time before making this mental note: “What the classics ultimately reach to is the Way. Their phrases are that by which the Way is made clear, and those phrases are composed of written characters. To comprehend the phrases from the [individual] characters, and then to comprehend the Way from the [discrete] phrases, must be a gradual process.” In seeking the origins of what we now call “characters,” I examined archaic seal-script writing and to that end obtained a copy of [the etymological dictionary] Explanations of Writing and Characters, by Xu Shen [ca. 100 C.E.]. For three years I studied its entries and gradually gained some insight into the beginnings and fundamentals of the ancient sages’ compositions. Yet I doubted whether Mr. Xu’s glosses were exhaustive, so I borrowed from a friend a set of the [ca. twelfth century] Compendium of Commentaries to the Thirteen Classics and read it also. Then I realized that the meaning of a character must be threaded through all the classics and grounded in the six graphic modes before it can definitely be established.

As for why, it seems, the classics are hard to understand, there are a number of matters involved. In reading aloud just a few lines into the “Canon of Yao” in the Classic of Documents, one comes to the phrase, “then ordered Xi and He.” If one does not understand how the movements of the constellations and planets were thought to be regulated [by those two ancient astronomers], one will have to close the book without finishing. If one tries to intone even the first sections of the Classic of Odes, then from the first subsection onward, if one does not know the ancient rhymes and simply tries to force them, the result will be discordant, and the proper reading will be lost. Reciting from the [Classic of] Etiquette and Ceremonies, right at the beginning with the capping ceremony, if one does not know about ancient regulations concerning palace rooms and ritual garments mentioned therein, one will be disoriented and unable to distinguish their functions. If one does not know the evolution of place-names from ancient to present times, then the jurisdictions recorded in the “Tributes of Yu” in the Documents will lose their geographical referents. If one does not know the ancients’ methods of geometric measurement, one cannot infer from the text of the “Technology” section of the Rites of Zhou the actual use of the implements described. And if one does not know the general characteristics and common names of birds and beasts, insects and fish, grasses and trees, then the metaphors and similes that feature them in the Odes will seem strange. Moreover, etymology and philology are inseparable from phonology, in which tones and sounds should be as clearly distinguishable as the vertical and horizontal of warp and weft. . . .

I have heard that in the pursuit of classical studies, generally three [things are] difficult [to attain]: broad erudition, sound judgment, and critical discernment. I certainly cannot lay claim to any of these, but I hold that the criteria of good scholarship should be rooted in them. Some of our forebears who were broadly learned and had good memories . . . wrote housefuls of books. They possessed erudition but lacked discernment. Then there have been others who slighted those qualities, saying that the Great Way can be reached by shortcuts. . . . They abandoned the practice of learned discussion and took advantage of the words “honor the moral nature” to embellish their reputations. But having discontinued the “pursuit of studies” [as really intended by these phrases in the Mean], they failed to reach the proper “Mean,” as is well known.

Lack of attainment in the various classics and in the ancient Six Arts is cause for shame in a Confucian scholar, and I use awareness of this to guard against sloth. Fearful of forgetting what I have learned from experience in study, I have written it out in this letter. When my insight matures, I will present my Odes commentary to you without further delay.

Before the Song, Confucius and Mencius were Confucius and Mencius, and Daoists and Buddhists were Daoists and Buddhists. Those who discoursed on Daoism and Buddhism made their words lofty and abstruse and did not attach themselves to Confucius or Mencius. Since the Song, however, the books that record the thought of Confucius and Mencius have been completely misunderstood because Confucians have randomly appropriated the theories of Daoists and Buddhists to explain them. Thus, there are those who, by reading Confucian books, slip into Daoism and Buddhism. And there are those who, lovingly immersed in Daoism and Buddhism, encounter Confucian books and delight in the support their own doctrines receive from them. So they rely on Confucian books in discussing Daoism and Buddhism. Encountering similarities with their own views, they take them as further proofs of the tradition of Mind; encountering differences, they lend their own interpretations to the Six Classics, Confucius, and Mencius, saying, “What I have attained [is] the subtle teachings and profound meanings of the sages.” Crisscrossed and interlocking, such [thought]-structures have undergone repeated changes and augmentations, willy-nilly becoming seamlessly joined. . . .

Since Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi early in their lives entered into the other doctrines [i.e., of Daoism and Buddhism] and later simply turned those around to arrive at their own [Confucianism], so Cheng-Zhu ideas can be turned around again to get back to the others. “Heaven” and “Mind” having been united as one thing, the Daoists and Buddhists all invoke our doctrines to lend support to their own. Neo-Confucians having interpreted the classics in that manner, Daoists and Buddhists follow the explanation of Cheng and Zhu, citing and borrowing from the Six Classics, Confucius, and Mencius in their own behalf.

The situation is like that of a son or grandson who has never actually seen his father or grandfather and who mistakenly draws the likeness of another and serves it ritually as though it were his ancestor’s true likeness. The object of his service is of course his own ancestor, and if the likeness is not true, so that in attaining the reality of filial respect he misses the pictorial likeness, what is the harm? But what if some outside person attempts to pass off a likeness of his own ancestor as a member of my patriline and actually succeeds in beguiling my family into becoming part of his? In view of this sort of situation, I have been unable to refrain from writing my Evidential Study to smash the wrong likeness, rectify my lineage, and protect my family. Distressed by my lineage’s long decline and by my family’s long dispersal among other families, I make bold to offer no quarter!

The Song Confucians merely changed the Daoist and Buddhist notion of “spiritual awareness” to designate “principle,” but otherwise they left the Buddho-Daoist conceptual structures unchanged. Consequently, their explanations of the doctrines of Confucius and Mencius became similar in form and substance to Buddho-Daoist views. For example, Zhu Xi’s gloss of the phrase “manifest luminous virtue” in his Commentary on the Great Learning, and of the phrase “what needs no display is virtue” in his Commentary on the Mean, are so pervaded with Buddho-Daoist views as to be almost indistinguishable from them. Thus you, sir, have felt it appropriate to cite “The work of exalted Heaven is without sound or smell” [from the Odes] as the great source of the tradition of Mind. Extending the Song Confucians’ muddled adoption of the Daoist’s esteem for “no desires” and Zhuangzi’s words “return to the beginning,” you have written: “To have no desires is genuineness. Tang and Wu returned to it, and this is called ‘returning to the beginning.”’. . .

But in the Great Learning, the phrase “manifest luminous virtue” speaks of “luminous virtue” in relation to “the people.” . . . All affairs are to be conducted with virtue, so that the people are struck with admiration, as if a suspended image of the sun or moon were shining brightly. .. . Since such luminous virtue accumulates, flourishes, and spreads from near to far without cease, the Great Learning speaks of “manifesting luminous virtue to all-under-Heaven.” Buxian and bucheng [conventionally read “not manifest” and “not honored,” respectively] in the Odes, which you cite, are the same as pixian and picheng [read “greatly manifest” and “greatly honored”] in the Documents. The ancient character pi commonly used for bu, meant not the negative but the “great.” The Mean says, “His fame overspreads the middle kingdoms,” and in speaking of the Way of the gentleman as “concealed,” it also refers to it as “daily manifest.” Why should one not wish it to be greatly manifest but instead prefer to take Zhu Xi’s gloss, “deep, dark, mysterious, and distant,” as its ultimate perfection?

When the sun is in the sky, what need is there for sound or smell for men to know it? And why, knowing this, can one not cite [as you do], “The work of exalted Heaven is without sound or smell”? But contrary to your aim, in the Mean this line follows upon “the virtue that transforms the people,” meaning that Heaven makes no use of sound or smell to join with them. Those who talk in the manner of Laozi and the Buddhists here draw on expressions, familiar in the tradition of Mind, such as “void, psychic, undarkened,” “deluded by human desires,” “the brightness of the original substance,” “deep and dark, mysterious and distant,” “perfect virtue profound and subtle,” and “the wonder of the unmanifest.” This not only falls short of [understanding] the original texts of the Great Learning and the Mean by a thousand miles, even Zhu Xi’s commentaries, [which use all of the expressions derisively cited above] though misinterpreting those classics, differ [from the Buddho-Daoist discussions] in basic intent.

Mencius said, “An extensive territory and a vast population are things a gentleman desires”; and “All men have the same desire to be exalted”; as well as “Fish is what I desire; bear’s palm also is what I desire. . . . Life is what I desire; rightness also is what I want.” . . . Song Confucians, deluded by Daoist and Buddhist talk about “desirelessness,” explained the one phrase “rightness is what I want” as “the mind of the Way” and as “Heaven’s principle,” disparaging the rest as merely “the human mind” and as “human desire.” However, desire rightly understood is the wish of one possessing life to affirm that life and protect its excellence. Feelings are spontaneous, affective responses to differences of close and distant, old and young, honored and humble [in human relationships]. Principle means the subtleties of desires and feelings being exercised to their fullest in making fine distinctions, being smoothly fulfilled, each minutely according to its proper role.

With desire, one need not worry about deficiency, only about excess. If it is excessive, one becomes habituated to selfishness and forgetful of others, one’s heart becomes immersed in self-indulgence and one’s actions vice-ridden. Thus Mencius said, “There is nothing better for nurturing the heart than to have few desires.” . . . If desire does not fall into selfishness and thus constitutes humaneness; if it does not give way to self-indulgence and vice and thus constitutes rightness; if the sentiments manifest themselves in due degree and thus constitute harmony—this is what is called “Heaven’s principle.” If, when desires and feelings have not yet been stirred, they are limpid like still water and free of the errors that arise in activity, this is the “Heaven-bestowed nature.” It is not that the Heaven-bestowed nature is an entity unto itself, nor that desire and feeling constitute a category unto themselves, nor that “Heaven’s principle” itself is some thing. . . .

The Laozi says, “Between the flattering ‘yes’ and the indignant ‘no,’ what is the difference? Between what the world regards as ‘good’ and ‘evil,’ what is the difference?” [Mencius’s antagonist] Gaozi said, “There is neither good nor bad in human nature,” and “Rightness is external, not internal.” The Buddhist [Platform Sutra of Hui Neng] says, “Think not of good; think not of evil. At that moment recognize the original countenance.” And Lu Xiangshan and Wang Yangming [by this time spoken of together as the Lu-Wang school] said, respectively, “Evil can harm the heart; good also can harm the mind-and-heart”; and “Without good and without evil—the essence of the mind and heart.” What these have in common is that they do not value the good. . . .

But the Mean and the Mencius both say, “If one does not understand goodness, one cannot be true to oneself.” Nowadays people disregard “understanding goodness” and regard having no desires as “being true to oneself.” This is erroneous. Those who affirm the tradition of Mind thus erroneously can always take “recognizing the original countenance” as equivalent to “understanding goodness.” And if one draws out the implications of this, what cannot be justified? Laozi and Gaozi held “goodness” in contempt while seeming to understand the meaning of the term. But latter-day followers of their thought treat goodness as though it were their own property while not really understanding the term at all. Nowadays, not only is what they call “morality” not what we Confucians properly call morality, all such terms as “the nature” and “the Way of Heaven,” “sagely wisdom,” “humaneness and rightness,” “genuineness and clear-sightedness,” and even “goodness,” “decree,” “principle,” “knowledge,” and “action” have been borrowed in name but changed in meaning. . . .

As you, Sir, have said, “In matters of scholarship nothing is more imperative than to examine the crux between good and evil and to strictly distinguish between genuineness and artificiality.” Please do begin from this. If you are as diligent as Cheng and Zhu, as dedicated to the truth and as free from self-concern, then although now you agree with their early views, in your later insight you may realize that the direction in which Cheng and Zhu point is different from that of Daoism, Buddhism, Lu, or Wang. But what I myself hope you will find, Sir, is not just this. Cheng and Zhu treated “principle” as though it were a kind of thing, “received from Heaven and complete in the heart,” opening the way in later generations for each person to rely on his own subjective opinion, upholding that as principle and so bringing disaster to the people. Cheng and Zhu having further admixed the doctrine of “no desires,” true understanding became even more remote, the maintenance of subjective opinions ever more rigid, and the disaster to the people ever worse. How can principle bring disaster to the people? Because the arbiters thereof do not themselves realize that it is only their opinion. Taking leave of human sentiments and seeking for what purportedly is complete in the heart, how can they not mistake their mind’s opinions for principle? This is what those who base all in the mind still do. . . .

Alas, one who draws a likeness of the wrong person cannot but be changed into the reality of that person. If one sincerely, conscientiously investigates the words of the Six Classics, Confucius, and Mencius to the point where one truly advances in understanding, one will see not only that their reality is vastly distant from that of Daoism and Buddhism, but that their likeness is too and cannot be falsely borrowed. What has been so borrowed are the mistaken interpretations of later scholars. Simply this is what I, in my own heart, hope that you, Sir, will find in your search.

From early in his life, Zhang Xuecheng (1738–1801) evinced a strong desire to attain greatness as an intellectual. Inconveniently, his talent and passion lay in a field that lacked prestige in his day—history. And within historical studies, his emphasis on discerning broad patterns and on an actively interpretive role for the inquirer also was out of fashion. Thus, Zhang was destined throughout his career to struggle for due respect, both for himself as a scholar who offered needful leadership and for history as a discipline that, properly pursued, could far transcend the piecemeal, philological, text-critical style of research that was ascendant precisely during his lifespan.

Among the several tactics that Zhang Xuecheng adopted to raise his own profile, along with that of historiography, was the reopening of discussion on some of the most stimulating ideas of the most revered historians in the Chinese scholarly heritage. In the two essays selectively translated below (from Zhang’s extensive collection of such essays, the Wenshi tongyi), he explicitly does this with a well-known dictum on history-writing of the famous Tang dynasty historian and critic Liu Zhiji (661–721 C.E.), author of Understanding History (Shitong). As Zhang did on many occasions, he tries to best Liu as a philosopher of the historical challenge. To this end, he inexplicitly invokes an opaque but semi-canonical statement by the greatest of China’s historians (next to Confucius, of course), Sima Qian (145?–90 B.C.E., who had been criticized by Liu) that his monumental Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji) was intended, in part, to “fathom the interface between Heaven and Humankind.”

Both in belittling Liu’s ideas and in implicitly claiming to share Sima Qian’s grand vision, Zhang liberally employs concepts of the human condition that were fundamental to the so-called Cheng-Zhu school of Neo-Confucian philosophy: The qi (“ether,” “material-force”) of the human mind partakes of both the universality of Heaven and the partiality of human beings; its position is precariously crucial in that it enables us to empathize with and understand all things but also makes us liable to exercise favoritism and prejudice; it is the vehicle both to sagehood and to the cleverest of abominations. Therefore, one’s mind must be nourished to fulfill its great potential and watched over assiduously for signs of deviance.

This set of ideas, formulated during the Song dynastic period, of course had not been part of the mental worlds of either Liu Zhiji or Sima Qian. In Zhang Xuecheng’s time, Cheng-Zhu philosophy had been enshrined as state orthodoxy for several hundred years, but it had declined as a stimulus among intellectuals. So Zhang’s use of this Neo-Confucian conceptual resource in attempting to enrich and elevate the historical thought of his own day did not garner much interest. One essay in Zhang’s oeuvre that drew wide notice did so not because it argued the necessity to base good writing in good personal character but because it combined discussion of a current cultural issue—whether women should pursue literary repute—with acerbic, perhaps somewhat grudging criticism of the most gifted and sought-after writer of his time, Yuan Mei (1716–1798). In “Women’s Learning” Zhang makes it clear that the “virtue” he looks for in historians and writers can be found in both men and women. However, in reaction to the libertine views and lifestyle of Yuan Mei, who offended many by accepting women among his poetry students and publicizing their talents, Zhang insisted that men and women should hold to their own separate spheres of virtuous expression and that women of proper social status should not ordinarily reveal their learned accomplishments outside the home. Though such opinions have struck twentieth-century readers as unprogressive, Zhang’s obvious respect for the female intellect has added to the recognition that he was not a marginal oddity but an exceptional thinker who sustained the richness of Chinese historical thought during a relatively moribund phase.

Talent, learning, and insight—to have one of these is not easy, but to combine them all is difficult indeed. For this reason, since earliest times there have been many literary men but few good historians. In his day Liu Zixuan [Liu Zhiji] apparently held this analysis adequate to cover all the principles of the matter. And yet, what history chiefly values is meaning, which is embodied in events, the transmission of which depends on writing. Mencius said [of the Spring and Autumn Annals]: “Its events are [the doings of] Duke Huan of Qi and Duke Wen of Jin”; its writing is historical [in genre], and its meaning [lies in what] Confucius himself [implied in] saying that he had selectively compiled it. Without insight, we cannot judge [history’s] meaning; without [literary] talent, we cannot write it well; and without learning, we cannot marshal its events. Each of these three [abilities] of course has its approximations, as well as [abilities] that resemble them but are not the same: memorization might be called learning; colorful prose might be called talent and precipitate judgment might be called insight. But these are not the [true] talent, learning, and insight of the good historian. . . .

To possess the insight of a [true] historian, one must understand the virtue thereof. What is [this] “virtue”? I mean by it the [historical] writer’s quality of mind. Now, a man who writes a “foul history” fouls himself thereby, and a man who writes a slanderous book slanders himself thereby. If one’s general conduct makes others ashamed, how can one’s writing command esteem? In the case of Wei Shou’s calumnies [in the Weishu] and Shen Yue’s concealment of evil [in the Songshu], readers have prior distrust of the authors, so the harm is not great. When the harm lies [rather] in [the author’s] quality of mind, it means that he has the mind of a superior man, but its nourishment has not yet reached refinement. Now, having the mind of a superior man that has not been nourished to refinement is a condition one can avoid. This being the case, no [historical work] can be free of defects [arising from the author’s quality of mind] except Confucius’s Spring and Autumn Annals. Is it not indeed difficult to criticize people by such a standard? Actually not. It is [just] that he who would be a good historian should carefully distinguish between the “heavenly” and the “human,” giving full play to the heavenly and not exercising too much of the human. In [so doing], if one does not get it perfect, being conscious of [the need] is enough to be regarded as having [the good historical] writer’s quality of mind. But scholars of literature and history try to outdo each other in talking about talent, learning, and insight, without realizing [that they must] discern men’s qualities of mind in order to discuss virtue in historians. Can this be condoned?

Now, everyone is able to say that he approves of Yao and Shun and disapproves of Jie and Zhou; and it is a well-established convention among scholars to esteem the kingly way and disparage the achievements of hegemons. As for loving good and hating evil, praising correctness and detesting wickedness, all who have wished to obtain imperishable [repute] through writing have had minds [capable of] this. But the quality of mind must be carefully considered, because the interpenetration of the heavenly and the human is so subtle, the petty intelligence cannot count on [discerning it].

What history records are events, and those events must avail themselves of writing to be transmitted [as historical knowledge]. Hence, all good historians work at their writing, but they fail to realize that it can suffer in thrall to events. For [historical] events must always involve success and failure, right and wrong. And when success, failure, right, and wrong are involved, then the ins and outs, the give-and-take [among them] interact vigorously [in the historian’s mind]. As this vigorous interaction goes on, [the mind’s] qi becomes concentrated. [Historical] events always involve flourishing and decline, ebb and flow. And when one contemplates such flourishing, decline, ebb, and flow, then the pathos becomes unforgettable. As this absorption goes on, feelings become profound. Most prose is not sufficiently moving; what moves people is qi. Most writing does not affect people much; what affects them is feeling. When qi accumulates, the prose is glorious; when feeling is profound, it draws the reader in. Vigorous qi and inviting emotion—[these are characteristics of] the best prose in the world.

But the heavenly and human elements in [these characteristics] must be differentiated. Qi partakes of yang’s firmness, while feeling accords with the softness of yin. Human beings are subject to the [forces of] yin and yang and cannot be separated therefrom. When qi accords with principle, it is heavenly; in its ability to depart from principle for its own purposes, it is human. Feeling grounded in the inborn nature is heavenly; in its ability to confuse the inborn nature and indulge itself, it is human. The meaning of history issues from Heaven, but the writing of history cannot but depend on human effort for its accomplishment. When the human is afflicted with [the susceptibilities of] yin and yang, then history is written contrary to the universality of the Great Way, and its [capacity] to move or attract [people] is slight.

Now, writing cannot stand without qi, but qi is estimable [only] when in equilibrium. People’s qi is always in equilibrium when they are at leisure. But when they respond emotively to events, their qi loses [its equilibrium] and becomes unsettled, aroused, or arrogant, thus adding to [the force of] yang. Writing cannot be profound without feeling, but feeling is estimable [only] if proper. People’s feelings are always proper when they are unoccupied. But when they respond emotively to events, then feelings lose [their propriety] and become deviant, self-indulgent, and biased, thus adding to [the force of] yin. When the potential for disharmony in yin and yang works through [people’s] physical constitutions into their minds, it insidiously subverts [their judgment such that] what seems impartial really partakes of selfish interest and what seems [as clear as] Heaven actually is beclouded by the human. When written out in prose, [the resulting viewpoints] can do violence to [history’s] meaning and contravene the Way without the author himself being aware of it. Therefore I say that [the historian’s] quality of mind must be regarded very seriously.

That qi can overbear and that feeling can take sides is to say that the movement begins with Heaven but then enters the human. [Thus, we find that] men of artistic talent become immersed in literary style, thinking that style is a manifestation of aesthetic value and not realizing how wrong [such immersion] is. The dependence of history on [good] writing is like the necessity that clothing have appearance and food have flavor. Appearance cannot be without the more decorative and the more plain; flavor cannot be without the more robust and the more bland. [But when] decorative and plain conflict, the appearance always is jarring; when robust and bland conflict, the taste always is strange. Jarring appearances that offend the eye and strange flavors that numb the palate arise from conflicts between decorative and plain, robust and bland. Among literary styles there are the skillful and the awkward, and commonplace historians go on contending over matters such as this, neglecting what is basic while pursuing the superficial. Their approach to writing has never shown superb results. And with such a view of history, how can they receive any understanding of the general conditions of the ancients?

In all philosophical discussions, earlier men have put forth ideas and later men have refined them, feeling compelled to explore them as far as possible. When the ancients discussed writing, they were concerned only with stylistic matters. Liu Xie used Lu Ji’s basic ideas to elaborately discourse on the “literary mind,” and Su Che used Han Yu’s basic ideas to elaborately discourse on the “literary spirit.” [But I] have not seen anyone discuss literary virtue—which should prompt reflection among scholars. . . .

Now in saying that I have not seen any discussion of literary virtue, I meant that in the words of the ancients, comprehensive and thorough as they are, the subject is not distinguished from that of essays by moral men. They never go into the prose itself to consider whether—besides talent, learning, and insight—literary virtue also was present. All those ancients who [were accomplished in] ancient letters had to have composure in order to effect empathy. [Let me point out that] the need for composure in beginning to write is not the same as moral cultivation [in general]; and the need for empathy in discussing ancient times is not the same as magnanimity [in general]. [Rather, specifically in writing,] empathy is the ability to put oneself in the actual situations of the ancients. Alas! Few are those who know what [the writer’s] virtue is. If one understands that in commencing to write one must restrain one’s qi and enter the lives of others, then one does understand virtue in writing. . . .

The various worthies “were such no matter where they lived” and would not necessarily recognize the trend-conscious, narrow scholarly perspectives of today. Thus, if one does not know the times of an ancient [writer], one cannot, with abandon, discourse on his literary style. Knowing his times but not knowing his personal situation, one cannot hastily [proceed] to discourse on [the substance of] his writing. Life’s circumstances do undergo the vicissitudes of honor and shame, obscurity and renown, humility and boldness, sorrow and joy, and things that are said for reasons. Even You [Ruo] did not understand what [his teacher] Confucius meant [in one instance when the latter’s dissatisfaction with certain recent developments crept into his reply to You’s innocent query]. How much less [can it be understood by those of us] born thousands of years later? The Sage’s explanation of shu [i.e., “empathy”] as “not putting upon others what one does not wish for oneself” is eminently to be followed. Nowadays those who would rank themselves among the literati and discuss the ancients must first establish self-[understanding], for no other reason than to exercise the empathy in the writer’s virtue. . . .

Indeed, historians have three strengths in talent, learning, and insight. [To say that] the literature of ancient times did not emerge from historical writing [would be as absurd as to say that] food and drink do not ultimately derive from the cultivation of grain. Insight is born of the mind; talent comes from qi; and learning—that [is a matter of] concentrating the mind to nourish qi and forging insight to complete one’s talent. A dispersed mind is not reliable; floating qi easily is lax. In [practicing] inner composure one continually vigilates between mind and qi, strictly precluding any unguarded fault or deviation. Yet, brilliant, self-composed tranquillity was that with which the sages began and ended [all affairs, thus attaining] breadth of justness. In the present [context], it is none other than to approach writing with one’s mind and qi under supervision—the inner composure of virtue in the writer.

The term women’s learning appears in the section on the ministry of state in the Rites of Zhou, where women’s posts are listed. There it refers to “virtue, speech, decorum, and work”—a broad range of attributes. This is unlike use of the term learning in later times, when it came to refer to literary arts alone. . . . Zheng Xuan (127–200 C.E.) says in his commentary on these terms that “speech” means rhetoric. It follows that a woman who was not well versed in classical ritual and accomplished in letters could not be considered learned. Thus we know that in poetry recitation and mastery of the rites, the learning of women in ancient times was just slightly inferior to that of men. Although the writings of women who came later have been more inclined toward beauty and ornament, women should know their original heritage.

Pursuing the successive commentaries on the Spring and Autumn Annals, we find that the wives of the various feudal lords and the spouses of the chief officials were able to cite allusions and tell of the past—all in elegant prose. For example, Deng Man was able to interpret the auspicious omen in the full moon, deriving from it a detailed understanding of Heaven’s Way, and Mu Jiang concisely explicated key terms in the Classic of Changes. The good wife of Earl Mu of Lu used canonical phrases in handing down ethical instructions, and the spouse of Minister of Education Qi was granted a nobler title because of her ritual propriety. . . . Do these classical rituals and standards of conduct, these literary hues and styles, differ in any way from those of the highest-ranking lords and statesmen?

As we see, women’s behavior originally did not receive particular documentation; women simply appeared in historical records wherever they figured in specific events. If those women had appeared in later times, when histories required special treatises and a separate category for women’s biographies, there would be ten times as many as in Liu Xiang’s and Fan Ye’s [Han period] collections who were as brilliant and distinguished as Ban Zhao (45–114? C.E.) and Cai Yuan (late Han). Thus we know that [not only the records of women’s lives] but also women’s learning have not been transmitted to later ages. . . .

From the Spring and Autumn period onward, when the roles of official and teacher were no longer one, learning ceased to be the domain of governmental officers, and writings came to be authorial compositions. Men of exceptional talent wrote about what affected them personally to found schools of thought. Then writing devolved into belles lettres, talent in beautiful expression counted the most, and richness of color made for renown. The fact that women of extraordinary brilliance and unusual ability, who concentrated in themselves the vital force between Heaven and Earth, were able to achieve special distinction in fine writing that was recognized in the past and is recognized today, was simply due to the circumstances of the time.

When Confucian learning flourished at the Han court, Ban Gu [32–92 C.E.] said that it was brought about via “the route to profit and fortune.” That is, what official policy honored was what worthy and talented men vied for; scholars who pursued learning did so on exactly the same principle [of gain] as farmers who tilled the fields. But a woman’s writing was not her vocation. Therefore when a woman excelled, it emerged from her Heaven-bestowed nature, not from vying to be fashionable or longing for fame. . . .

As for various [Han dynasty] verses and miscellanies from the inner apartments, some of which have come down to us, regardless of whether the women who wrote them were pure or dissolute, their words and phrases always are properly restrained. [Zhou] Wenjun eloped [and thus married without the proper ceremonies], yet her “Song of White Hair” only admonished [her husband, Sima] Xiangru (d. 18 C.E.), [not others]. Cai Yan lost her virtue [by remarrying as a widow], yet in writing out the works [of her father’s library from memory] she steadfastly declined the services of ten official assistants [because she did not wish to seem improper in receiving things from their hands]. As for others, who were content to remain in their homes and follow accepted norms, and who became known for their purity and chastity—in every case their writings are serene like still water, wondrous like clear wind. Even though their literary eloquence arose from natural ability, the sphere of their thought did not transgress the bounds of their quarters. Thus, although women’s learning was different from what it had been in ancient times, it did not conflict with civilizing instruction. . . .

When long ago the historian Ban Gu died before finishing the History of the Former Han, the emperor issued an edict summoning Gu’s younger sister, Ban Zhao, to come in person to the imperial Dongguan Library and carry the work to completion. Thereafter, the noble lords and great ministers all brought her gifts and asked her to be their teacher. This truly can be called an extraordinary event without precedent. But it is generally the case that specialized schools of outstanding scholarship are preserved within certain families and never completely articulated in books. Without qualified persons [in the family line], there simply is no way to transmit that learning. To take another example, when the rulers of the former Jin (351–394 C.E.) first established schools and assembled a broad array of erudites and teachers of the classics, they discovered that all five classics were roughly in hand except the Rites of Zhou, which had been transmitted orally. The emperor declared Lady Song’s home a lecture hall and appointed 120 stipended scholars to sit on the other side of a curtain and receive instruction from her, on whom was bestowed the honorary title “Scholar of Illustrious Culture.” This too was an extraordinary event with no precedent. . . .

These two mothers carried out men’s tasks with women’s bodies. Truly, transmitting the classics and narrating history are crucial to Heaven and humankind, the Way and the laws. Fearing that [such transmission] might be lost, the rulers of those times had no choice but to break with [bureaucratic] convention and emphasize ritual propriety [in taking women as instructors]. We cannot accuse these women of showing off their splendid talents or of suddenly deviating into vulgarity. . . .

Beginning in Tang-Song times, the only discernible talent conveys its lofty refinement through mere short poems about spring in the women’s apartments, unrequited autumn love, and blooms and grasses in profusion and decay. There are notable exceptions—for instance, the Women’s Analects by (the Tang period) Song Ruoshen and the Women’s Classic of Filial Piety by (the Song period) Lady Zheng. Although these women’s intelligence did not save them from hackneyed writing, still the general direction of their work approached refinement and correctness. When those of us in the literary world cite their writings, it is principally an acknowledgment of their praiseworthy aspirations.

As for the celebrated, “wall-toppling” courtesans, they frequently interacted with famous men of their time by exchanging poems and essays imbued with meanings appropriate to both spouses and friends. One could say that they were good at double entendre. They were like the ancient poets who, when they thought of their lords or pined for a friend, affected the sad emotions between men and women. . . . So it is that the poems of nameless lovers may approximate the perdurance of the principles of the Supreme Ultimate and yin and yang between Heaven and Earth. [In them] “the wise find wisdom, and the humane see humanity.” The famous courtesans were skilled poets who also comprehended ancient meanings. They transferred these meanings and lodged them in the warm, weighty language of the poet using the realities of joy and longing between men and women. Thus, their syntax is refined and yet informed by a standard, true and yet free of lewdness. [Such works] have been transmitted for a thousand years, shining forth from the pages of books, and cannot be dismissed on account of the [fallen status of] the persons who wrote them.

But to claim a voice is to find one’s proper form, and in this women are different from men. Thus a skillfully composed dirge is only appropriate for a funeral attendant to chant, and a rowing song, freewheeling and ingenious, is suitable only for a boatwoman to sing. The courtesan who presents a poem to a Mr. Li or composes verse along with a Mr. Zhang does so simply because her situation requires it. But in respectable families, the words spoken in the women’s rooms are not even to be heard [in the rest of the household], so how could such words ever get into poetry exchanges on the outside? . . .

[But nowadays] one often sees printed editions of a famous scholar’s poetry in which, without having read the collations through, already in the tables of contents one can scan references to rouge powders and passionate love, or mentions of poetry exchanges in the pleasure quarters. This writer adopts a chic suaveness, claiming that he is just like the ancients. He seems unaware that if a man born in this age [of strict regulations], a man of the present, can be so inept at observing official prohibitions, then he hardly can discuss any skill with words and ink. In the rituals of the Duke of Zhou, men and women from the same descent group cannot marry. Is it all right, then, to take advantage of being born after the Zhou to claim that in ancient times there was no separation between men and women, thus throwing human relationships into confusion and behaving like birds and beasts—and to further claim that the ancients were the same way?

Now talent requires learning, and in learning the premium is on insight. Talent without learning is mere cleverness; a merely clever person who has no insight has no true talent, and such a person will know no bounds. He may call a poem elegant and refined when in fact it is frivolous and shallow. He may try to make a reputation out of boastful posturing. He may show himself off to the younger generation and make outrageous displays before ladies, corrupting human hearts and mores beyond description. In ancient times frivolity was not unknown among the literati, but it never ran so far as braggadocio in front of women. To be substandard but still strive relentlessly for fame, or to be undistinguished in one’s own right but trade on the reputations of others—men of high purpose should be ashamed to act in these ways. . . .

The women’s learning of ancient times always emphasized mastering poetry through prior mastery of the rites. But women’s learning today has turned to confounding the rites because of poetry. If the rites are shunned, we will no longer be able to discuss the human heart or social customs. Without question it is certain scholars of dubious character who, propagating heretical ideas, have subverted women’s learning. Others who truly understand it look on such men as akin to excrement. How could they ever be fooled!

Is it impossible to believe what other people have said? The world is very large and I cannot do and see everything in it. How much more so with the world of a thousand years ago! If I do not accept the accounts of other men, by what means can I find out about it? But is it possible to believe everything that others have said? . . . Tongues will grow in people’s mouths and there is nothing to restrain them; brushes will find their way into men’s hands and there is nothing to hold them back. Whatever comes into a man’s head to say he may say, and there is no limit to how far he can go. . . .

In our prefectural town there was a Liu family who had two meteorites. According to the story that was told by everyone around the village, some shooting stars had fallen long ago on the Liu mansion and changed into stones. I was still young when I heard of this, but I already doubted it. When I was a little older I was playing once with the Liu boys and they showed me the stones and some inscriptions carved on them in seal and ordinary script. When I questioned them very closely they finally said, “That story is not really true. One of our ancestors was an official in the south, where he came across these stones. They were such an odd shape that he supposed there were no others like them in the world and so he just carved these inscriptions to give proof, and yet as you see the whole thing was a fake.” How then is one to go about ascertaining the truth of what people say?

When the Zhou declined, many strange doctrines sprang up. The various schools of Yangzi, Mozi, the Logicians, the Legalists, the diplomatic alliances, and the yin and yang all made up sayings and invented incidents to fool wise men and sages. The Han Confucians were acquainted with these various teachings and, accepting them as quite reliable without even examining them carefully, proceeded to note them down in their books and commentaries. . . . After this there appeared the cults of the prophet, even more absurd, and yet [in the Han] Liu Xin and Zheng Xuan made use of them in expounding the classics so that they have been handed down for ages now. Scholars avidly study all these without ever examining their origins. They suppose only that, since the Han Confucians were close to antiquity, their assertions must be based upon older traditions and not irresponsibly selected at random. Even among the Song Confucians, with all their diligence and purity, there are many who accepted these theories without alteration. . . . Mencius said, “It would be better to be without the Classic of Documents than to believe it all. In the ‘Completion of the War’ section, I select only two or three passages that I believe” [7B: 3]. If a sage like Mencius is as cautious as this when reading the classics, how much more so in the case of commentaries on the classics, and even more with the various philosophical works. Mencius also said, “In learning extensively and discussing minutely what is learned, the object is to be able to go back and set forth in brief what is essential” [4B: 15]. One desires a wide range of information not for the sake of extensive learning itself but only because one wishes by repeated comparisons and revisions of the data to arrive at a single truth. If one simply exhausts all learning without knowing what to select, then although he reads all the books in the world he is not so well off as a stupid and uneducated man who is yet free from serious error. . . .

The Han Confucian Dong Zhongshu once wrote a work on disasters and portents. Emperor Wu submitted the book to the court officials for their opinion. Lü Bushu, one of Dong Zhongshu’s disciples, having no idea that the book was written by his teacher, expressed the opinion that it was a work of gross stupidity. As a result, Dong Zhongshu was put on trial for his life. To any book written by their own teachers men accord the fullest honor and belief; any book not by their teachers they disparage and revile the merits of the works. . . . When I read the classics I do not respect them blindly merely because they are classics. Instead I try only to discover the intentions of the sages, and thereby come to appreciate the loftiness and beauty of their writings so that I cannot be misled by forgeries. . . .

Neither in the past nor in the present has there ever been any lack of people who read books. . . . Among them have been scholars of keen intellect whose intentions were of the loftiest. And yet they were led astray by the fashions of the times. . . . As scholars who valued truth none can compare with the Song Confucians. Yet most of them concerned themselves with questions of the nature and principle of things and with moral philosophy. If one looks among them for men who devoted themselves to historical research, he will find no more than two or three out of ten. By Ming times scholarship had grown increasingly heterodox, and it became so that if one hoped to write anything important he had to be conversant with Chan doctrines and interlard his library shelves with Buddhist books. . . .

In the past centuries there have been plenty of scholars who devoted their minds to the study of antiquity. Whenever I read works such as Zhao Mingcheng’s Record of Inscriptions on Metal and Stone (with the colophon by Hong Mai) or Huang Bosi’s Further Studies of the Dongguan, I never fail to remark with a sigh that the breadth of learning and diligence of research of these former scholars surpass mine a hundred times. By the detail on a plate or a vase, some minute point about a goblet or a ladle, they declare, “This is Zhou,” “This is Qin,” “This is Han.” The preface to the Orchid Pavilion Collection [on the ritual of the lustral sacrifices], written by Wang Xizhi, surely has no connection with the practical dos and don’ts of human affairs, and yet scholars ask, “Which is his genuine calligraphy?” “Which is forged calligraphy?” so thorough are they in their research and so discriminating in their judgments. Yet when it comes to the affairs of the rulers and sages of antiquity, which are directly concerned with morals and the human heart, people accept what others say without discriminating between truth and falsehood. Why should this be?

In order to repair some of the omissions of former scholars and supplement certain of their defects, I have written this book, Record of Beliefs Investigated (Kaoxin lu), which I hope will not be found entirely useless.

It may seem surprising that in an age whose intellectual ideals were breadth of knowledge and practicality of thought, the new knowledge from Europe that the Jesuits brought to China in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries did not make more of a stir. This was certainly not owing to lack of acquaintance with the new learning or lack of opportunities to learn more. The Jesuits had attracted wide attention by their scientific feats and had been installed for more than a century as the official astronomers of the Ming and Qing courts. They had even made a few important converts to their own faith among scholar-officials and a not inconsiderable number among the common people—enough to cause alarm to men like the xenophobic official Yang Guangxian (1597–1669), who saw in Western science as well as in Christianity a threat to all of Chinese civilization. Yet the net impression made on the Confucian mind was slight.

It is true that interest in mathematics and astronomy among men like Huang Zongxi, and others after him in the Han school, was greatly stimulated by the revelations of the Jesuits; in fact, a few individuals, like Mei Wending (1633–1721), were even ready to acknowledge the great value of the new scientific learning and to assimilate it. Indeed, a fair number of the best known scholars of the day were cognizant of the new Western learning, and in a few cases, most notably that of Fang Yizhi (1611–1671), it led to a significant reexamination not only of traditional Chinese astronomy but even of a central value in Neo-Confucian teaching, the “investigation of things,” which he directed toward “externals” and empirical research.⁵²

Yet on the whole these new speculations “did not greatly influence the general course of Qing intellectual history.”⁵³ More typically, however, this new interest was directed toward a reexamination of China’s traditional methods of astronomy, toward recovering much genuine knowledge that had been lost owing to centuries of neglect, or toward defending Chinese tradition by showing, with great ingenuity, that what was valid in the scientific learning of the West was not really new but was borrowed indirectly from the ancient Chinese, or that, on the other hand, what clearly conflicted with traditional lore must be held invalid. Ruan Yuan (1764–1849), a prodigious scholar as well as a leading official of his time, testified to the new interest in mathematics and astronomy by his biographies of notable contributors to these sciences, including even Westerners like Ptolemy. Yet his Sino-centric point of view is evident. He contends that because the knowledge of astronomy attributed to Ptolemy by the Jesuits was so far in advance of the Chinese at the same time (the Han dynasty), the Jesuits must have deliberately exaggerated it in order to deceive the Chinese concerning the accomplishments of the West.⁵⁴ Another contention of his is that the revolution of the earth around the sun must be a fallacious theory since it “departs from the classics and is contrary to the Way.”⁵⁵

We should not conclude from this that the attitude of most Confucian scholars toward Western learning was hostile or sharply defensive. More generally it was one of indifference. When in 1818 Ruan Yuan sponsored the publication of Jiang Fan’s monumental survey of the school of Han Learning in the Qing dynasty (Guochao Hanxue shicheng ji), neither Jiang nor Ruan, in prefatory remarks concerning the significance of this movement, found it necessary to mention its position with respect to Western learning. The great antagonists in Ruan’s mind were still the old ones—Buddhism and Daoism—and he placed much emphasis on the contribution of the Han school in purging Confucianism of Buddhist and Daoist elements that had infiltrated the original teaching.

What, then, are the reasons for this notable disinclination to pursue more vigorously contacts with the West, when by contrast many of the best minds in Europe were avidly devouring not only curious information about China but the teachings of Confucius himself as related by the Jesuits (from whom we inherit our romanization of his Chinese name, Kong Fuzi)? Much has been written on this question, and much more remains to be studied. The Jesuits themselves, from the outset, observed that the general disinterest of the Chinese in Western science was a reflection of their preoccupation with studies that led to official preferment. The Jesuit Nicholas Trigault (1577–1628), for instance, puts it this way:

And Jean-Baptiste Du Halde, in reporting the Jesuits’ generally favorable impressions of early Qing China, notes:

What Du Halde says here about the key role of the civil service examination system (the term wenzhang refers specifically to the examination essay) only confirms what Confucian reformers themselves had repeatedly pointed to: that education in China, and the capabilities of the educated class, were relatively limited by the type of examination system that controlled entrance to official life (still the most preferred of careers). Recent scholarship has tended to confirm this early judgment: namely that the new interest in scientific investigation and cosmological speculation did not significantly deflect the mainstream of Confucian scholarship from its perennial pursuits—the central Neo-Confucian texts in the educational and examinations curriculum. As John Henderson has said: “Achievements in most other fields of learning [than Neo-Confucianism] were not so munificently rewarded or highly regarded.”⁵⁸ And even among those not caught up in the examination culture, but more committed to scholarly research, like Gu Yanwu and the Han Learning, it could be said that their efforts were “largely focused on matters relating to human affairs and thus their energies were channeled into historical and textual studies, and ideally, statecraft.”⁵⁹

During the first half of the Manchu dynasty, the great influence of the state in intellectual matters was further exerted through its patronage of Confucian scholarship. In an attempt to demonstrate that though they were foreigners, their rule was based on a full appreciation of the best in Chinese culture, the Manchus lavished special honors on Confucian scholars recognized for their broad classical learning and employed large numbers of scholars and scribes in ambitious projects for the preservation, codification, and explication of the classical tradition—projects of such magnitude as the collection of the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries (Siku quanshu) from texts gathered all over the land and the preparation of a compendious critical bibliography for it.

The fact that this collection process also enabled the Manchus to screen out and destroy works considered subversive of their rule (a censorship process not unmixed with scholarly politics) was perhaps less significant as a negative factor than the positive support given to a type of classical research in which Chinese scholars, pursuing their own line of thought, were already diligently engaged. Nor should we overlook a more subtle and indirect contribution of the Manchus to the Chinese self-absorption in intellectual matters: the sense of well-being and complacency that was fed by the initial success of the Manchus as rulers of China in the great Kangxi and Qianlong reigns. The empire was peaceful and prosperous, the population was growing, and the arts of civilization flourished as never before. In such circumstances it was difficult to take seriously a bid from the West that had only been tendered at the hands of gentle missionaries and was not as yet backed by overwhelming force.

Compared to the wide range, fluidity, and variety of late Ming thought, the early Qing period witnessed both a conservative reaction among scholars to the freethinking of the late Ming and a parallel strengthening of central institutions that promoted ideological consensus and continuity. A key point in restoration of the dynastic state was the early resumption by the Qing of civil service examinations with a content and form basically similar to those of the Yuan and Ming and with Zhu Xi’s version of the Four Books as the basic texts. This represented orthodoxy as an officially approved body of correct teachings, without necessarily entailing the proscription of other works or views. Simply to have the exams focus on the Neo-Confucian canon as shaped by Zhu Xi meant that, since school curricula generally aimed at preparation for the examinations, the thinking of most educated people would early be exposed to and formed by Zhu Xi’s teachings.

This was not done simply by imperial fiat. In fact, as in the Yuan case earlier, the dynastic endorsement of Zhu Xi followed upon the prior recognition and acceptance of Zhu Xi’s curriculum in the local academies and among independent scholars. As we have seen in volume 1, a tidal conservative reaction to Wang Yangming’s liberal teachings had already shown itself at the end of the Ming, as manifested in the neo-orthodox reformism of the Donglin Academy and Fu She society, expressing the alarm of the Confucian scholar-elite over signs of political decadence and a decline in public morality.

This conservative trend carried over into the early Qing, as scholars otherwise diverse in their interests looked to Zhu Xi for their intellectual grounding and moral bearings. Even Confucian scholars identified with significant new trends, such as Gu Yanwu, a progenitor of the evidential research largely identified with Han Learning, looked up to Zhu Xi as a scholar and was strongly critical of Wang Yangming’s subjectivism. Of Wang Fuzhi the same was true, though he exercised far less influence on the course of Qing scholarly thought than did Gu. Likewise turning to Zhu Xi were leading figures in the movement that stressed “practical” or “substantial” learning (shixue) in the early Qing (for instance, Chen Hongmou [chapter 26]), as were scholars in the closely related trend that advocated the practice of Confucian “rites” as models of political and social organization.

A central figure in all this was the Kangxi emperor (1662–1722), generally credited with high intelligence, wise judgment, and benevolent intentions. He took a special interest in Zhu Xi’s teachings and had as advisers some of the leading Neo-Confucians of the day, including Lu Longji (1630–1693), the one Qing scholar esteemed enough to be enshrined in the official Confucian temple and himself an ardent champion of Zhu Xi. The continuity with late Ming neo-orthodoxy is also shown by Lu Longji’s admiration for and acknowledged indebtedness to Lü Liuliang, whose radical Zhu Xi orthodoxy has been discussed above.

Yet the difference between official and scholarly orthodoxies, as well as the potential conflict between them, was sharply drawn in the next reign (Yongzheng, 1723–1735). When Lü Liuliang’s challenge to dynastic rule became exposed in the course of a local revolt in 1728 inspired by Lu’s ideas, Lu’s works were later suppressed and even Lu Longji’s collected writings were expurgated of their many favorable references to Lu Liuliang. Here the demands of dynastic loyalty overrode fidelity to Neo-Confucian tradition, while the greater tolerance of Lu shown in the Kangxi reign did not carry over to his successors.

Meanwhile, steps were taken to establish Zhu Xi as the supreme scholarly authority among the successors to Confucius and Mencius. By imperial order in 1712, his tablet was installed in the main hall of the Confucian temple along with those of Confucius’s own disciples. A definitive edition of his writings (The Complete Works of Master Zhu, 1714) and of his recorded conversations (The Classified Sayings of Master Zhu) was prepared and published under imperial auspices, as well as an anthology, The Essential Ideas of Human Nature and Principle (1715), a selective abridgement of the official Ming collection of Neo-Confucian texts, Great Compendium of Human Nature and Principle.⁶⁰

Another major project to codify orthodox teaching was undertaken by one of the Kangxi emperor’s prime advisers, Zhang Boxing (1652–1725), who compiled a set of authoritative Neo-Confucian writings in The Collected Works of the Hall of Correctness and Propriety. As with Essential Ideas, referred to above, it was understood that even in such an encyclopedic collection, economy of space and selectivity of materials was called for. The perpetuation of tradition could not be achieved by indiscriminate addition and accumulation, lest the burden of received culture become unmanageable and stultifying. Hence the need for strict criteria in refining the selection, which meant, to some degree, repackaging and redefining the canon, as Zhu Xi himself had done.

In addition to these efforts to promote a scholarly orthodoxy, other major projects were undertaken in the Kangxi reign to record, preserve, and codify the larger legacy of traditional scholarship. One of these, started by an independent scholar but patronized by the court and eventually published with imperial sponsorship, was the encyclopedia Synthesis of Books and Illustrations from Past and Present (Gujin tushu jicheng, 1778). Another such was the project carried out in the Qianlong era, from 1772 to 1783, to prepare a manuscript library that would provide authoritative copies of extant works gathered throughout the empire, the Imperial Manuscript Library known as the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries (Siku quanshu).

Here, too, opportunity was taken to criticize or censor some offending works, while bestowing a kind of seal of approval upon others, and thus in a way defining a canon. Still, it was a vast, capacious canon, and the compilers’ critical comments, many influenced by the new text criticism of the Evidential Learning, did not spare even would-be imperial sages like the Yongle emperor of the Ming, whom they castigated for promulgating his own version of authoritative “sagely learning” when this would better have been left to qualified scholars.

By such official patronage of scholarship on a grand scale, the Manchu regime, especially during the long Kangxi reign (1662–1722), enlisted the services of many Confucian scholars, who, though Chinese, were more humanist than nationalist in their basic outlook and, as earlier in the Mongol period, under Khubilai, were prepared to accept non-Chinese rulers who met their universalist criteria. One of the Manchu rulers who presided over this long antecedent period of consolidation, growth, and prosperity received the posthumous title of Humane (or Benevolent) Emperor (Renzong), and if even European thinkers of the Enlightenment spoke of China in these years as a “benevolent despotism,” it was in part a tribute to the success of the Manchus in carrying out policies that were no less effective in the cultural domain than in the military and political.

If this much be granted to the success of Qing policy and official ideology, even Neo-Confucian scholars who collaborated in this enterprise knew that it fell short of the ideals of Confucius and Zhu Xi. The aforementioned Zhang Boxing, who could be identified as well as anyone with the Qing state orthodoxy, remained conscious that the examination system, even with Zhu Xi’s Four Books and commentaries installed as basic texts, failed to achieve the goals for learning set by Zhu Xi himself. In the following passage, Zhang’s opening reference to the ancients evokes Confucius’s, and later Zhu Xi’s, basic premise that true learning should be “for the sake of one’s self” and not for the pursuit of political and social success:

Thus even the official orthodoxy carried with it some seeds of its own self-examination, self-criticism, and possible renewal. Moreover, apart from, and even within, the Qing establishment there were independent scholars carrying on the critical scholarship that called into question some of the texts and doctrines closely identified with the official orthodoxy.

Yet it remains a central fact of cultural history in late imperial China, as in the educational history of East Asia as a whole, that Zhu Xi’s basic texts continued to serve as the mainstays of the school curriculum down into the late nineteenth century, and to persist as the most influential force in the intellectual and moral formulation of the educated elite of China, Japan, and Korea.

The “Sacred Edict” refers to a set of moral and governmental instructions promulgated by imperial authority for use in local rituals conducted throughout the Qing empire. First instituted by the Kangxi emperor (r. 1662–1722), it was expanded and given definitive form in Sixteen Maxims by his successor, the Yongzheng emperor (r. 1723–1735). Much ceremony attached to the recitation of these instructions, and an effort was made to popularize them through explanations in the vernacular, the telling of moral tales, and the conducting of dramatic performances to illustrate the main points of instruction.

So widespread was this educational practice that it early came to the attention of foreign observers, who noted its official character, its emphasis on compliance with the authorities, and the fact that it had tended to become a ritual routine, dutifully performed by mandarins as an official function but not taken too seriously by anyone.

What few realized was that this custom, also known as the Village Lectures, derived from the practice instituted long before by the founder of the Ming⁶² and earlier spoken of as the Six Maxims [of Ming Taizu], whose “sage instructions” became increasingly thought of as a Sacred Edict, reflecting the theocratic character of the monarchy and the process of official ritualization by which the performance became endowed with a quasi-religious aura.

What fewer still realized was how this had come about as a transformation of Zhu Xi’s original Community Compact promoting such communitarian values as the leadership responsibility of the local elite, consensual agreement among the members at village meetings (i.e., the “compact”), popular moral uplift, neighborly cooperation, and mutual aid, with ceremonial respect shown for age and superior wisdom but otherwise no distinctions made of rank or class. This original character is still reflected in the preservation of Zhu Xi’s Six Maxims among the later Sixteen, and by the fact that, despite the aggrandizing of imperial authority in the official Ming and Qing versions, priority is still given to the family values of filiality and brotherliness (especially as dramatized in later popular tales of heroic filial piety), while the virtue of loyalty to the throne (not mentioned in Zhu Xi’s version, or even in the early Ming version, out of respect for Zhu’s original formulation) is again striking for its absence from this otherwise markedly theocratic ritual.

By contrast to the Six Maxims, the Sixteen, as given below, add many items of an authoritarian and bureaucratic character that are quite foreign to the spirit of Zhu Xi’s original community compact—e.g., matters pertaining to law as administered by the territorial agents of state administration; to collective security units; to the ostracizing of deserters and miscreants; to the prompt payment of taxes; to the suppression of heterodoxy—none of which are mentioned by Zhu Xi. Also striking here is the attention to scholarly achievement, which the accompanying commentary and popular expositions clearly connect with advancement through the examination system, the prime means of official recruitment. Ironically, Zhu Xi, the great scholar himself, had said nothing whatever about scholarly training in his compact; here, however, it ranks well ahead of Zhu’s instructions to the young in general (item 11), which had been oriented toward moral conduct in the family, neighborhood, and village community, not to success in the state bureaucracy.

1. The Chinese title is not susceptible of literal translation; we give the general sense of it as indicated by Huang’s preface to the work.

2. Legendary Daoists who refused the throne when it was offered to them.

3. Yu (or the Great Yu). During the reign of Shun he saved the country from a great flood, for which service he was ennobled and made a minister, eventually succeeding Shun on the throne as first ruler of the Xia dynasty.

4. The term zhu (master) could also be translated “host,” but in China, as in the West, the relationship between host and guest most often suggests that the former is obliged to accommodate the latter, in accordance with long-standing traditions of hospitality. Yet Huang obviously means that the guest has no rights, being at the mercy of the host’s generosity, and thus “master” conveys better the idea of primacy, superiority, or sovereignty as Huang intends it here and “tenant” the dependence of the people on the ruler.

5. Mencius 4B: 3.

6. Shang shu, Taishi B, SBCK 6: 5b, and Mencius 1B: 8 in reference to the last ruler of Shang. See n. 10.

7. The original quotation is from Zhuangzi, Renjian shi, SBCK, Nanhua zhenjing 2: 16b. It is also found in the Surviving Writings of the Cheng Brothers (Er Cheng yishu 5: 77, Er xiansheng yu in Er Cheng ji [Beijing: Zhonghua, 1981]), where it has a different meaning, i.e., the constant relation between prince and minister is a mutual commitment to moral principle, not an inescapable obligation to serve. If prince and minister do not agree on principles, according to Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi, the minister should leave the prince’s service. See Cuiyan, Jun chen pian, 2: 1242–1247.

8. Zhuangzi, “Autumn Floods,” SBCK, Nanhua zhenjing 6: 28a; Burton Watson, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968), p. 188.

9. Zhuangzi, Quqie pian, SBCK 6: 15b; Watson, Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, p. 107.

10. A transposition of an expression found in the Liji, Quli, SBCK 1: 6a, which according to the commentator Zheng Xuan enjoins upon the filial son a constant attentiveness to the behests of his parents. Legge translates it: “He should be [as if he were] hearing [his parents] when there is no voice from them, and as seeing them when they are not actually there” (Li Ki 1: 69). Here it cannot be translated as “not actually there,” because it is clear from the passage following that this is a question of discerning desires that are actually there but are simply unexpressed, unformulated.

11. Liji, Sangfu sizhi 63: 22b.

12. Zuozhuan, 25th Year of Duke Xiang, Chunqiu jingzhuan jijie, SBCK 17: 11a.

13. Mencius 3B: 5.

14. Huainanzi, SBCK, sec. 1, 12: 2a.

15. Reading gong (together) for qi (their). Cf. Haishan xianguan ed. 5a, line 8.

16. In the classics the relation of minister (chen) to prince, and son to father, are frequently linked, as in the Liji: “The ceremonies . . . of mourning and sacrifice . . . illustrate the kindly feelings of minister and son” (Legge, Li Ki 2: 258–259. This usage is akin to the Confucian emphasis on the Five Moral Relations—between parent and child, sovereign and minister, husband and wife, elder and younger brothers, and friends (cf. Mencius 2B: 2 and 3A: 4; Great Learning 20: 8). Mencius, however, insisted on the virtual parity of prince and minister because of their shared commitment to rightness (yi) and said a minister should leave a prince if they had no such agreement on what is right (2B: 5, 14; 4B: 3; 5B: 9).

17. Mencius 4B: 3: “When the prince regards his minister as a mere dog or horse, the minister regards the prince as any other man of the country.” Zhu Xi renders “man of the country” as “anyone met on the road” (luren), and Huang uses Zhu’s term, not Mencius’s. Cf. Mengzi jizhu 4B: 3, Zixue ed. 10: 15a, p. 781.

18. Zhuangzi was often quoted for his attribution to Confucius of the view that the relationship of prince and minister was as unalterable and inescapable as that of parent and child ( Zhuangzi 2: 16b). Zhu Xi agreed that the principle of a mutual commitment to rightness (yi) was unalterable, but there was no such relation based on blind personal loyalty. Further, he agreed with Mencius that if the ruler lacked such a commitment, the minister should leave. In other words, the underlying principle was changeless, but the personal relationship was contractual and became void if there was no agreement in principle. Huang agrees with Zhu Xi (Mengzi jizhu 4B: 3, Zixue ed. 10: 15a, p. 781. See also 2B: 5, 14, and 5B: 9. Zhuzi wenji 82: 9b–10a. Ba Song jun zhongjia ji and Er Cheng yishu (Zhonghua ed.) 5: 76–77, where Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi affirm the invariable principle of being in accord on what is right, but with it the obligation to withdraw if there is no such agreement.

19. The Two Emperors—Yao and Shun; the Three Kings—Yu of Xia, Tang of Shang, and Wen and Wu of Zhou together.

20. Zhuangzi, Dazong shi, SBCK 3: 9a; Watson, Complete Works of Chuang Tzu, p. 81.

21. Yanzi qunqiu, SBCK 6: 19b.

22. Xianzhang means to uphold the laws and institutions established by the founder of the dynasty; an expression applied to Confucius, who “elegantly displayed the regulations of Wen and Wu [founders of the Zhou dynasty], taking them as his model” (Legge, Doctrine of the Mean, 30: 1).

23. Liji, Quli, Shisanjing zhusu 2: 9a.

24. Xunzi, Jundao pian, SBCK 8: 1a.

25. In Xunzi’s discussion of the “Way of the Ruler,” he says, “It is men that govern, not laws” (Wang Xianqian, Xunzi jijie 8: 1a), and Zhu Xi implicitly amended this when he said in his Commentary on the Great Learning that it is by self-cultivation and self-discipline that the governance of men is accomplished. See ch. 21.

26. Zhixiang: The term that Huang uses most often for prime minister (caixiang) is a common, but not a formal, title in Chinese official history. At times two or three men were so designated concurrently, in which case “chief councillor” is a more appropriate translation. But to Huang’s mind there should be only one such, and therefore it means here “prime minister.”

27. Gao Huangdi: i.e., the founder of the dynasty, whose canonical name was Taizu and reign name Hongwu (1368–1398). In 1380, following the execution of Prime Minister Hu Weiyong for plotting against the throne, the prime ministership (chengxiang) was abolished, together with its chief agency of administration, the zhongshu sheng, and the Six Ministries were made directly responsible to the emperor. By this Taizu hoped to keep any one man from obtaining sufficient power to rival the throne. However, this arrangement placed a heavy administrative burden upon the emperor, too great a one for him to cope with, and led to the exercise of executive functions by members of his cabinet and eunuchs.

28. Part of Mencius’s description (5B: 2) of the enfeoffment system as he supposed it to have existed during the early Zhou dynasty (ca. 1000 B.C.E.). See ch. 6.

29. That is, the relationship of the emperor to the enfeoffed nobility ruling outside his own immediate domain but within the empire.

30. That is, the emperor’s relationship to the officials of his court administering directly his own domain around the capital. The point of this passage is to show that in ancient times (i.e., ideally) the emperor’s power and dignity were not absolute but relative to a gradually ascending hierarchy of rank, both within his own feudal domain and in China as a whole.

31. Zhou Gong: The fourth son of King Wen of Zhou and younger brother of King Wu. He served as counselor to the latter and on Wu’s death assumed the regency for seven years during the minority of King Cheng. See ch. 2.

32. Liji, Yanyi, Shisanjing zhusu 62: 19a.

33. Han shu, SBCK 84: 3b. According to Yan Shigu’s commentary, this was the Han ritual.

34. Hundred Offices: i.e., all the government officials.

35. Literally “from inside”; i.e., from the eunuchs. See Ming shi 72: 1730.

36. With the decline, during the late Tang, Five Dynasties, and Song periods of the official school system devoted to the preparation of men for government service through the examination system, academies grew up around some of the better private libraries, where serious and independent study could be carried on by men whose primary interest was in true learning rather than official advancement.

37. The proscription of the Zhu Xi school at the end of the twelfth century.

38. During the Ming dynasty three attempts were made to suppress the academies on the charge of heterodox and subversive teaching: in 1537–1538, when Zhan Roshui (1466–1560) was condemned; in 1579, when Zhang Juzheng attempted unsuccessfully to destroy the academies; and in 1625, when the powerful eunuch Wei Zhongxian again ordered their destruction, followed by a purge of “subversives” associated with the Donglin Academy of Wuxi. Huang has the last in mind here.

39. Huang himself cites such a case in his account of Zhuang Chang, 1437–1499 (jinshi 1466), which repeats the charge in the same language. In 1457, as a Hanlin bachelor, Zhuang, together with two colleagues, submitted memorials rebuking the emperor for his preoccupation with sexual pleasures. For this he (and they) were flogged at court in the presence of the emperor, and Zhuang was banished to Guiyang. Later rehabilitated, for some years he refused to serve and was accused by the scholar and statesman Qiu Jun (1420–1495) of “leading scholars throughout the land into defiance of the court.” Qiu claimed that the Ming founder, Taizu, had made refusal to serve a punishable offense (Mingru xuean 45: 14).

40. Certified scholars receiving official stipends.

41. Libationer (taixue jijiu): i.e., chancellor or rector of the Imperial College. In ancient times at great feasts the honor of offering the first libation of wine was reserved for the oldest man present. Libationer thus became a term of the highest respect and in the Han was applied to the most learned of the court scholars. Between 275 and 280, under the Western Jin (265–316), the head of the Imperial College was designated Libationer, a title that remained in use until the end of the Qing dynasty.

42. Here Huang follows the recommendation of the Cheng brothers and Zhu Xi. See Er Chengji, Mingdao wenji 1: 449–450; Yichuan wenji 3: 563; and Zhu Xi; Daxue zhangju, preface, pp. 1b-3a.

43. A system used in the Latter Han dynasty for the selection of court officials upon the recommendation of local prefects (junshou) and the prime ministers of the various states (guoxiang).

44. Those who have passed the provincial examinations and obtained the juren degree.

45. See vol. 1, chs. 6, 11, 19.

46. Letter in Reply to Zide, Tinglin shiwen ji 4: 7b.

47. Classic of Documents, Counsels of Great Yu II.

48. Analects 6: 25.

49. Analects 13: 20.

50. Mencius 7A: 4.

51. Chen Lihe, quoted in Hummel, Eminent Chinese, 2: 773.

52. Willard J. Peterson, “Fang I-Chih’s Western Learning,” p. 401.

53. John B. Henderson, Chinese Cosmology, p. 141.

54. Zhouren juan 43: 6b.

55. Zhouren juan 46: 19a.

56. Gallagher, China in the Sixteenth Century, pp. 32–33.

57. Adapted from A Description of the Empire of China (London, 1741), 2: 124, cited in Bernard, Matteo Ricci’s Scientific Contribution to China, p. 20.

58. Henderson, Chinese Cosmology, p. 146.

59. Willard Peterson, Fang I-chih’s Western Learning, p. 400.

60. See vol. 1, ch. 22.

61. Zhang Boxing, personal preface to the Chengshi . . . richeng, Zhengyi tang quanshu 1: 1.

62. See ch. 21.