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. . . .
The Selection of Scholar-Officials, Part 2
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.
LÜ LIULIANG’S RADICAL ORTHODOXY
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.
COMMENTARIES ON THE FOUR BOOKS
Principle in the Mind-and-Heart
Lü Liuliang rejected the view of the mind as something to be known in itself (a view he attributed to Lu Xiangshan and Wang Yangming) and emphasized instead the mind as a faculty for recognizing principle in things and affairs. In this he contributed to the reemphasis on scholarship and Evidential Learning in the Qing.
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.
Believing that rational moral principles were inherent in the mind and all things, Lü asserted that the moral consciousness and moral life were natural to human life and that freedom and spontaneity (so emphasized by the Wang Yangming school) could be attained only through the fulfillment of moral principles in action, not through any attempt at direct transcendence of the rational, moral sphere.
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.
Further, explaining Mencius’s teaching concerning the “lost mind” Lü says, on the basis of Zhang Zai and Zhu Xi’s view of “the mind as coordinating the nature and emotions”:
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.
Here Lü asserts the importance of method or process, combining moral effort and intellectual inquiry, as the requisite means for achieving and preserving the unity of the mind. Deviant teachings, such as those of Chan masters Linji and Caodong, Lu Xiangshan, Chen Xianzhang and Wang Yangming, discard this method in order to pursue the substance of the mind-in-itself, apart from things-and-affairs, thereby seeking a unity devoid of principle. This then leads also to dispensing with specific steps taught in the Great Learning (the Eight Items or Specifications) and the Mean (the five procedures of broad learning, accurate inquiry, and so on). Lü’s line of analysis is clearly meant to underscore the difference between Lu Xiangshan’s primary emphasis on first establishing the moral nature and Zhu Xi’s on the method of inquiry and learning.
Principles, Desires, and Rites
Lü, like Zhu Xi, believed that human appetites and moral principles were complementary, not opposed, elements of human nature and that human desires became evil only when selfishly indulged. Rites give formal embodiment to the principles that should guide the appetites, i.e., they provide for the “measured expression” of both Heaven’s principle and natural appetites.
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.
For Lü the quintessential “rites” were the well-field system and school systems spoken of by Mencius, the former providing for everyone’s physical sustenance and the latter providing education for the moral and cultural uplift of the people.
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 Mas
ter [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.
The Neo-Confucian Critique of Dynastic Rule
From earliest times Confucians had invoked an idealized Age of the Sage Kings as the foil for their criticism of the status quo. Lü is even more outspoken on the point than most of his predecessors:
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].
Sources of Chinese Tradition, Volume 2 Page 4