The gentry in the Eastern Han Dynasty began to form gradually: the gentry class has been completely secular.

During the five hundred years of the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, China culture developed rapidly, and historians called this historical culture pre-Qin culture. The splendid pre-Qin culture is fascinating and a hundred schools of thought contend. Mainstream cultures such as Confucianism, Taoism, France and Mohism have been passed down to this day.

Among them, Confucianism has the greatest influence on later generations. It can be said that Confucianism ruled the feudal society in China for more than two thousand years. Confucian classic "The Analects of Confucius" records that "Confucius said: scholars should be determined to pursue the truth …". There is another saying, "Confucius said: Scholars should strive for self-improvement .....".

In these Confucian classics, it is not difficult to see that Confucianism has great constraints on scholars such as gentlemen and scholars. In Confucianism, scholars need to have lofty aspirations to pursue the truth in the world.

With the development of history, Confucianism in the Western Han Dynasty was impacted, and the scholar class gradually evolved from "scholar's ambition is in the Tao" in the Spring and Autumn Period to "scholar's non-exemption". So why did such a change of thought occur in the Western Han Dynasty and the Eastern Han Dynasty?

1. The number of inspection officials has increased, but the wages are insufficient.

On this issue, we should understand the social class of the Western Han Dynasty. The first is the core layer, headed by the emperor, including the prince and members of the royal family.

The second category is the scholar class, which is the backbone of society, mainly scholars. In the Spring and Autumn Period, the gentry class was the lowest class of the nobility, because it had little blood relationship with the royal family.

There are two classes below the scholar class, mainly ordinary people and slaves. Therefore, although the scholar is the lowest among the nobles, compared with the third and fourth class with a huge base, the scholar is still a class that many people can't reach.

Influenced by Confucianism, the thoughts of the taxi class in the early years of the Western Han Dynasty all took the world as their responsibility, and they had such lofty aspirations as "a scholar determined to be a Taoist" in their hearts. The collective of this class is great and unusual. They are firm in heart and committed to helping the world.

However, the history advanced to the middle of the Western Han Dynasty, and the imperial examination system had not yet appeared. Except hereditary, ordinary people can only pass the imperial examination system if they want to be officials. Procuratorial system was an official selection measure established during the period of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty. Local officials inspected the election and finally recommended it to the central government for appointment.

In the early Western Han Dynasty, the number of officials was small, and the salary of the court was enough to support a family. In the middle of the Western Han Dynasty, under the system of procuratorial supervision, the number of officials in the Western Han Dynasty soared. At the beginning, there were only a few local officials in a county, and everyone performed their duties. Later, it developed to hundreds of officials in a county, when the court was under great pressure.

Agriculture in the Western Han Dynasty was not very developed, and the salaries of officials were mainly food. Because the number of local officials has increased several times, the salary has become the pressure of the court.

In order to solve this problem, either reducing the salaries of local officials or raising the tax rate is undoubtedly killing lives, so the court decided to reduce the salaries of local officials.

This leads to a problem. First of all, local officials are all scholars, and their salaries are declining. If they can't support a large family or even their families by themselves, how can they have the ambition to help the world? As a result, the scholar class had to find ways to support a large family, so the so-called "scholar's ambition is in the Tao" inevitably fell behind.

2, chasing fame and profit, it is inevitable that literati will be vulgar again.

The Book of the Later Han Dynasty recorded what Pan Chen said: If a person is a human being, should he sweep the world and settle down? A friend retorted, "If one room is not cured, how can we rule the country and level the world?"

Pan Chen thinks that a gentleman should take the responsibility of sweeping away the evil in the world. How can he care about a room? The idea here is that "scholars take Tao as their purpose". And his friends think that if you can't handle a room well, how can you destroy the world?

What happened in a room here is a metaphor for trivial matters and can also be considered as family matters. In fact, this record shows that the contradiction between the gentry classes began to appear in the Western Han Dynasty. Some gentry still maintain their "ambition for the Tao" in their hearts, while others think that family affairs are unfinished. How can they pretend the world in their hearts?

"Home is the world" puts home first, and The Book of Rites University also says: If you want to be the wise man in the world first, you should rule the country first; If you want to govern your country, you should first get your family together; If you want to keep your family together, you should trim your body first. All these show that the gentry class must have a small family before they can run the country.

This is the ideological change of the literati class in the Western Han Dynasty. How can we sweep the world without sweeping a house? In the long run, scholars' firm goal of aiming at Tao began to loosen.

Coupled with the loopholes in the procuratorial system, not all elected officials are non-Changde. At first, they began to be selfish, and later, due to reality, some taxi classes with "Tao" in their hearts began to pursue fame and fortune and become secular.

Therefore, in the middle and late Western Han Dynasty, for various reasons, some scholars changed from the initial "scholar's ambition is in the Tao" to "scholar's freedom is in the vulgar". However, this is only part of it. During the period of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, Dong Zhongshu put forward the idea of "ousting a hundred schools of thought and respecting Confucianism alone", which has always influenced the Western Han Dynasty, so most literati still have the pursuit of Confucianism in their hearts.

1, the politicization of the literati class in the Eastern Han Dynasty

Although the scholar-bureaucrat class in the Western Han Dynasty has partially changed to secularization, the character of the scholar-bureaucrat class in the Eastern Han Dynasty still exists, but it has not completely disappeared, and of course it is only a minority.

The biggest change of the literati class was in the Wei and Jin Dynasties after the Eastern Han Dynasty. During the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the taxi class was completely secularized. They pursued fame and fortune and lost the character of the pre-Qin era. However, historians believe that the rise of the gentry in Wei and Jin Dynasties had an inestimable relationship with the gentry in the middle and late Eastern Han Dynasty.

As for how this qualitative change happened in the Eastern Han Dynasty, it can probably be attributed to the political direction. The official system of the Eastern Han Dynasty followed the official system of the Western Han Dynasty, with the central government as the mainstay and local officials as the supplement, and at the same time greatly strengthened the power of the central government.

However, there are some differences at the local level. The original county system has become a state-county system, which makes the original local power more decentralized and detailed. In this way, the corresponding responsibilities of local officials are more detailed.

Under this system, ordinary scholars have no access to the central government, but have more opportunities to participate in local politics. For example, according to the direction of employment, there are salt officials. And according to his position, there are county magistrate, Li Zheng and other official positions. The selection of these local officials mainly comes from the scholar class.

At this time, the gentry were generally local officials and were restricted by imperial power. In order to survive, he was assimilated politically, lost the personality and character of literati and scholars, and became a tool attached to imperial power. Gradually, the original ambitious and ambitious scholars compromised with the secular world and no longer adhered to the Tao in their hearts.

2. The gentry in the Eastern Han Dynasty compromised with the secular world, and it was hard to resist the temptation.

Before the Han Dynasty, literati were always called scholars, because they were just an independent individual with a good heart. But at the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the gentry class had developed into an gentry. The change from individual to family shows that the whole scholars in the Eastern Han Dynasty were almost completely secularized.

In the middle of the Eastern Han Dynasty, in order to strengthen agriculture, the central government selected more officials for governance. At this time, the "landlord" in the ancient sense appeared. They are an aristocratic class. Affected by interests, they are not thinking about how to improve people's quality of life, but how to make themselves and their families stronger.

Under the guidance of such thoughts, it is more difficult for the scholar class to resist the temptation, and the scholar's thoughts are more and more decadent.

For thousands of years, people's hearts have not changed. "Close to Zhu Zhechi, close to Mexico, people are black" also explains the relationship between environment and thought. More and more scholars forget their original intentions, are blinded by fame and fortune, and begin to pursue fame and fortune.

3. The gentry gradually formed in the Eastern Han Dynasty, and the gentry became completely secular.

The complete secularization of the gentry class should be after its formation. In the mid-Eastern Han Dynasty, scholars already had the concept of home, which was greater than the country and took root in their hearts.

At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, there were four famous families in the Eastern Han Dynasty-Yang, Xun, Chen and Yuan. Most of these gentry appeared in the early and middle Eastern Han Dynasty. Take Yang as an example. In the middle of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Yang Zhen, the ancestor of Yang, was admired by the world for his knowledge and virtue.

Since then, Yang has been accumulating family strength. Yang Zhen's son doesn't like his ambition to defend the gentry. His son firmly believes that "home is the world" and only a strong family is the foundation of survival.

So his son devoted himself to the development of family power, and he was able to gain a foothold in agriculture and military affairs, even competing with the central government, somewhat similar to the vassal state of Zhou Dynasty. By the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Yang and other three families had become four families in the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty.

Yuan Shao, whom we are familiar with, is the Yuan family among the four families. From the middle of the Eastern Han Dynasty to the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, the rise of the gentry also meant the rise of the gentry class, which was no longer the bottom of the nobility. However, this is not a beneficial change to history or society, and the gentry are called decadent systems and forces by historians.

At this time, the scholars have completely evolved from "scholars' ambition is in the Tao" in the early years of the Western Han Dynasty to "scholars are not exempt from customs", and the secularization of the literati class has been completed.

Therefore, it is not difficult to see that the change of scholars from having beautiful mountains and rivers to being unable to resist the secular temptation began with the selection of officials in the imperial examination system in the Western Han Dynasty and completed the formation of the gentry in the late Eastern Han Dynasty. There are many reasons, the most important of which is political assimilation, which has turned taxis with unattractive and strong personality into flattering gentry attached to powerful people.

This is due to the measures of the central government and the increase of local officials, which led to the increase of the gentry class and gradually evolved into the idea of "home under the world" instead of "country under the world". The ideological view that "scholars take Tao as their purpose" has also become "scholars are not exempt from customs".

References:

history

book of later han

The Book of Rites