Chapter 408: The imperial examination begins! Recruiting scholars!
Speaking of this, Liu Rong had wanted to do this for a long time.
——Look at how many prime ministers of the Han Dynasty died of old age while in office over the years?
The founding prime minister Xiao He, his successor Cao Shen, and later Chen Ping;
Guan Ying during the reign of Emperor Taizong, Shentu Jia during the reign of the previous emperor, and so on.
Counting on one's fingers, the Han Dynasty appointed eleven prime ministers in the past nearly sixty years, including Xiao He, Cao Shen, Wang Ling, Chen Ping, Shen Yiji, Zhou Bo, Guan Ying, Zhang Cang, Shentu Jia, Zhou Yafu, Liu She, etc.
Excluding Liu She who is still in office, five of the first ten died in office!
Even for the remaining five, it was not that they were unwilling to die in office - on the contrary, they were very happy to die in office, but ultimately did not get their wish.
For example, the third prime minister of the Han Dynasty, Wang Ling, the Marquis of Anguo, angered Empress Dowager Lü, who wanted to enfeoff all the Lü clans as princes, because of his remark "Only the Liu clan can be king". He was then promoted in name only and demoted in reality. He was promoted to the Imperial Tutor of the former Shaodi Liu Gong, but soon resigned in anger.
For example, Shen Yiji, Marquis of Pi Yang, was a waste who was forced into power by Empress Dowager Lu. He was naturally deposed after the Lü Rebellion and was eventually even hit to death on the street with a hammer by Liu Chang, King of Huainan.
After that, Emperor Taizong made the move of "the Prime Minister should be the first in the world to be respectful to all other officials" and drove Marquis Zhou Bo back to his fiefdom to farm, and then let Zhou Bo experience the "pride of a jailer".
Ten years later, Zhang Cang, Marquis of Beiping, had a dispute with Emperor Taizong over the Huanglong change of the era name. The conflict was irreconcilable and he was eventually brutally dismissed from his position as prime minister by Emperor Taizong.
The last one, Zhou Yafu, the Marquis of Tiao, simply did not want to be the prime minister, and was even suspected of "not wanting to live", and was eventually deposed by the previous emperor...
From the above-mentioned people - among these ten prime ministers, five served their entire lives in office, and five unfortunately did not serve their entire lives in office, it is not difficult to find that the bureaucratic group of the Han Dynasty was actually quite solidified.
The reason is simple: in this era, perhaps anyone who becomes prime minister hopes to remain in office until the end of his life, and to hold the ultimate power in the world until his death, which cannot be held by ministers outside the Liu family.
But the emperor was not happy!
No emperor with a normal mind would want a highly respected prime minister to stay in office for too long.
Therefore, as long as it is possible and as long as objective conditions permit, the emperor will do his best to promote the personnel iteration in the court - at least the orderly iteration of the position of prime minister.
This is the truth behind the saying “running water never stagnates”.
The problem, then, is obvious.
——It is impossible for the emperor not to hope that a prime minister would stay in office for more than ten or twenty years, and eventually grow into a ruler of the future, or even an old monster that he himself could not deal with;
But in the past few decades, as long as the prime minister himself did not make any principled mistakes, the emperors of the Han Dynasty would allow them to remain in office until the end of their lives.
I didn't want to do it, but in the end, I still did it;
The only reasonable explanation is: I have to do it.
There is nothing I can do but do this.
Objective conditions do not allow what I originally wanted to do, so I can only accept this unwilling fact.
Specifically speaking of the position of prime minister, the situation in the past few decades where 'more than half of them died in office' is that successive emperors of the Han Dynasty actually hoped to have a new prime minister every few years without affecting the operation of the court.
But objective conditions do not allow it.
What objective conditions?
no one.
Over the past few decades, except for the first ten years or so after the founding of the country when the founding fathers still had some strength, for most of the rest of the time, the Han family could not even find a qualified candidate for prime minister!
It was not so bad during the reign of Emperor Taizu Liu Bang, with Xiao He, Cao Shen, Wang Ling, and Chen Ping;
Although the quality is indeed steadily declining, they are still above the standard and are all qualified candidates for prime minister.
But after Chen Ping, the quality of the prime ministers of the Han Dynasty dropped drastically.
——What the hell is Shen Yiji?
——Can Zhou Bo also govern the country?
——Where did Guan Ying come from?
It was not until Zhang Cang, Marquis of Beiping, took office in the middle and late period of Emperor Taizong's reign that Han public opinion finally nodded in satisfaction: I said it, the position of prime minister can only be held by founding fathers.
As a result, within just ten years, Zhang Cang was brought down and Shentu Jia was forced to take over, which was immediately booed inside and outside the court.
Although few people directly criticized Shentu Jia for being "unworthy of his position", sarcastic comments such as "each generation is worse than the previous one" and "anybody can become prime minister" persisted for quite a long time.
Then there was Zhou Yafu, and now there is Liu She...
To put it bluntly, from the time when Emperor Taizu Liu Bang founded the Han Dynasty to the present time when Liu Rong is in power, in just sixty years, the selection standards for prime ministers have actually been rapidly lowered.
——During the reign of Emperor Taizu, there were a number of talented people in state administration and a group of good generals inside and outside the court. Choosing a prime minister was not enough to overwhelm Emperor Taizu, but at least he could rank them in order. When the founding prime minister Xiao He was still in office, the first four prime ministers of the Han Dynasty were appointed.
During the reign of Empress Dowager Lü, although the situation was not as "affluent" as during the reign of Emperor Taizu, there were still two people designated by Emperor Taizu - Wang Ling and Chen Ping.
Of course, he is not as good as Xiao He and Cao Shen, but he is decent enough.
I won’t talk about Shen Yiji, those who understand will understand.
By the time of Emperor Taizong, Chen Ping was already very old, and the position of prime minister was basically passed around among the meritorious officials of the Lü clan: Chen Ping, Zhou Bo, Guan Ying and others.
It was not until all these people died and Zhang Cang took office that the Han Dynasty's group of prime ministers had a last hurrah.
After Zhang Cang, there was no one left.
What is the concept of 'no one'?
——There are more than one hundred marquises, but Emperor Taizong couldn’t find even one prime minister who was barely decent enough!
As a last resort, they had to expand the scope of investigation, and finally selected Shentu Jia from among the Guannei Hou, who was just barely good enough - or even not necessarily good enough!
Then, in the morning, Shentu Jia was selected, in the morning, he was made a marquis, at noon, he was offered sacrifice to the heaven and appointed as the prime minister, and in the afternoon, Shentu Jia was sent to work at the prime minister's residence...
Let alone the later period of the previous emperor, and even up to the present day.
A lucky minister like Liu She was able to become the prime minister, not only for several years, but also for several years without any intention of a temporary transition!
Even a relative like Dou Ying became the only candidate for the next prime minister of the Han Dynasty. Liu Rong could only turn his attention to the talent absorbed from the local counties and kingdoms: Han Anguo...
All I can say is that it is true that the Han Dynasty's prime ministers were inferior to the previous generation.
But the most fundamental reason for this situation is that the overall quality of the Han bureaucracy and even the intellectual group has been steadily declining over the past few decades.
——Compared to that turbulent era of war and conflict, the number of scholars in the world is indeed greater;
But the quality is indeed worse.
The old elites were mostly destroyed by war and conflict, and the new elites were not fully formed;
Even if some have been formed, they are preventing the spread of knowledge and the growth of the elite group.
The monopoly of knowledge and books strictly limited the scope of "scholars" in the world to academic elites and aristocrats.
Only the children of the nobility and the scholars were lucky enough to read the ancient books handed down from their families and learn from them to equip their brains.
Only this very small number of people are qualified to be intellectuals.
This meant that when the unified Han regime needed to recruit reserve bureaucrats from the intellectual community, its choices and the base for screening were limited to an extremely narrow range.
Take a very simple example.
At present, under the Han Dynasty, there are more than 4 million households and nearly 30 million people.
Among these 30 million people, even if we remove half of the women and the elderly and the weak, there will still be at least millions of men of working age left who can contribute to the country and the nation.
But the vast majority of them have no access to knowledge, so they can only contribute their physical strength and labor, but cannot contribute their brain power to the country.
As for those who are qualified to learn knowledge, become intellectuals, and are regarded as "official candidates" by the Han family, what proportion do they account for among these hundreds of millions of people?
Just count on your fingers. --There are more than one hundred noble families, but less than two hundred. Even if we count that each family has ten sons who study literature, there are only two thousand.
If we remove half of the playboys, half of the warriors, and then remove the defective ones who failed to inherit the excellent genes of their ancestors, it would be remarkable if there could be thirty to fifty capable officials out of two thousand people.
Let’s look at the academic cliques.
Huang-Lao school of thought was held in high esteem, and for more than twenty years, the Communist Party of China had only one figure, Ji An.
The first Legalist school to emerge was Chao Cuo, and then came the new generation such as Zhidu, Zhao Yu, and Zhang Tang, but after all it was a family tradition, and the number of them also did not exceed three digits - looking around the world, there were only about a hundred people who could see it.
There are indeed a lot of Confucian people.
But the quality is really bad.
Or should we say, it is uneven.
The upper limit of Confucianism is that in recent decades, it has contributed a large number of national treasure-level talents in governing the country, such as Yan Yi and Gongsun Hong, to the Han Dynasty!
However, its lowest level can also produce national scum like Di Shan, the "Xiongnu Shepherd Dog".
More often than not, they adopt a moderate attitude.
——You mean he’s useless?
After all, he is an intellectual and can do something;
——Say he’s useful?
After all, he was born into a Confucian family, so his butt is naturally crooked and he always causes trouble.
Historically, it was for this reason that Emperor Wu of Han abolished all schools of thought and promoted Confucianism alone.
No one uses it!
Apart from Confucianism - apart from Confucianism which advocates "teaching without distinction of class", other schools of thought are simply unable to provide the Han Dynasty with a steady stream of intellectuals to supplement the overstretched bureaucratic system!
And at this timeline, there are still several decades before Confucianism becomes the dominant school.
Liu Rong still has time.
Liu Rong still has a chance to get all schools of thought to lower their standards and transform from the previous closed-minded thinking of "passing on knowledge to males but not females" and "passing on knowledge to within the family but not outsiders" to an open teaching model similar to Confucianism.
There is no distinction between education and distinction.
This is one of the rare points where Liu Rong agrees with the Confucian value system.
So what can we do to mobilize the enthusiasm of various schools and doctrines?
The answer is nothing more than: coercion and inducement.
Coercion is naturally the only solution;
As for inducement, no matter how you say it, it all comes down to what people in later generations said: learn literary and martial arts, and sell them to the emperor.
——Students learn a certain doctrine in order to become an official!
Liu Rong had the final say on who would be appointed as an official and from which school of thought more officials would be recruited.
Therefore, Liu Rong could theoretically manipulate various schools of thought and rank them low in the minds of scholars throughout the world.
As the saying goes: The King of Chu likes thin waists, and many people in the palace starve to death;
The Han emperor favored cruel officials, and many people died unjustly.
The King of Qin likes warriors, and all the people in the country are strong men.
In the feudal era, the emperor's personal preferences could influence the inclinations of the people of the world.
Let me say something a little exaggerated: if one day Liu Rong expressed his preference for "only Mohist scholars", then within three days at most, there would be tens of thousands of barefoot and brown-clad Mohists on the streets of Chang'an!
It is precisely for this reason that Liu Rong rarely revealed his personal preferences for his superiors in the past - even if he did, his expressions were targeted and purposeful.
So what Liu Rong had to do next was to use the examination to clearly tell the world - especially those academic tycoons who mastered or even monopolized knowledge;
——I want you to open source!
——Give me all the knowledge you have been hiding!
Otherwise, those three or five talents that your school has hidden and taught, if I accidentally eliminate them all and don’t want any of them, then your school will be doomed in this life (thumbs-up).
Liu Rong knew that this would take a process.
For example: In the first imperial examination, if there were 10,000 people taking the exam, there would probably be 7,000 to 8,000 Confucian scholars, plus less than 2,000 scholars from other schools.
When Liu Rong absorbs one or two thousand people from these tens of thousands of people at one time, and among them there are several hundred Confucian scholars, a few Mohists, a dozen Huang-Lao scholars, and a hundred or so "Legalists", other schools of thought will react: Alas, something is not right!
This thing called the imperial examination requires a lot of skill!
No!
Go back quickly to recruit more disciples, and strive to win over those corrupt scholars in the next round!
The second time, perhaps the situation will not change much - Confucian candidates will still account for more than 70%, and more than 60% of those who pass will be Confucian scholars.
But as time went by, the third time, the fourth time...
One day, the Huang-Lao, Legalist and even Mohist schools will be able to gather a team of thousands or even tens of thousands of people to take the exam.
At that time, as long as Liu Rong secretly lends a helping hand and suppresses Confucianism, even if the era of the Hundred Schools of Thought could not be reproduced, it would at least be able to start a new round of great collisions of Chinese thoughts.
Liu Rong never forgot: the way of an emperor is ultimately nothing more than the word "checks and balances".
There should be checks and balances between individuals and between groups.
There must be checks and balances between classes, and also between schools of thought and ideas.
It is unacceptable for one company to dominate the market;
It is not an either-or situation;
The old forces are old but not dead, and the new forces are strong but not victorious, which is even more unacceptable...
After understanding this, Liu Rong's final decision was revealed to the world at the same time when public opinion reached its peak.
——The course is open!
——Recruit scholars!
Thus, the first imperial examination in Chinese history was held in the autumn of the second year of Emperor Rong Xinyuan, which opened a new chapter in Chinese civilization.
That’s right;
The exam is in the fall.
Therefore, Liu Rong was very shameless and frankly named this scientific expedition, and every scientific expedition in the future, as: Autumn Examination...
(End of this chapter)
Speaking of this, Liu Rong had wanted to do this for a long time.
——Look at how many prime ministers of the Han Dynasty died of old age while in office over the years?
The founding prime minister Xiao He, his successor Cao Shen, and later Chen Ping;
Guan Ying during the reign of Emperor Taizong, Shentu Jia during the reign of the previous emperor, and so on.
Counting on one's fingers, the Han Dynasty appointed eleven prime ministers in the past nearly sixty years, including Xiao He, Cao Shen, Wang Ling, Chen Ping, Shen Yiji, Zhou Bo, Guan Ying, Zhang Cang, Shentu Jia, Zhou Yafu, Liu She, etc.
Excluding Liu She who is still in office, five of the first ten died in office!
Even for the remaining five, it was not that they were unwilling to die in office - on the contrary, they were very happy to die in office, but ultimately did not get their wish.
For example, the third prime minister of the Han Dynasty, Wang Ling, the Marquis of Anguo, angered Empress Dowager Lü, who wanted to enfeoff all the Lü clans as princes, because of his remark "Only the Liu clan can be king". He was then promoted in name only and demoted in reality. He was promoted to the Imperial Tutor of the former Shaodi Liu Gong, but soon resigned in anger.
For example, Shen Yiji, Marquis of Pi Yang, was a waste who was forced into power by Empress Dowager Lu. He was naturally deposed after the Lü Rebellion and was eventually even hit to death on the street with a hammer by Liu Chang, King of Huainan.
After that, Emperor Taizong made the move of "the Prime Minister should be the first in the world to be respectful to all other officials" and drove Marquis Zhou Bo back to his fiefdom to farm, and then let Zhou Bo experience the "pride of a jailer".
Ten years later, Zhang Cang, Marquis of Beiping, had a dispute with Emperor Taizong over the Huanglong change of the era name. The conflict was irreconcilable and he was eventually brutally dismissed from his position as prime minister by Emperor Taizong.
The last one, Zhou Yafu, the Marquis of Tiao, simply did not want to be the prime minister, and was even suspected of "not wanting to live", and was eventually deposed by the previous emperor...
From the above-mentioned people - among these ten prime ministers, five served their entire lives in office, and five unfortunately did not serve their entire lives in office, it is not difficult to find that the bureaucratic group of the Han Dynasty was actually quite solidified.
The reason is simple: in this era, perhaps anyone who becomes prime minister hopes to remain in office until the end of his life, and to hold the ultimate power in the world until his death, which cannot be held by ministers outside the Liu family.
But the emperor was not happy!
No emperor with a normal mind would want a highly respected prime minister to stay in office for too long.
Therefore, as long as it is possible and as long as objective conditions permit, the emperor will do his best to promote the personnel iteration in the court - at least the orderly iteration of the position of prime minister.
This is the truth behind the saying “running water never stagnates”.
The problem, then, is obvious.
——It is impossible for the emperor not to hope that a prime minister would stay in office for more than ten or twenty years, and eventually grow into a ruler of the future, or even an old monster that he himself could not deal with;
But in the past few decades, as long as the prime minister himself did not make any principled mistakes, the emperors of the Han Dynasty would allow them to remain in office until the end of their lives.
I didn't want to do it, but in the end, I still did it;
The only reasonable explanation is: I have to do it.
There is nothing I can do but do this.
Objective conditions do not allow what I originally wanted to do, so I can only accept this unwilling fact.
Specifically speaking of the position of prime minister, the situation in the past few decades where 'more than half of them died in office' is that successive emperors of the Han Dynasty actually hoped to have a new prime minister every few years without affecting the operation of the court.
But objective conditions do not allow it.
What objective conditions?
no one.
Over the past few decades, except for the first ten years or so after the founding of the country when the founding fathers still had some strength, for most of the rest of the time, the Han family could not even find a qualified candidate for prime minister!
It was not so bad during the reign of Emperor Taizu Liu Bang, with Xiao He, Cao Shen, Wang Ling, and Chen Ping;
Although the quality is indeed steadily declining, they are still above the standard and are all qualified candidates for prime minister.
But after Chen Ping, the quality of the prime ministers of the Han Dynasty dropped drastically.
——What the hell is Shen Yiji?
——Can Zhou Bo also govern the country?
——Where did Guan Ying come from?
It was not until Zhang Cang, Marquis of Beiping, took office in the middle and late period of Emperor Taizong's reign that Han public opinion finally nodded in satisfaction: I said it, the position of prime minister can only be held by founding fathers.
As a result, within just ten years, Zhang Cang was brought down and Shentu Jia was forced to take over, which was immediately booed inside and outside the court.
Although few people directly criticized Shentu Jia for being "unworthy of his position", sarcastic comments such as "each generation is worse than the previous one" and "anybody can become prime minister" persisted for quite a long time.
Then there was Zhou Yafu, and now there is Liu She...
To put it bluntly, from the time when Emperor Taizu Liu Bang founded the Han Dynasty to the present time when Liu Rong is in power, in just sixty years, the selection standards for prime ministers have actually been rapidly lowered.
——During the reign of Emperor Taizu, there were a number of talented people in state administration and a group of good generals inside and outside the court. Choosing a prime minister was not enough to overwhelm Emperor Taizu, but at least he could rank them in order. When the founding prime minister Xiao He was still in office, the first four prime ministers of the Han Dynasty were appointed.
During the reign of Empress Dowager Lü, although the situation was not as "affluent" as during the reign of Emperor Taizu, there were still two people designated by Emperor Taizu - Wang Ling and Chen Ping.
Of course, he is not as good as Xiao He and Cao Shen, but he is decent enough.
I won’t talk about Shen Yiji, those who understand will understand.
By the time of Emperor Taizong, Chen Ping was already very old, and the position of prime minister was basically passed around among the meritorious officials of the Lü clan: Chen Ping, Zhou Bo, Guan Ying and others.
It was not until all these people died and Zhang Cang took office that the Han Dynasty's group of prime ministers had a last hurrah.
After Zhang Cang, there was no one left.
What is the concept of 'no one'?
——There are more than one hundred marquises, but Emperor Taizong couldn’t find even one prime minister who was barely decent enough!
As a last resort, they had to expand the scope of investigation, and finally selected Shentu Jia from among the Guannei Hou, who was just barely good enough - or even not necessarily good enough!
Then, in the morning, Shentu Jia was selected, in the morning, he was made a marquis, at noon, he was offered sacrifice to the heaven and appointed as the prime minister, and in the afternoon, Shentu Jia was sent to work at the prime minister's residence...
Let alone the later period of the previous emperor, and even up to the present day.
A lucky minister like Liu She was able to become the prime minister, not only for several years, but also for several years without any intention of a temporary transition!
Even a relative like Dou Ying became the only candidate for the next prime minister of the Han Dynasty. Liu Rong could only turn his attention to the talent absorbed from the local counties and kingdoms: Han Anguo...
All I can say is that it is true that the Han Dynasty's prime ministers were inferior to the previous generation.
But the most fundamental reason for this situation is that the overall quality of the Han bureaucracy and even the intellectual group has been steadily declining over the past few decades.
——Compared to that turbulent era of war and conflict, the number of scholars in the world is indeed greater;
But the quality is indeed worse.
The old elites were mostly destroyed by war and conflict, and the new elites were not fully formed;
Even if some have been formed, they are preventing the spread of knowledge and the growth of the elite group.
The monopoly of knowledge and books strictly limited the scope of "scholars" in the world to academic elites and aristocrats.
Only the children of the nobility and the scholars were lucky enough to read the ancient books handed down from their families and learn from them to equip their brains.
Only this very small number of people are qualified to be intellectuals.
This meant that when the unified Han regime needed to recruit reserve bureaucrats from the intellectual community, its choices and the base for screening were limited to an extremely narrow range.
Take a very simple example.
At present, under the Han Dynasty, there are more than 4 million households and nearly 30 million people.
Among these 30 million people, even if we remove half of the women and the elderly and the weak, there will still be at least millions of men of working age left who can contribute to the country and the nation.
But the vast majority of them have no access to knowledge, so they can only contribute their physical strength and labor, but cannot contribute their brain power to the country.
As for those who are qualified to learn knowledge, become intellectuals, and are regarded as "official candidates" by the Han family, what proportion do they account for among these hundreds of millions of people?
Just count on your fingers. --There are more than one hundred noble families, but less than two hundred. Even if we count that each family has ten sons who study literature, there are only two thousand.
If we remove half of the playboys, half of the warriors, and then remove the defective ones who failed to inherit the excellent genes of their ancestors, it would be remarkable if there could be thirty to fifty capable officials out of two thousand people.
Let’s look at the academic cliques.
Huang-Lao school of thought was held in high esteem, and for more than twenty years, the Communist Party of China had only one figure, Ji An.
The first Legalist school to emerge was Chao Cuo, and then came the new generation such as Zhidu, Zhao Yu, and Zhang Tang, but after all it was a family tradition, and the number of them also did not exceed three digits - looking around the world, there were only about a hundred people who could see it.
There are indeed a lot of Confucian people.
But the quality is really bad.
Or should we say, it is uneven.
The upper limit of Confucianism is that in recent decades, it has contributed a large number of national treasure-level talents in governing the country, such as Yan Yi and Gongsun Hong, to the Han Dynasty!
However, its lowest level can also produce national scum like Di Shan, the "Xiongnu Shepherd Dog".
More often than not, they adopt a moderate attitude.
——You mean he’s useless?
After all, he is an intellectual and can do something;
——Say he’s useful?
After all, he was born into a Confucian family, so his butt is naturally crooked and he always causes trouble.
Historically, it was for this reason that Emperor Wu of Han abolished all schools of thought and promoted Confucianism alone.
No one uses it!
Apart from Confucianism - apart from Confucianism which advocates "teaching without distinction of class", other schools of thought are simply unable to provide the Han Dynasty with a steady stream of intellectuals to supplement the overstretched bureaucratic system!
And at this timeline, there are still several decades before Confucianism becomes the dominant school.
Liu Rong still has time.
Liu Rong still has a chance to get all schools of thought to lower their standards and transform from the previous closed-minded thinking of "passing on knowledge to males but not females" and "passing on knowledge to within the family but not outsiders" to an open teaching model similar to Confucianism.
There is no distinction between education and distinction.
This is one of the rare points where Liu Rong agrees with the Confucian value system.
So what can we do to mobilize the enthusiasm of various schools and doctrines?
The answer is nothing more than: coercion and inducement.
Coercion is naturally the only solution;
As for inducement, no matter how you say it, it all comes down to what people in later generations said: learn literary and martial arts, and sell them to the emperor.
——Students learn a certain doctrine in order to become an official!
Liu Rong had the final say on who would be appointed as an official and from which school of thought more officials would be recruited.
Therefore, Liu Rong could theoretically manipulate various schools of thought and rank them low in the minds of scholars throughout the world.
As the saying goes: The King of Chu likes thin waists, and many people in the palace starve to death;
The Han emperor favored cruel officials, and many people died unjustly.
The King of Qin likes warriors, and all the people in the country are strong men.
In the feudal era, the emperor's personal preferences could influence the inclinations of the people of the world.
Let me say something a little exaggerated: if one day Liu Rong expressed his preference for "only Mohist scholars", then within three days at most, there would be tens of thousands of barefoot and brown-clad Mohists on the streets of Chang'an!
It is precisely for this reason that Liu Rong rarely revealed his personal preferences for his superiors in the past - even if he did, his expressions were targeted and purposeful.
So what Liu Rong had to do next was to use the examination to clearly tell the world - especially those academic tycoons who mastered or even monopolized knowledge;
——I want you to open source!
——Give me all the knowledge you have been hiding!
Otherwise, those three or five talents that your school has hidden and taught, if I accidentally eliminate them all and don’t want any of them, then your school will be doomed in this life (thumbs-up).
Liu Rong knew that this would take a process.
For example: In the first imperial examination, if there were 10,000 people taking the exam, there would probably be 7,000 to 8,000 Confucian scholars, plus less than 2,000 scholars from other schools.
When Liu Rong absorbs one or two thousand people from these tens of thousands of people at one time, and among them there are several hundred Confucian scholars, a few Mohists, a dozen Huang-Lao scholars, and a hundred or so "Legalists", other schools of thought will react: Alas, something is not right!
This thing called the imperial examination requires a lot of skill!
No!
Go back quickly to recruit more disciples, and strive to win over those corrupt scholars in the next round!
The second time, perhaps the situation will not change much - Confucian candidates will still account for more than 70%, and more than 60% of those who pass will be Confucian scholars.
But as time went by, the third time, the fourth time...
One day, the Huang-Lao, Legalist and even Mohist schools will be able to gather a team of thousands or even tens of thousands of people to take the exam.
At that time, as long as Liu Rong secretly lends a helping hand and suppresses Confucianism, even if the era of the Hundred Schools of Thought could not be reproduced, it would at least be able to start a new round of great collisions of Chinese thoughts.
Liu Rong never forgot: the way of an emperor is ultimately nothing more than the word "checks and balances".
There should be checks and balances between individuals and between groups.
There must be checks and balances between classes, and also between schools of thought and ideas.
It is unacceptable for one company to dominate the market;
It is not an either-or situation;
The old forces are old but not dead, and the new forces are strong but not victorious, which is even more unacceptable...
After understanding this, Liu Rong's final decision was revealed to the world at the same time when public opinion reached its peak.
——The course is open!
——Recruit scholars!
Thus, the first imperial examination in Chinese history was held in the autumn of the second year of Emperor Rong Xinyuan, which opened a new chapter in Chinese civilization.
That’s right;
The exam is in the fall.
Therefore, Liu Rong was very shameless and frankly named this scientific expedition, and every scientific expedition in the future, as: Autumn Examination...
(End of this chapter)
