With a wise monarch like Wei Wenhou, we also need a group of capable ministers who can make plans and win battles thousands of miles away. Most of these capable ministers came from the land of Xihe, and most of them were disciples of Bu Zixia, the Confucian sage.
Usually when people talk about Confucianism and Confucian scholars, they always think of those scholars with great erudition and great etiquette. This is actually a misunderstanding. When Confucius himself imparted knowledge to his disciples, he did not blindly emphasize complicated etiquette and justice, but often taught his disciples knowledge that could be applied in the world. For example, Zixia's lineage inherited Confucius' knowledge in this area and cultivated many talents who were practical in the world. Li Kui, Wu Qi, Duan Muqian and others are among the best.
Zixia was the only living Confucian scholar among the second generation disciples of Confucius at that time. In order to enhance the appeal of his culture, Wei Wenhou invited Bu Zixia, who was nearly a hundred years old, to the land of Xihe and worshiped him as the emperor's teacher. The world was shocked for a while. Let's talk about Xihe, which is close to the Qin State. The Qin people have intermarried with the Rong and Di since their inception. Their customs are barbaric and they are regarded as barbarians by the Central Plains countries. However, precisely because of their backward culture, they yearn for the Central Plains culture even more. Therefore, Marquis Wen of Wei chose Xihe as the place for Zixia's lectures because he had a clever plan to overwhelm the Qin people culturally. His far-sightedness and meticulous thinking are truly impressive.
Zixia was very old, and he was newly suffering from the pain of losing his son. He was blinded by crying. Therefore, the ones who actually taught in Xihe were his two disciples, Gong Yanggao from Qi and Gu Liangchi from Lu. These two people are the authors of Gongyang Chunqiu and Guliang Chunqiu. "Spring and Autumn" is said to be a history book edited and edited by Confucius. Gongyang Gao and Gu Liangchi provided interpretations for "Spring and Autumn". The knowledge was passed down and became "Gongyang Chunqiu" and "Guliang Chunqiu". Of course, the more famous "Zuo Shi Chun Qiu" is also one of the three "Spring and Autumn" branches. However, when it comes to political influence, "Gongyang Chunqiu" should undoubtedly be recommended as the highest. This is because scholars of this school are best at commenting on politics and criticizing human affairs, paying the most attention to real political life, and advocating the most reform and reform. However, just like Legalism and other pre-Qin schools, their reforms and reforms are all in the name of "restoration." Flag carried.
After years of cultivation, Xihe has produced a large number of talents, and the Wei imperial court behind Xihe Academy has naturally become their first choice of place of allegiance. Probably Wei Wenhou was so proud and excited when he saw that the people in the court were so satisfied and needed so many talented people to develop their talents and realize their dreams. He would also have the same pride and excitement as Emperor Taizong of Tang Dynasty, who said, "Heroes in the world have come to my rescue." But among all the talents, the one that Wei Wenhou valued most was Li Ke, who laid the foundation for his hegemony.
According to two great historians, Bai Shouyi and Li Dongfang, Li Ke was the famous Li Kui, the first person to carry out the Warring States Reform. Generally speaking, most people classify Li Kui as a Legalist. People may wonder that Li Kui was originally a disciple of Zixia, and Zixia was one of the seventy-two sages of Confucianism. How could he train a successor of Legalism? In fact, this is not surprising. Because Confucius was a staunch supporter of the Zhou rites, he always wanted to restore the Zhou rites, so that the world could return to the peaceful situation in which the emperor of Zhou was respected and the princes were the top. However, law comes from ritual, and the two have always been synonymous. Confucius's thoughts are not without elements of the rule of law. For example, he has a famous saying, "The way is governed by government, and the order is punished, so that the people can be spared and shameless." This means that Confucius also saw the effectiveness of severe punishments and laws, but he valued benevolence and etiquette more, so he felt that "the rule of law is to bring order to the people." The approach of "punishing them with punishment" is a bit excessive, because it will make the people "free from shame". In addition, after Confucius became the chief military officer of the Lu State, he first killed Shaozhengmao, who he considered to be "the traitor of mankind". This shows that he was not a Confucian who was always kind-hearted and kind-hearted as some people imagined. He also understood criminal law. Means.
However, the reason why Li Kui became the first reformer during the Warring States Period was not only because he was influenced by Confucius' criminal law thoughts passed down by Zixia, but also because of the changing situation and frequent wars in the Three Jin Dynasties, which forced Li Kui to embark on the path of reform. This is the path to reform. Everyone knows that whether it is his predecessor, Guan Zhong, the first Legalist in the Spring and Autumn Period, or his successor, Shang Yang, who made the barbaric and backward Qin State become the world's hegemon, their ideas are to enrich the country and strengthen the army. And this is all because of the pressure brought by survival.
With the support of Marquis Wen of Wei, the newly appointed Prime Minister Li Kui began vigorous reforms in Wei. The "Tao" of Legalism is different from that of Confucianism. Confucianism pays attention to "kingly way", while Legalism pays attention to "hegemony". The so-called hegemony means enriching the country and strengthening the army - first enrich the country, then strengthen the army. Only a rich country can strengthen the army. So, how to “rich the country”? The word "wealth" does not mean having more money - money is just a medium of exchange and a certificate of social credit. The ancients said that "gold, stone, pearls and jade cannot feed you when you are hungry, and you cannot clothe yourself when you are cold", which is profound and thorough. If you one-sidedly believe that money is wealth, then you only need to continue to mint coins. However, this is likely to cause inflation because there are no physical commodities equivalent to the minted currency on the market. So social wealth is actually a commodity.
So, which product is the most important? It's food. Therefore, the first policy of Li Kui's reform was "to teach according to the best efforts of the land." The so-called "teaching the best of the land" has two meanings. The first one is to further break the state-owned land system that "everything in the world is royal land", encourage land reclamation, and transfer part of the cultivated land to farmers in order to mobilize their enthusiasm and increase food production. And only one-tenth of their harvest was collected as government tax. Another meaning is just like its literal meaning, which is to encourage different treatment of land with different soil quality and planting different crops on it, so as to ensure the maximization of final returns. This is common knowledge today, but it was indeed an innovative idea at the time. Sure enough, according to Li Kui's expectations, in the few years since this policy was implemented, the Wei State was able to have a generally good harvest regardless of drought or flood, and the grain in the treasuries of Wei State was getting higher and higher. .
However, the social economy is an organic whole, and it does not mean that the more food there is, the better the entire social economy will be. If there is too much food, it must be transported by merchants and adjusted to meet people's different needs. Li Kui has long known this, but he needs to find a balance point in the exchanges and complementarities between the two major departments of agriculture and commerce. This balance point is a reasonable grain price. Because Li Kui discovered that if the food is too expensive, it will hurt the enthusiasm of businessmen to do business; on the other hand, if the food is sold too cheaply in the market, then farmers will definitely not be willing to grow food, and they will think of other ways out, for example, If you learn from businessmen to do business, agriculture, which is the foundation of a rich country, will definitely suffer a huge blow.
Therefore, in order to stabilize prices, Li Kui promulgated the second policy of the reform: "Ping Bian". When the word "籴" is broken down, it means "ru" at the top and "mi" at the bottom. It can be seen that "籴" originally meant to buy rice, and later it was extended to "buy". The so-called "pingbian" means stabilizing commodity prices. Of course, the most important thing is the price of rice. There are generally two means to stabilize prices. One is administrative means, which means that prices are stabilized by rigid provisions of power. However, although this method may work wonders in the short term, it will not be beneficial to market stability in the long term. This is a stupid method, or it is a temporary measure that has to be adopted to solve the urgent need. As the Prime Minister of Wei, Li Kui of course had to "have far-reaching plans" for Wei, so he adopted the second method: economic means. The so-called economic means are to balance prices by adjusting the supply of various commodities in the market (at that time, the operation of the commodity economy was far less developed than today, so there was no talk of adjusting the market through monetary means for the time being). How to adjust the supply of goods? What Li Kui could use was naturally the grain, cloth and other goods collected from the official treasury. His method is simple. In good years, he collects grain at relatively low prices and stores it. Once a famine occurs in the coming year and the grain harvest fails, the stored grain can be distributed at low prices or free of charge. In this way, the price of food will not fluctuate greatly, the lives of ordinary people will be improved, and there will not be a situation where "bad things in the west of the river will be moved to the east of the river" or "bad things in the east of the river will be moved to Hanoi". When people's lives stabilize, the population will definitely increase significantly. In this way, Wei will become rich and strong. Li Kui's "Ping Bian" policy achieved great success.
Abundant treasury and a prosperous population are only necessary conditions for hegemony, but not sufficient factors. If a country's economic development is stable but its people are scattered, it will be impossible to organize and mobilize. And due to different laws and regulations, there will be constant conflicts between members of society. In this way, most of a country's power will be used to maintain the country's internal stability. How can it talk about external hegemony? The same goes for military organizations. The most terrifying army is not an army with adequate logistics, but an army with orders and prohibitions, and the generals drive them like an arm. It is the kind of army where every soldier can advance or retreat according to the orders of the commander, no matter whether they are facing a mountain of swords or a mountain of swords. Or an army of fire. Li Kui's method of "educating" ordinary people was very simple. He did not invite knowledgeable people to open schools to teach truth, but used severe punishments to let the people know what they could and could not do. This enables them to understand the principles of advance and retreat.
In fact, Li Kui had already begun his "Legalist experiment" when he was the governor of Shangdi County. Shangdi and Qin are adjacent to each other. The people have always been fierce and fierce, and there were many fights and lawsuits between them. After Li Kui became the county magistrate, he cleverly came up with the idea of solving the accumulated lawsuits through archery competitions. Whoever can shoot accurately will be the winner of the lawsuit. As a result, people worked hard to practice archery in order to win the lawsuit. After a while, the archery skills of the Shangdi people made a qualitative leap. From then on, they used their bows and arrows to make the Qin people suffer enough when fighting Qin. Of course, this is because during the Warring States Period, military commanders were in charge, and because Shangdi was a border area. At that time, most of the border areas were occupied land, so there were many counties in the border areas, which was very different from the many counties in the inland areas. -So Li Kui's "Archery Judgment" is just a temporary method. When he became the Prime Minister of Wei, he began to consider the entire country's legal system. The crystallization of his thinking was the famous "Book of Laws".
The Book of Laws consists of six parts: "Theft Law", "Catching Law", "Prison Law", "Thieves Law", "Miscellaneous Laws" and "Special Laws". It has made special arrangements for various crimes and their punishments. Clear rules. What is particularly worth noting is that the "Dharma Sutra" clearly states that not only if someone carries out an action, but also if someone has the idea of stealing other people's property, he must be punished by execution or execution. This shows how harsh the legislation is. .
The Dharma Scripture can be regarded as the first written law in ancient my country. Later, when Shang Yang carried out his reform and formulated laws and regulations for the Qin State, he used Li Kui's "Fa Jing" as a reference blueprint. After the Qin Dynasty destroyed the Han Dynasty, Han law also inherited the Qin system. Since then, the laws of all dynasties have made gains and losses based on the Han law. This shows the great significance of the "Dharma Scripture" in the history of our country.
All the reform initiatives of various schools in the pre-Qin period mentioned the selection of talents. The so-called "selection of talents and appointment of talents" refers to the hereditary system of "Shiqing Shilu" in the Zhou Dynasty. Therefore, although the law comes from etiquette, it is different from etiquette after all, because the basis of etiquette is blood relations. Legalism's opposition to rites was to get rid of this system of selecting officials based on blood ties. So, if you don’t rely on blood ties to become an official, how can you “select the best and appoint the most capable”? "For the sake of the country, food must be served by hard work and salary must be paid by merit. If you are capable, you must be rewarded and punished." This is the answer given by Li Kui.
After Li Kui's series of top-to-bottom reforms, Wei already had strong strength. This rising giant will let out a roar that will make the whole world notice his existence.
