It is true that civil servants often push back the emperor's wishes. As for the means, there are both hard and soft methods, but the current situation is not the same as usual.
Although this group of nobles are all unreliable and all kinds of scum when it comes to fighting, but when it comes to officialdom, even if they are platinum per capita, they are all well-connected.
The reason why this matter is different is actually what Gao Pragmatic himself said just now, that is, "the mausoleum work is extraordinary."
How extraordinary, this is rooted in Chinese cultural tradition.
Because of the Confucian tradition, Chinese people have always been relatively superficial about belief in God and Buddhism. Many people seem to believe in it, but in fact they believe in it if it works well and abandon it if it doesn't work.
My begging was of no use, so I came to fulfill my wish, which means that you are still of some use, so I came to thank you; my begging was of no use, so I just pretended that you don’t exist, and I won’t bother to talk to you anymore in the future. I love so and so. . Belief in God and Buddhism is like a business to the Chinese, just an exchange. There is absolutely no "spirit" like other civilizations that are willing to sacrifice everything for their own gods.
People always have to have some faith. Since the Chinese people since ancient times have not really believed in gods and Buddhas, then what exactly is the faith of the Chinese people? In fact, Chinese people, especially traditional literati, have only two types of true worship, namely "Heaven Worship" and "Ancestor Worship".
What is heaven worship?
Chinese myths and legends may be the most unique in the world. Among a lot of unique myths, there is one god who can be called the most unique. The status of this god in the hearts of the Chinese people is equivalent to that of God in Western mythology, but no myth or legend has ever given any detailed description of this almost omnipotent god. "He" He is also the only deity among the many myths and stories of the Chinese nation that has not been transformed into a facial expression or a totem. We can’t even figure out whether he should be one person, one statue or one.
Yes, this strange existence is the "God" we often talk about. Foreigners will say "Thank God" when they feel they are very lucky, but what about the Chinese?
"God bless you."
Chinese mythological stories are very coherent, just like narrating an unknowable history, from "Pangu opened the sky" to "Nuwa created man", to "ten suns came out together", and then from "Hou Yi shot the sun" From "Chang'e flying to the moon", to "Gonggong's anger touching Buzhou Mountain" to "Nuwa mending the sky", followed by "Dayu controlling the floods" and so on, it seems that there has never been a god named "Heaven" Directly involved in it, but such a god who cannot be verified has been worshiped by the people for five thousand years.
Some people say that "Heaven" is the "Emperor of Heaven", which seems to make sense at first glance, but anyone who has a little knowledge of Chinese mythology will know that this statement is untenable.
Ancient kings all called themselves "Emperor". It seems that as long as it is related to "Heaven", it is orthodox. However, the amazing thing is that Chinese literary legends have no respect at all for the real objects such as "Heaven", "Heavenly Emperor" and "Jade Emperor" in Chinese mythology.
Putting aside the "havoc in heaven" in "Journey to the West", as long as you read "The List of Gods" you will know that the status of gods is lower than that of immortals, and the highest achievement of immortals is "immortality" and "longevity and heaven" together". It can be seen from this that "Heaven" is an existence far higher than the gods in "Heaven".
Some people say that "Heaven" refers to the "Way of Heaven", which is much more reliable than the "Emperor of Heaven". But if we examine it carefully, there are still big loopholes.
"The Way of Heaven" or "Tao" was proposed by Laozi in the "Tao Te Ching", and the Chinese people's worship of "Heaven" was formed much earlier than this. In fact, the worship of "Heaven" already existed before the emergence of writing. From the titles such as "God" and "Son of Heaven", and from slang such as "Man is doing it, God is watching" and "God has eyes". It is not difficult to find that for the ancestors of the Chinese people, "Heaven" is something or someone who is deified, and it is by no means an illusory "Heaven".
So what exactly is heaven? So far, no one has been able to come up with a point of view that everyone is convinced of. They can only roughly believe that "God" is the specific manifestation of "Heavenly Way" - but they cannot be "concrete" into a specific image. So when Chinese people worship heaven, they never place a statue of a god in front of people and say: "This is heaven."
But ancestor worship is much more specific than heaven worship. Academic circles believe that there are two major symptoms of Chinese civilization that are particularly important. One is the clan system (Tribe System) linked by blood-line patriarchal families, and the other is the rationalized shamanism tradition (Shamanism rationalized). The two are closely connected and formed into one body, and have continued to this day in various forms for a long time.
Intellectual historians believe that archaeological discoveries from the Neolithic Age prove that one of the indisputable major primitive phenomena of Chinese culture is ancestor worship. Many other cultures also have ancestor worship, but China's ancestor worship has its own unique characteristics.
The words used by intellectual history scholars are relatively unfamiliar to ordinary people, so I won’t go into details here. Let’s just “speak in human terms.” One of the important keys is that since the primitive era of "family history of witchcraft" was transferred to "Jedi Tiantong", "witchcraft" has become the privileged function of "jun" (political leader). This "unity of shamans and kings" (i.e., ****) and the unity of worship of ancestors and gods (i.e., the unity of humans and gods) are actually the same thing. It has gone through a long process, and although the royal power increasingly overwhelms and replaces the divine power, the unity and combination of the two has never been disintegrated.
That is to say, from the great wizards in ancient times to Yao, Shun, Yu, Tang, Wen, Wu, Zhou Gong, all these famous ancient and ancient political figures, including Yi Yin, Wu Xian, Boyi and others. Inside, there are great witches who combine political power (royal power) and spiritual power (divine power). This is obviously different from when "witchcraft" became folk Nuo culture after royal power overcame divine power.
As we all know, China's rulers in the past dynasties like to "canonize gods" and canonize some outstanding ancient people as gods. But most people don't think about the basis of this matter-that is, why the emperor has the power to confer gods.
Because he is the "Son of Heaven", he represents "God", and the origin of this idea can be traced back at least to the era of "Unification of Witches and Kings".
By the beginning of the Zhou Dynasty, this process of "history from witchcraft" in ancient China reached a qualitative turning point. This turning point is Zhou Gongdan's "making rituals and music". It finally completed the rationalization process of the "shamanistic history tradition" and thus laid the foundation of the Chinese cultural tradition.
The realization of the thoughts of "virtue" and "ritual" is the symbol of this completed form of rationalization.
"Virtue" is derived from the magical power of witchcraft and the following "witchcraft etiquette" and other meanings, and gradually transformed into the meaning of the king's behavior and character, and finally became the meaning of individual character and morality.
The "virtue" discussed in the early Zhou Dynasty is in the second stage. "Virtue" refers to a set of behaviors of the king, but it is not an ordinary behavior, but mainly major political behaviors such as sacrifices and expeditions.
Over time, it was combined with the witchcraft etiquette of ancestor sacrificial activities, and gradually evolved into a set of social norms, orders, requirements, and habits that maintain the survival and development of clans, tribes, and chiefdoms.
In other words, "virtue" is first of all unwritten laws and regulations related to major activities of clans, tribes, and chiefdoms such as "sacrifice" and "rong". "Virtue" was mentioned in an unprecedented high position in the early Zhou Dynasty, which is related to the fact that Zhou Gong comprehensively established a complete set of normative systems for the clan-tribe-state with the king's political behavior as the core, that is, "making rituals and making music".
This "moral policy" of "making rituals and making music" can be divided into two aspects: "respect" and "rituals", both internal and external.
Next, Confucius refined and sublimated the requirements of "virtue" and "ritual". Here again, we need to bring out the classic sentence from "Zuo Zhuan": The great affairs of the country lie in sacrifice and military service.
However, "sacrifice" has a prerequisite. You must build and carefully maintain the tomb of your ancestors, and you must have a place to worship your ancestors' spiritual tablets carefully. Why have Chinese people been afraid of leaving their “ancestral land” for so long? Because the ancestors are there, if you cannot guard the tombs of your ancestors and offer sacrifices seriously, then you are a "bad person". It is not that the Chinese are afraid of unfamiliar environments and dare not leave familiar places. Otherwise, the Chinese people are very pioneering.
In this way, China has always paid attention to the importance of death as life. This is true for the people, and even more so for the royal family.
Once the cultural roots are explained clearly, looking back, we can clearly understand why "Ling Gong" is important.
The most important thing about the emperor's mausoleum is not to provide the emperor with enjoyment after his death, but rather to give future generations of emperors a place where they can "sacrifice".
The ideological level of this matter is not to flatter the emperor of the day, but to set an example for the world and to offer sacrifices to the "virtue".
In the era when Confucianism governed the world, as long as anything was linked to "virtue", it would definitely not be a trivial matter. What's more, the "virtue" here is not the "virtue" cultivated by individuals, but "the major affairs of the country are sacrifice and military service." That worldly virtue.
Who dares to ignore this, who dares to oppose it? Those who dare to take this matter lightly, do not cooperate, and do not try their best will probably end up being criticized by thousands of people and ending in nothing.
But Gao pragmatically took over this death-defying job, saying that he could stand in front and withstand possible threats from the Ministry of Works, and even asked the emperor to find him in person.
So awesome?
Seeing the expressions of these many distinguished nobles as if they had seen ghosts in the daytime, Gao Pragmatic felt a little secretly happy and thought to himself: How can you see through my methods at a glance? Confucianism talks about virtue, but now Confucianism almost only deals with "programmes". Isn't it the specific things that we legalists dressed in Confucianism are doing?
What does Legalism emphasize? As long as things are done well, the means are not important! Whether it's cool or scheming, even if it's a compromise without a bottom line, the Legalists don't really care at all, okay? Historically, Legalism was famous for its coolness, but that was just because under the circumstances at that time, coolness was the most effective.
As for Confucian "virtue", you, the Ministry of Industry, can talk about it, but I, a highly pragmatic and six-souled scholar, can't talk about it? There is so much room for wrangling here. Could it be that Neo-Confucianism was orthodox from the beginning? Did the Heart School and the Practical School both appear out of thin air?
To be fair, you have your own way of doing things, and I have my own way of doing things. If you say that it is virtuous to repair things on time, then if I say that you work slowly and carefully, is this not virtuous? I didn’t say not to practice!
Gao pragmatically smiled and said nothing, and his confident look gave the nobles some confidence. After everyone looked at each other for a while, Zhu Yingzhen asked: "To be honest, have you thought about this clearly? It won't hurt you, right?"
His question moved Gao Jingshi a little. The friendship of more than ten years was finally not in vain. The first thing he thought about was not whether he could handle this matter well and save their future interests, but was worried about someone Gao. Will he be implicated?
Although if Gao Jingshi really wants to be implicated, their future situation may be even worse, but Gao Jingshi still appreciates people asking this.
"Don't worry, Mr. Cheng Guo. When the soldiers come, they will cover up the water and the earth. Since my husband has seen through their chess move and came here to remind me, so that I won't be caught off guard again, there is nothing to be afraid of." Gao Pragmatic smiled and said: "Now Rong Rong The political assistant minister is temporarily vacant. If the Ministry of Works takes action at this time, it will be difficult for you to deal with it. But since Shi Xing... haha, I have to respond. You just hand over all financial matters to the Ministry of Accounts for processing. I will do something new here. With a customized system, there is absolutely no risk of the Ministry of Household Affairs plucking it out."
With Gao Pragmatic taking action, Zhu Yingzhen and the others really weren't worried that Gao Pragmatic would embarrass them - there were too many ways Gao Pragmatic could embarrass them, and he was no less good at it. But they were really a little panicked when Hubu Yan had his hair plucked. After all, everyone in the yamen these days was equally black, so there was no reason why Hubu should be particularly clean.
However, now that Gao Pragmatic said this, they had peace of mind. It's not that because of Gao Pragmatic's presence, the household department will be clean immediately. Even if he has such a method, it will take some time to be effective. The reason why they have confidence in their hearts is because the systems Gao Pragmatic has implemented so far are quite reliable. It will be much more difficult to circumvent the obstacles he has set up to play tricks. In this way, even if there are people in the household department, there will still be some slight changes. With a little help, the impact won't be big.
Moreover, at least Gao Pragmatic himself will not cause trouble here, so no matter how the people below do it, they can only make a small fuss, and it will not become a big deal.
By the time the nobles and Gao Pragmatic reached an agreement, they had already finished their meals and left one after another when the lanterns were first lit.
That night, many people learned about the news that a large group of distinguished nobles visited Gao Pragmatic. Everyone either started to inquire about the news or began to speculate and doubt, and they all wanted to know what the plot was.
Is it the honorable minister who communicates with you or the minister who communicates with you? This kind of thing can be big or small. Although a large number of dignitaries visiting in public are generally not regarded as "honored ministers communicating with important ministers" or "important ministers communicating with distinguished ministers", there will definitely be an explanation afterwards.
Now that Gao Pangshi has just stepped down as Minister of Rongzheng, with such a large group of nobles visiting him, they cannot just simply congratulate him on taking up his new post. So... the most reasonable explanation is probably that the nobles persuaded him to stay in office. Although this kind of thing is not something he can stay in office if he wants to be pragmatic, the collective power of the entire Jingnan family is no joke, and even the emperor has to consider the impact.
Is that so? So how would Gao Pragmatic choose?
The entire capital spent the night in confusion, and everyone was waiting for Gao Pragmatic's movements tomorrow.
Tomorrow is the day when Gao Pragmatic officially takes office as Minister of the Ministry of Revenue.
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Thanks to book friend "Cao Mianzi" for your reward and support, thank you!
Thanks to book friend "Dongguan Bald King" for your monthly ticket support, thank you!
PS: The preparation for the first duel as Minister of Tobe has been laid, and it will be a "new copy of the ship" tomorrow.
