VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 5
The Examination System Is Not History, It Is a Present Law
Part One finished with enfeoffment and made clear how a position comes to be. Enfeoffment runs from below; the position is lifted up by the group. And in Chapter Four, Laozi's nine words gathered it into three things a person in a position can do: know that he is only passing through, hold the will of the people, and stir little. But enfeoffment settles only half of it. The position exists, so who fills it? The same governor's seat, filled by an able hand or by a poor one, makes all the difference. This Part is about the examination system, a thing one layer above enfeoffment: how the people in the positions get chosen. This chapter has three sections that set out its three joints.
Section One lays down a judgment that may surprise you: the examination system is not a thing in history, it is running this very moment, and it began the instant a child first sat down in a classroom, assessment, merit selection, streaming, and rising running through nearly the whole working life of a modern person. In a classroom, the teacher writes a character on the board and has one child stand and read. The child reads it right, and the teacher smiles. That is the moment he is assessed for the first time. The end-of-term test, the entrance exam, the college-entrance exam, the civil-service exam, and the bar that come after are all the examination. What the ancestors of the Sui did that was so remarkable was not to invent these four motions, it was to make them, for the first time, into a public, open-to-all-regardless-of-birth, workable institution. This section also sets one distinction: the child is the subject of the examination, not the parents. The ancestor it calls on is Mozi: even a person laboring in farming or in the workshops, if he has the ability, should be raised up. This line of more than twenty-four hundred years ago is only now truly realized on a large scale. From America's SAT to India's entrance exams in science and engineering, the examination has become the shared underlying infrastructure of all humankind.
Section Two is about the will of the people, the face of enfeoffment that runs from below. A person may test brilliantly and is still only nominated to the position. To sit in it steadily takes the acceptance of six layers, superiors, peers, subordinates, local gentry, the common people, and history. A young man of a poor house in the Tang passes the presented-scholar exam and feasts by the Winding River, writing poems. But passing the exam is not the same as holding office; he must still wait on the selection of the Ministry of Personnel. Once at his post, will the clerks hollow him out underneath, will the local gentry join together to oppose him, will the common people obey his decrees? That is the real test. The line it calls on is from Guanzi, in the chapter Shepherding the People: a politics rises when it moves with the will of the people, and falls when it moves against it. Part One quoted it once, and it is quoted again here, landed on the concrete joint that comes after the examination. This section also points out a real thing: the person the examination selects is often the one who most lacks the will of the people. A poor-house scholar has only a certificate. The certificate can seat him in the chair, but the certificate cannot steady the chair. Fan Zhongyan, born to a poor house, won the six layers of acceptance step by step by truly working for the people and by being upright and daring to speak.
Section Three is about the enlightened ruler, the face of enfeoffment that runs from above. A person with ability and with the people behind him still has to meet someone above who can recognize talent, dare to use it, protect it, tolerate it, and cede the seat, before he can truly be used. This section starts from Ma Zhou. In the Zhenguan years, Taizong had every official write a memorial on the affairs of the day. The military man Chang He could write none, so he had his adviser Ma Zhou write it for him. Ma Zhou wrote more than twenty proposals, every one striking to the heart of the matter. Taizong summoned him at once and appointed him on the spot a censor. Ma Zhou's fate was not decided by the examination, it was decided by Taizong. Confucius's line, to govern by virtue is like the north star, which stays in its place while the many stars turn around it, is about the enlightened ruler resting steady in his own position and letting the able turn around him and do the work. Chongzhen was diligent to the patch on his dragon robe, yet he replaced more than fifty chief grand secretaries, and this is exactly the layer he failed to reach. Emperor Taizong of Tang is the most complete sample. Wei Zheng contradicted him to his face, and most of the time he bore it. But enlightened rulers are very few, fewer than ten in over two thousand years, and dynastic enfeoffment makes the appearance of one a matter of luck.
This chapter shows one thing clearly: the examination sifts people out, but what lets a person truly hold the seat and spend his ability is the two faces of enfeoffment, the will of the people and the enlightened ruler. A test can seat you in the chair. Whether the chair is steady takes the will of the people. Whether your ability gets used depends on whether there is an enlightened ruler above. The next chapter puts the examination, the will of the people, and the enlightened ruler together and asks a deeper question: good rule comes only when all three are present, so why were the times of good rule in history so few and so short?
Chapter contents
Section One. The child sits down in the classroom, and the examination begins
Section Two. The will of the people, enfeoffment runs from below
Section Three. The enlightened ruler who knows talent, five things one can do
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Section One. The child sits down in the classroom, and the examination begins