120 SOCIAL REFORMthought of the entire post -Chou period as one of permanent imperfection, but
with much leeway for tinkering and manipulation because any practitioner of
statecraft had to adjust his classical model to current circumstances, which could
be quite varied. Tn reading his final proposals for reform, however, one wonders
in several instances whether he really succeeded in making that adjustment, and
he was acutely aware of the charge that he was really a fundamentalist disguis-
ing himself as a practical and flexible thinker.
Despite the imperfect nature of the dynasties after the Chou, some of them
were useful in providing lessons and examples for reform, particularly the Han
dynasty, which was generally regarded as having achieved a close approxima-
tion of some Chou institutions. For that matter, even some of the more tragic
and backward historical periods, like the Northern and Southern dynasties, pro-
vided a didactic example of adverse consequences that could follow from the
emergence of an hereditary aristocracy.
The Sui and T'ang dynasties from 589 to 906 represented the reunification of
China and reestablishment of empire with its panoply of central bureaucratic
institutions, but it also represented examples of thc distortions of the classical
spirit that could he wrought by the operations of an impersonal, remote, top-
heavy, and complex bureaucratic structure, in particular the decline in appoint-
ment, review, and promotion procedures from the Chou and even Han dynasties.
The Sung dynasty was an inspiration for Yu, not as a model for actual policy
but because of its Neo-Confucian philosophers and statecraft thinkers. Although
many statecraft writers and officials from the Han through the Sung harked back
to the perfection of Chou dynasty institutions, it was the Sung statesmen like
Wang An-shih and the Neo-Confucian thinkers like Ch'eng I, Ch'eng Hao, and
Chu Hsi of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, who rediscovercd antiquity. They
were mueh like the thinkers of the Western Renaissance who rediscovered Greece
and Rome, and proposed a series of ideas for the moral and institutional reno-
vation of society. Yu was inspired by similar motives and in several cases adopted
their suggestions. The main problem, however, was transcending the limitations
of antiquity or Renaissance humanism, as when the heliocentric cosmos of Coper-
nicus and Galileo overturned the Aristotelian diagram of the universe so admired
by the medieval Scholastics. In the realm of statecraft it appears unlikely that
Yu achieved this.
The Ming dynasty (1368-1644) played a less important role than the Sung
in Yu's thought, but he was influenced by certain of its aspects. One of his favorite
Chinese scholars was Ch'iu Chiin, primarily because he reinforced the advice
of the great Sung Neo-Confucians. He was also moved by the glowing reports
of the superiority of Ming institutions by the memorials of Cho Hon, who had
visited the Ming court prior to his tragic death during the Hideyoshi invasions
in 1592. What Cho contributed that was different was praise for the practices
of late sixteenth-century life in China, not simply an advertisement for idealis-
tic schemes of Sung idealists. Other than these figures, however, Yu made no