124 SOCIAL REFORMalways had the potential for recovery. Those who followed the utilitarian pro-
clivity for reform within the Confucian tradition thought that miscast institu-
tions could be corrected by the skills of a master social planner, who could by
the study of past institutions devise better methods for approximating past glo-
ries.^9 Despite the difference in social and historical circumstance between past
and present, Yu believed that "In fact there is no difference between ancient times
and the present in terms of what ought to be done."Io
Throughout his magnum opus Yu retained an unshakable, almost naIve faith
in the efficacy of institutions to enable the achievement of the moral order as
defined in Confucian terms. The idea that the nature and quality of institutions
had moral consequences also seems on the face of it to contradict the Confu-
cian axiom that good government depends on men, not laws, or that moral trans-
formation rather than legal coercion is the only way to achieve social order. But
Confucians had to deal with the reality of imperfect humanity and the apparent
intractability of ordinary men to grasp the moral message of Confucian teach-
ing and apply it to their daily behavior. Ideally all men were capable of moral
perfection, but in actuality only a few achieved it. Because statecraft writers like
Yu had to deal with the reality of human failure rather than the potential for human
success, they turned to an institutional and legal approach to reform to assist the
ruler in his task of the moral transformation of society.
The Moral Basis of Classical EducationEducation and Government Schools. Yu's main concern with the ruling class
in contemporary Korea was the domination of the hereditary yangban over the
bureaucracy and society, but he found that the key to this problem was the empha-
sis by the rulers of the san-tai period of Chinese antiquity (the Hsia, Shang, and
Chou dynasties) on education as the means of achieving the moral transforma-
tion (kyohwa) of their people. Mencius had remarked that the only thing that
separated man from the beasts was education, Tung Chung-shu of the Former
Han dynasty said that the ancient kings had regarded moral education as the
means for perfecting customs and mores and ensuring the longevity of their
reigns, and Chu Hsi had expressed the same thought in Neo-Confucian terms,
that education was the means of overcoming the obstructions in the mind of psy-
cho-physical energy:
Generally speaking, the principles of the five ethical relationships emerge from
the roots of the human mind. They are not things that can be forced on people.
Men first become confused in their understanding of these principles because
they are restricted by some imbalance in the material endowment of their nature
or because [their inner goodness] is obscured by their immersion in material
desire [muryok]. As a result fathers and sons are not close and loving and people
are not obedient to one another. Therefore Shun [the sage emperor] gave this over
to Ch'i, subsequently appointed him minister of education [Ssu-t'u], and made