REMOLDING THE RULING CLASS 135could estimate his intelligence and ability to plan. You could annoy him in order
to see how he would deal with it; you could tempt him with profit in order to see
how honest he was.-l^3Shen YUeh of the Liang dynasty (502-57) argued that the classical principle
of opening the opportunity for office to men of even the lowliest status had been
subverted by the development of favoritism for men of status. In ancient times
there were only two classes of men - the chiin-tzu or man of superior virtue and
the hsiao-jen or "small man" of limited moral capacity - and that because only
the morally superior men were chosen for office, even fishermen, farmers, and
teachers on occasion could rise from their low and humble stations in life to
attain the position of prime minister.^44 When the nine-rank system was begun
in the Wei, it was only intended as a temporary means for the evaluation of tal-
ent, but it resulted in hereditary class differentiation because the Chung-cheng
assigned rank on the basis of existing status rather than real talent:^45As time passed this tendency gradually became stronger. The gowned and
capped scholars were never graded lower than second rank, and afterwards this
led to the creation of a lowly commoner class. According to the system of the
Chou and Han dynasties, intelligent men commanded stupid ones and people of
base status were mixed together with people of high status in the formation of
ranks and grades. But since the Wei and Chin dynasties, because the noble [kueil
commanded the base [ch 'ienJ, a clear distinction was made between the scholar-
officials [shih, sa in Korean] and the commoners [shu, so in Korean] in terms of
their grade.^46Fu HsUan's (2 [3-78, the Western Chin) analysis of what had gone wrong after
the third century was based on a deterioriation in the spirit that motivated the
activities of the four functional divisions of society. He endorsed the traditional
concept that the essence of ancient society was based on a functional division
of labor - the shih, farmers, artisans, and merchants - "each of which had their
own occupations and different tasks to perform." As opposed to Shen YUeh's
belief that the lowliest peasant had a chance for office in classical times, Fu thought
that education was justifiably restricted to the shih, the National Academy was
established only for the sons of the shih, and only the talented among them were
appointed to office. The farmers produced food for their support, the artisans
furnished them with utensils, and the merchants exchanged goods for them.^47
Although Fu's functional division of society was not based on a feudal model,
it was nonetheless bifurcated into the elite/commoner division described else-
where for Chou society.
Then he argued that this functional differentiation was lost in thc Han and
Wei dynasties, and the sons of the officials neglected their classical studies and
administrative duties and indulged themselves in lives of idle association and
play. The farmers and artisans abandoned their basic, productive pursuits in favor