150 SOCIAL REFORMto recommend others to staff subordinate posts, and he complained that the chief
ministers of his own time were all worthless men who only recommended oth-
ers of their own kind. Punishing them for faulty recommendation had proved
worthless in rectifying this situation. 105
He charged that the Sung government had neglected the prefectural and dis-
trict schools and the matter of instruction in truly important subjects like rites,
music, and penal law, instead of the current trend in favor of the useless expli-
cation of texts and writing style necessary for passing the examinations. 106 His
definition of talent, for example, stressed expertise in civil and military affairs,
and he praised the ancient kings for selecting students knowledgeable ih civil
and military affairs for the highest posts. By contrast, current officials had no
use for these practical subjects and when on duty on the frontier or in the cap-
ital turned over responsibility to their subordinates. 107
Wang's practicality was also reflected in his utilitarian interpretation of the
purpose of archery contests in ancient times despite the traditional association
of archery with the conduct of ritual and the inculcation of moral values. He
wrote that when the Book of Changes (l Ching) said that "By means of skill in
the bow and arrow they overawed the empire," it meant that archery was essen-
tial to the military strength of the state. Everyone practiced bowmanship at home
during peacetime and used it to practice rites and music, but when they went
out on military campaigns or served on border defense or the capital guards,
they used it for fighting. "Since ... the ancient rulers gave out weapons and
entrusted them to people, there was nothing to be feared either domestically or
in foreign affairs."lo8
Wang thus turned the usual version of the Chou model on its head: the con-
duct of rites was an adjunct to practice in archery, not the other way around. By
extension, the strength and security of the state might well take precedence over
the moral cultivation of the individual. Yet he did not separate value from fact,
he merely subordinated it in some cases. As Hoyt Tillman put it, both Wang and
Chu Hsi represented one of Benjamin Schwartz's polarities in Confucian
thought, between the utilitarian achievement of results versus the perfection of
moral character.^109
Chu Hsi dwelled on the idea of utility more than other Sung moralists, 110 but
his concept of utility contained more of a moral quotient than Wang An-shih's:
In what was taught during the three dynasties of antiquity [san-tail, the arts were
the very last things to be taught. Nevertheless, in everything [taught] there was
practical utility [shih-yung] .... What is taught at present is not based on the
actual substance [shih, sil in Korean] of moral behavior, and what is referred to
as the arts are also all empty words of no utility .... 111Notice that Chu Hsi's use of the term sit (the sir of Sirhak) meant "the actual
substance of moral behavior," and not the value-free practicality or utility referred
to by so many twentieth-century Korean scholars. In any case, the notion of the