178 SOCIAL REFORMto a court position until the age of forty. Yu attributed the idea for a forty-year
age minimum to Confucius's admission in the Analects that he did not escape
his own confusion until he turned forty, and the injunction in the Book of Rites
that men at the age of forty should be appointed to office because they were
strong and robust at that age.^28 Yu was aware that this provision left him open
to charges of obscurantist fundamentalism particularly because the forty-year
minimum might close off opportunity to younger men of talent and set an unre-
alistically high age requirement in an age when life expectancy was low.^29
Yu's defense was that he was not mindlessly adopting an ancient system, and
he attempted to justify it by demonstrating that any man would be convinced
on the grounds of reason alone. The mode of his argument, however, was closer
to a Thomistic rationalization of dogma than a Kantian attempt to prove his pos-
tulates on the basis of logic because he began by arguing that any system used
by the ancients was inherently suitable and appropriate; all it took was a proper
understanding of the wisdom of their measures. The ancients preferred the forty-
year minimum because they understood that it took time for men to develop their
intelligence and cultivate their wills before they could be properly orientated.
Since he allowed for exceptional appointments of younger men, there was also
no fear that the opportunity to recruit talent would really be restricted. Further-
more, the forty-year minimum would enable him to achieve a balance between
the limited number of available bureaucratic posts and the pool of talent emerg-
ing from the school system. This argument was not without merit in a period
when the oversupply of degree-holders created a class of potentially discontented
and disruptive individuals, but it was based on an appeal to utility rather than
pure reason.
Yu also argued that moral cultivation required a lifetime of unremitting effort,
and young men were not to be trusted because they tended to be ambitious and
careerist rather than devoted to self-cultivation. One of the reasons why dynas-
ties of the later age declined was because they appointed excessive numbers of
young men to office, a practice that led to the general degradation of mores. If
the younger men knew they had no chance for office until the age of forty, they
would certainly devote their early years to doing good.^30
Yu's disclaimer is unconvincing, however, because there does not seem to be
any reason why it would take forty years to prepare men for office except for
Confucius's hallowed dictum. It resembles other attempts he made to disclaim
charges of fundamentalist antiquarianism against him, and his mistrust of youth
jibes perfectly with the stress on the primacy of age in respect relations that he
copied from Chu Hsi's school regulations.
Coercion, Punishment, and DisciplineYu was quite liberal in his use of rewards and punishments, particularly the lat-
ter, as an inducement to probity on the part of recommendors and diligence among
students. These coercive reinforcements for Confucian moral objectives were