official and participant in political intrigues, held that the sage is one who
governs by “non-action” only in the sense of spontaneity in one’s social role.
All social activities, including politics, are natural, and withdrawal from public
life is itself an artificiality.
It is worth stressing that creativity here was not a clash of class cultures
alone but a contest of real structural possibilities contained within the same
interpersonal network. Hsiang Hsiu, whose ideas Kuo Hsiang carried on, was
himself a member of the Seven Sages before withdrawing to take public office:
here the multiple bases intersected in a key individual. Refusing office and
withdrawing to one’s estate was part of political bargaining over conditions of
power. Hsiang Hsiu thus aroused considerable resentment within the group
after he ended a long holdout against taking office, especially because of the
switch in political loyalties involved (Demiéville, 1986: 834). Situated in this
densely balanced network structure in which no single group exercised power,
the conflict of class cultures gave impetus to a higher level of struggle over
intellectual space; and this in turn resulted in epistemological and metaphysical
explorations on a new plane.
Philosophical creativity came abruptly to an end when this structure was
destroyed. It is not merely that Kuo Hsiang was (in all likelihood) killed in
312 in the Huns’ conquest of north China. A good many other philosophers
had been killed earlier: Ho Yen in a coup in 249, Wang Pi the same year at age
24, and three of the Seven Sages in dynastic violence around 265 (Demiéville,
1986: 830; Balazs, 1964: 234–236). Until the final conquest, all this external
conflict was part of the conditions which made creativity possible, and new
intellectual leaders took the place of those who died. The weakness of the
government both gave autonomy to the gentry on their estates and weakened
the bureaucratic niches of traditional Confucianism. The cult of Confucius as
a state religion had no political strength in the absence of an extensive admin-
istrative class when central control of the economy, public works, and military
logistics had disappeared. By the same token, the secular scholars lost their
organizational base with the decay of state schools and examinations. In
themselves, both religious Confucians and scholar-bureaucrats were conserva-
tizing forces on the intellectual plane; only when they competed from a position
of weakness against other cultural groups were they aroused into creativity.
This creative balance was wiped out with the downfall of the Western Chin
dynasty. Military devastation was not the ultimate problem, for a number of
states soon reestablished themselves. For the most part these were states with
weak central administration, and power was in the hands of militarily autono-
mous landed estates. It was under these circumstances that the gentry culture
became established. Poetry writing, calligraphy, and painting became popular
entertainments, developing especially from about 300 c.e. onwards. The most
Innovation by Opposition: Ancient China^ •^175