EPILOGUE 1005tralized bureaucracy, but centralization had been incomplete, at least by the stan-
dards of most Chinese dynasties. The Neo-Confucian supporters of the new
dynasty successfully overcame that deficiency by extending central control to
all the districts of the kingdom, but they were never enamored of centralized
bureaucracy as the best form of government organization because it represented
the political system of the Ch'in dynasty that had destroyed the beloved feudal
political configuration of the Chou dynasty in the late third century B.C.
The Ch'in bureaucratic system was based on Legalist thought that seemed
diametrically opposed to Confucian moral philosophy. The Legalists took a neg-
ative view of human nature, eschewed moral education and persuasion as use-
less methods for the establishment of order, and insisted on the necessity of reward
and punishment as the only means for keeping human beings under control. All
Confucian officials who served bureaucratic dynasties after the Ch'in had to use
punishment as the means for enforcing conformity. Some sought to temper it
with Confucian compassion, but others became such adept users of coercion
that punishment became as much a feature of the bureaucratic Confucian state
as moral suasion. Even the most moralistic Neo-Confucians resorted to pun-
ishment as the ultimate recourse for forcing the ignorant and recalcitrant to con-
form to Confucian moral ideals, revealed only so clearly in Yu Hyongwon's
regulations for the conduct of his proposed schools. Yet most Confucians
believed that the unmitigated use of punishment was symptomatic of the moral
failure of the ruler and the state.
Unfortunately centralized bureaucracy had proved to be permanent, and Con-
fucians had to adjust to these unfortunate circumstances as the only way for their
philosophy to survive. The conflict between the two ideals - moral suasion ver-
sus coercion - was never solved, and the dividing line between the two was left
to arbitrary judgment or circumstance.
The Social LeRClC}': Heredity, Property, and Slavery. The ruling class of the
early Choson dynasty consisted of yangban families that constituted a semi-
aristocratic bureaucratic elite that owed much of their prominence to the inher-
itance of status, and they ruled over a slave society sustained by the system of
inherited slave status. Neo-Confucians in the first two centuries of the dynasty
barely raised the question of the moral conflict between Confucian principles
and semihereditary bureaucracy and hereditary slavery. It was not until the
immense pressure exerted on the Chason state by a series of catastrophic inva-
sions after 1592 that the Confucian bureaucrats began to think of requiring idle
yangban and slaves to perform military service.
The inheritance of social status, whether yangban or slave, was not only respon-
sible for revenue shortages and inadequate defense because of tax-exemption
privileges, it also contributed significantly to obstructing the achievement of the
Confucian ideal of expanded opportunity for education and orticeholding. The
preservation of class interest by yangban landlords and slaveowners was the main
obstacle to converting society to a moral basis for the distribution of prestige,
office, and wealth, but reform was made doubly difficult by the antinomies within