NEW SCHOOLS 201of the upper class but their improved performance by study and self-cultivation.
Yu was concerned as much about the revitalization of the ruling class as the
removal of existing barriers against the rise of a few more virtuous and talented
individuals into its ranks: "It is only that if we did select men on the basis of
virtuous behavior, it would be a natural condition that there would be many tal-
ented men among the hereditary lineages. But to limit opportunity to pedigree
and deny it to men of talent is to confuse the teachings of the world. There could
be no more serious harm than this."Iob
Yu sought to becalm the aristocratic opponents of the egalitarian implications
of his plan by pointing out that the de facto advantages of wealth, status, and a
family background with a scholarly tradition would have the effect of preserv-
ing the position of the yangban. His sociological intuition was impeccable: the
children of the well-to-do undoubtedly did have better success as a group than
their lower-class competitors, and his sociological explanation of their success
is far better than any belief that yangban simply inherited their status without
having to exert effort to pass the examinations.
Even though Yu's assurances may not have been heartening to certain yang-
ban who would understandably be concerned about slipping from the ranks of
the socially prominent if opportunities for education and appointment were
widened, his attempt to make such concessions to the legitimacy of privilege
and to assert that moral reform could be achieved without excessive disruptive
social consequences to the status quo only reflects the internalized constraints
on his Confucian social radicalism.
Yu's INFLUENCE ON SUBSEQUENT GENERATIONS
Yu never thought that his criticism of the examination system or advocacy of
government schools as the basis for a recommendation system of bureaucratic
recruitment constituted innovative thinking because these ideas were derived
primarily from the Chinese classics. One might criticize him for his desultory
account of the history of Korean views on these issues, but he undoubtedly pre-
sumed (and correctly) that the basic points of view had already been laid out in
the Chinese literature.
Insight into the influence of the two sections of his Pan' gye surok on schools
and the examination system on thinkers of the eighteenth century may be
assessed by estimating how widespread his ideas had circulated in the eigh-
teenth century. Yi Man'un, who revised the version of the original Munhonbigo
between 1770 and 1782, chose to insert three statements by Yu Hyongwon in
the section on the history of bureaucratic recruitment, but he chose nothing from
Yu's writing for the section on schools. The selection on recruitment contains
Yu's proposal for a system of guaranteed recommendation that would keep both
recommendor and recommendee honest by the threat of punishment. It also
includes Yu's criticism of the routine way that kings conducted the special
chongsi and alsong palace examinations, and his call for the abolition of the