SLAVERY 237mixed marriages by that of the mother was really a violation of the Confucian
ethical norms that he upheld. 119 On the other hand, the patrilineal succession
rule was hardly better, not for moral but for practical reasons, because the dif-
ficulty in proving paternity would simply incite litigation by cunning and law-
less people.
Instead, he resigned himself to the matrilineal succession law as the better
choice of evils. Since a patrilineal succession law would be impractical, "it is
for that reason that we have had no choice but to have things this way [i.e., strict
adherence to the matrilineal succession law], and that is all."12°Yu's practical-
ity stands in even bolder relief when contrasted with the moralistic tone of Song
Siyol. When Song recommended the matrilineal rule to King Hyonjong in 1669,
he said that it represented the epitome offairness, equity, justice, and rectitude. 121
Contrary to the view of Chon Hyongt'aek that Song and the Westerners repre-
sented the practical view of things in advocating the matrilineal law while the
Sirhak scholars like Yu represented a moral approach to the problem, the
essence of their positions was exactly the reverse.^122
Yu's rejection of both the matrilineal and patrilineal rules reflects a sophisti-
cation that would have been impossible but for the experimentation with regu-
lations governing the inheritance of status in the fifteenth century, which proved
that both the patrilineal and matrilineal rules were flawed. The overriding tone
of his analysis was practical acceptance of a method that he admitted was immoral
from a Confucian standpoint, one of the few clear-cut statements that would
indeed identify him as a scholar in the tradition of "practical learning." Yu did
not conclude, however, that all offspring of mixed marriages should be free, but
primarily because the times did not warrant an immediate abolition of slavery,
he suggested that perhaps the abolition of slavery might have to be postponed
until the appearance of a sage ruler in an age when "all institutions are rectified
and all baseness is washed clean."^123
Cessation of the Hereditary PrincipleAlthough he was committed to the abolition of slavery in principle, he also
believed that the ruling class deserved to be supported by the king as they had
been in the Chinese Chou dynasty. Since he felt that a sudden abolition of slav-
ery would be too abrupt a change of custom because it would leave not only the
contemporary yangban but the members of his new class of educated moral lead-
ers helpless and unable to care for themselves, the elimination of slavery had to
be done gradually by substituting hired or wage labor for slaves. This kind of
reform would also require that the ruling class become used to hired labor instead
of slavery. As part of the transition the first step would be to retain the existing
slaves but to set a deadline for the abolition of the hereditary transmission of
slave status to the next generation by a careful program of registration of the
existing slave population. 124