The Formative Age 13
eras in all of Chinese history, commonly known as the period of the
Hundred Schools of Thought.
By far the most successful and infl uential school of thought during
the Warring States period was the Legalist School (fajia). Legalist doc-
trines were developed in several different states over several centuries,
and Legalists both guided and responded to many of the technological
and organizational innovations of the period. In the ambitious western
state of Qin, rulers abolished serfdom (where peasants were bound to
the land and owned by a lord) and assigned land directly to peasant
families, whom they taxed, taking a percentage of their crops. They
drafted peasants as soldiers; promoted soldiers and offi cials on the basis
of merit rather than birth; and enacted strict laws with harsh punish-
ments on the theory that the harsher the punishment, the less it would
have to be used. The Legalist rulers of Qin organized their entire state
toward agricultural production, increasing trade, and the mobilization
of all economic resources in the service of war.
Born in 551 bce, Kongzi, whom we know as Confucius,^5 deplored
these changes and called upon rulers to return to the beliefs and practices
of the early Zhou. Confucius refl ected some of the changing attitudes
of the day as well, such as the growing emphasis on competence rather
than birth in choosing offi cials. He was essentially a private teacher
and accepted students from all social backgrounds. Agnostic about the
existence of ghosts and spirits, he saw religious rituals and ancestral
sacrifi ces as needed by the living, to express respect and gratitude for
their dead forefathers. He made no claims to have any supernatural
powers and modestly said that he only loved to study the wisdom of the
ancients so that he could pass on the best of his civilization’s heritage
to future generations. He also had a sense of humor, remarking at one
point, “The fact remains that I have never seen a man who loved virtue
as much as sex.”^6
Confucius hoped to convince rulers to adopt his idealistic vision of
benevolent rule based on early Zhou rituals and reverence for ances-
tors. He argued that the most basic human quality is our capacity to
empathize with each other, a quality suggested by the virtue of ren,
variously translated as humanity, benevolence, kindness, or reciprocity.^7
All people have the capacity for kindness, he asserted, but it needs to be
nurtured and encouraged through education, ritual, and the emulation
of virtuous models (including one’s parents, teachers, and great moral
leaders of the past). He wisely noted that people learn most not from
reading books but from watching and emulating those around them.
And he argued that in the proper hierarchical society, those in the lower