nection with the new religious conception of T’ien-ming, or Destiny. As the
determinism which goes along with a formalistic ritualism was brought to light,
Confucianism engendered its antithesis, a rejection of the whole ritualism
complex, with its associated intellectual justification.
At this time what we call Confucians were not yet a cult around the person
of their founder; their transformation into a new religion was to come later.
The movement instead was simply called ju, “scholars.” These were the first
educated men, self-conscious specialists in compiling and interpreting the an-
cient documents which legitimated both political authority and their own
claims for employment. Traditional Chinese religion had no special class of
priests. Kings themselves had carried out the major ceremonies, later usurped
by feudal lords in the manner of which Confucius was so critical. Adherents
of the Confucian movement were something like the beginning of a specialized
priesthood, offering themselves as advisers to the feudal lords on ceremonial
matters. The Mohists found a rival niche, forming a military-religious order
bound by commitments of loyalty to the death. Their organization is reminis-
cent of the orders of crusading knights in Christian Europe. The Mohist
practical strategy was to counter the evils of the Warring States by purely
defensive warfare, based on their expertise in fortification. This military or-
ganization probably did not last many generations, as the scale of warfare soon
far outstripped the numbers of Mohist troops.^3 By the generation of Mencius
and Chuang Tzu (ca. 320 b.c.e.), the Mohists survived only as an intellectual
faction. The fate of the rival movements was parallel. Confucians too were
unsuccessful in their political-religious reform. They became instead the arche-
type of the intellectual: custodians of the texts. In both camps the original
policy doctrines became logically acute as an internal attention space took
shape.
Other factions in the external arena of political policy contributed to the
thickening web of argument, and thus to the emerging space of intellectual
focus. Yang Chu debated with Mo Ti’s major disciple. In these generations (ca.
400–335 b.c.e.) a variety of thinkers offered alternative policies: return to
“primitivist” self-sufficiency, or the autarky of the “agriculturalists.” On the
opposite wing, others advocated an explicit concern for political solutions,
including a “Diplomatist” school proposing a path to state security through
negotiation and alliance.
Diplomacy was more than one factional alternative among others. It was
becoming a distinct profession, and the common basis for the careers of many
intellectuals of whatever stripe. The large number of feudal territories of the
previous centuries had been reduced to a moderate number of contending
states, from perhaps 1,000 down to 14 by 480 b.c.e. (Eberhard, 1977: 47). A
balance of power emerged among the strongest states. The military-political
Innovation by Opposition: Ancient China^ •^141