befitting an atmosphere of plots and coups. Divination schemes enjoyed a
dangerous popularity in the Han and in subsequent dynasties. Tung Chung-
shu, who surrounded himself with ritual pomp to the extent of lecturing from
behind a screen out of the sight of mere mortals, was exiled to the provinces
for his zealous advocacy of a divination scheme by which he attempted to
manipulate government policy.^12
The intellectual effects were not entirely destructive in the long run for the
development of abstraction in Chinese philosophy. The synthesis of Confucian
moralism with the divination schemes opened the way for a Confucian meta-
physics. The crucial development was the third appendix to the Yi Ching, the
so-called Great Treatise, which asserted ceaseless change as the fundamental
reality of the universe. At the same time, the system of hexagrams composed
of all permutations of strong (yang) and weak (yin) lines can be regarded as
the structure out of which the empirical world is formed, analogous to Her-
aclitus’ logos shaping the flux of experience.^13 The Yi Ching Great Appendix,
along with several other extracts and commentaries from classic texts about
this time—the Doctrine of the Mean and the Great Learning, both developed
from the Book of Rites—became the textual capital on which the Neo-Con-
fucians of the Sung dynasty were to develop a Confucian metaphysics.
The centralization of ideological production in the Han reorganized the
material practice of intellectual life. The imperial library was founded, staffed
by officials whose task it was to define the paramount reality through compil-
ing official histories and putting in order the texts that would constitute
tradition. Any rival to official definitions of reality would also take the form
of an encyclopedia or bibliographic collection. Collections of books and their
rubrics now crystallized identities, making up the “schools” into which all
subsequent historians have organized Chinese intellectual life. Inclusion or
exclusion from a bibliographical collection had fateful consequences. The
canon of Confucian texts omitted the works of Mencius and Hsün Tzu, which
constituted a Confucian underground, and Mencius was not brought back into
prominence until the revolutionary upheaval promoted by the Neo-Confucians.
Even in periods of centralization, what innovation did take place came
in the form of oppositions, the usual driving force of intellectual life. Oppos-
ing doctrines appeared simultaneously, contesting key points within similar
materials. In the same generation when Tung Chung-shu was carrying out
his Confucian synthesis, an anti-Confucian position was organized. It gradu-
ally acquired the label “Taoism,” although the term is anachronistic if we
expect it to carry particular metaphysical or religious connotations. There were
two such oppositional developments. Tung Chung-shu’s contemporary Ssu-ma
T’an, the imperial historian, in organizing the official library classified the
books into schools, coining the term “Tao-te chia” for a category of texts
similar to the Tao Te Ching.
156 •^ Intellectual Communities: Asian Paths