Chapter 134 Provoking a dispute of ideas, Zhang Gui made the civil servants split again!

  Yang Jingchen and others persuaded Zhang Gui to give up running the newspaper, and invited Zhang Gui's future father-in-law Shang Zhouzuo to be a lobbyist.

  So, when Zhang Gui appeared, he bowed to Shang Zhouzuo first: "I don't know why Yue Weng and the princes came to Han Mansion?"

  Shang Zhouzuo said: "They want me to persuade you to stop running the newspaper, and to report to His Majesty together to withdraw the previous edict allowing all government offices to run newspapers. What do you think?"

   "Please forgive my son-in-law for being so difficult!"

  Zhang Gui replied first, and then said: "What's more, how can foreign relatives interfere with the government? If you feel that the matter of running the newspaper is inappropriate, you can completely report it to your majesty."

Yang Jingchen saw that Zhang Gui was so disrespectful, so he had to hold back his anger and said: "Uncle Guo, all government offices can run newspapers. As the admiral of Xichang, Uncle Guo can naturally slack off on the matter of running the newspaper. Interfere with foreign affairs!"

   "Even so, there is no reason why this Marquis will go to the university together with you!"

   Zhang Gui replied.

  Yang Jingchen had to grit his teeth to endure his anger, and said again: "Uncle Guo, do you really want to keep fighting against the people of the world like this?"

  Zhang Gui smiled and said, "Why did Benhou go against the people of the world?"

   "Uncle Guo, you should understand!"

  Yang Jingchen replied loudly.

  Zhang Gui replied: "This Marquis doesn't understand!"

   "Uncle Guo!"

  Gong Dinghe couldn't help shouting at this time, saying: "Although you are a noble relative, you can't just think about the prosperity of the past, but you should think about the future!"

   "Are you threatening me?"

   Zhang Gui asked.

Gong Dinghe said: "Uncle Guo can think whatever he wants, but this is the truth! You can't just think of catering to the emperor of the current dynasty, and disregard being settled by the autumn queen in the future! Just like what happened to the second relative of the Zhang family in the Hongzhi Dynasty when he was in Shimiao! "

  Zhang Guidao: "This Marquis never did these things for the sake of gaining more power in his own dynasty, but for the sake of the country. So, it is useless for you to threaten me like this!"

   "That's the case, Uncle Guo, you can't be willing to be humble and make friends with the common people, and even let the common people know about the political affairs of the court, and even let them discuss public officials and scholar-bureaucrats!"

   "This is inverting the dignity and inferiority, which is a big bad manner!"

   "Uncle Guo, you are already a noble relative, not a commoner! You can't treat yourself as the same as the commoner, and you don't know how to maintain the dignity of the rentier!"

  Yang Jingchen replied.

Zhang Gui laughed: "It was you who advised His Majesty to speak out widely, so Chen Hanlin proposed to run a newspaper, so that more people's opinions and opinions can be heard through the newspaper, so that the father can better understand the public opinion of the world! Why, now you With the excuse of wanting the Marquis to maintain the decency of fellow rentiers, do you think that the Marquis will prevent His Majesty from listening to public opinion?"

   "Isn't this trying to block the emperor's hearing?!"

   Zhang Gui questioned as he spoke.

   "The Son of Heaven is to rule the world with the scholar-bureaucrats, not with the common people. To open up the way of speaking is to open the way to the scholars, not the people."

  "If the people have a grievance, they will have their own Dengwen Drum to listen to the heavens!"

   "Today, the purpose of running a newspaper is to allow the common people to discuss state affairs and know the faults of His Holiness just like scholars and bureaucrats. This is contrary to the principle that the affairs of the world can only be managed by carnivores! It is also against the principle of His Holiness' taboo!"

  Gong Dinghe replied.

  Zhang Gui sneered: "The people are the most important, the country is second, and the king is the least. How do you explain it?"

   "Although the common people are important, it is only important that they are not mourning, starving, and not making trouble for the people, not that they are really placed above the scholars."

   "For the people, it should be like a sage's words, the people can let them know, but they can't let them know!"

   "Uncle Guo still needs the old man to explain this saint's way to you in detail, so that you can understand the truth in it?!"

  Yang Jingchen asked.

   "No!"

   After Zhang Gui answered, he said: "How come I heard a Confucian official say that the sage read this sentence like this: The people can be used, let them know; if they cannot be used, they should be known."

As Zhang Gui said, he looked at Wen Zhenmeng and Chen Zizhuang: "One of you is the number one scholar and the other is the second place in the list. You are good at learning. Let's talk about whether the people can let them know or not, or whether the people can let them know or not. Let me know."

  Speaking, Zhang Gui bowed to Shang Zhouzuo again: "By the way, I would like to ask Yue Weng."

  Chen Zizhuang, Wen Zhenmeng, and Shang Zhouzuo suddenly realized that the sage's words would indeed have great ambiguity due to different sentence pronunciations.

  Wen Zhenmeng muttered: "That's right! How should I pronounce the sentence?"

  Chen Zizhuang said: "Is this too much to say? Uncle Guo's sentence reading is correct!"

  Yang Jingchen objected: "No! Uncle Guo's sentence is wrong!"

   "Uncle Guo's sentence is correct, the saint never fools the people and makes the people just like cattle and horses?!"

  Wen Zhenmeng then expressed his opinion.

   "Uncle Guo's reading of this sentence is wrong! If you are not polite to ordinary people, you don't need to let the people know what courtesy is, you just need to let the people obey the etiquette of scholars!"

  Gong Dinghe replied.

  Shang Zhouzuo said: "That's wrong! It's wrong to show courtesy to the common people. It's to criticize the common people for having perfect etiquette, not to let them not know what courtesy is, and let them only obey the orders of scholars. My son-in-law's sentence is correct."

   "Wrong! Those who work with their minds rule others, and those who work hard rule others. Scholars work with their minds; common people work with their hands. The common people should be ruled by scholars!"

  An imperial official who came with Yang Jingchen replied loudly.

"Rites are not the right of literati to enslave the people! Rituals should start with respect and end with benevolence! The so-called governance of people should also be to show benevolence and love to the people, which is the meaning of a sage, not the meaning of ruling and enslaving the people like cattle and horses! You people It is a distorted meaning of the saint!"

  Chen Zizhuang continued to refute, and said: "So the reading of Uncle Guo's sentence is correct, and it is in line with the meaning of the saint!"

"Incorrect!"

Yang Jingchen immediately continued to retort, and began to search his brains to quote a sentence or two from the Four Books and Five Classics to convince Chen Zizhuang that the sage wants to make scholars higher than ordinary people, and scholars are the slave masters of ordinary people. Himself, so that he can still use his servants and serve the people with peace of mind in the future.

But at this time, Ni Yuanlu, a scholar of the Imperial Academy who came with Yang Jingchen and others, also stood up after hearing what Chen Zizhuang said: "Mr. Yang, the sentence reading of Uncle Guo seems to be correct, just like what the young master Chen Butang said just now. , the sage should not mean to make the people slaves."

  Ni Yuanlu thought for a while while speaking, and then she said more firmly: "Well, I think the reading of Uncle Guo's sentence is correct. Everything is inferior, but reading is high. This is the Song people's misinterpretation, not the sage's willingness!"

   "That's right, the meaning of the saint should not be to regard the people as cattle and horses."

   "I also think Uncle Guo's sentence reading is correct."

  …

  For a while, Yang Jingchen and several Qingliu civil servants also joined Zhang Gui and Chen Zizhuang at this moment. After all, not all civil servants have their own independent thinking ability.

   Moreover, under the influence of Wang Yangming, the field of thought has been active since the late Ming Dynasty, and many people began to jump out of the cage of Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism, like Wang Yangming, to actively think.

  Yang Jingchen's face was quite ugly because of this, and he looked at Ni Yuanlu and the others: "You guys! How could you just listen to Chen Jisheng's demagogy so easily! Although the common people are not cattle and horses, they are not masters either!"

   "That's right, you can't mess up the status, so the pronunciation of Uncle Guo's sentence is wrong."

  Gong Dinghe replied.

"Yes!"

  After Ni Yuanlu changed sides, she immediately replied.

"Incorrect!"

"Yes!"

"Incorrect!"

  …

  The two sides are at a stalemate, and no one can convince the other.

  The same Confucian statement, because they have different positions and hold different understandings, they were all arguing for a while, and their faces were red, and they almost wanted to fight.

   Zhang Gui smiled slightly when he saw this, and he also understood that behind this seemingly sentence-reading dispute, there was a serious ideological conflict hidden.

  Many scholars have turned Confucianism into a tool to maintain their privileges as a master.

  Of course, there are also idealists who "travel the world, the way is for the public", and they insist that Confucianism is their tool for governing the country.

  Different people choose differently and hold different concepts.

   But those who only speak for their own interests are still the majority.

  At this time, the majority of civil servants insisted that Zhang Gui’s sentence pronunciation was wrong, and there were still not many civil servants like Ni Yuanlu who chose to support Zhang Gui and Chen Zizhuang.

  Seeing this, Zhang Gui couldn't help but said to Chen Zizhuang: "It seems that we must hurry up and let all the classics have standard sentence reading."

   "Uncle Guo is right, otherwise, I don't know how many scholars would misinterpret the way of saints."

  Chen Zizhuang replied.

   "Your Ministry of Rites is obliged to reform this aspect."

   Zhang Gui replied.

  Chen Zizhuang said: "After returning to the Ministry, I will go to the book and ask for the implementation of the method of sentence reading, and let all the books of Confucian classics in the world have only one set of sentence reading standards, so as to prevent the world from misinterpreting the meaning of the saint!"

Wen Zhenmeng said: "Then you can only be the president, Mr. Chen, who is responsible for arranging the readers of the scriptures, and you can only be the academic and decent Hanlin Qingliu, not the Yang Zhangyuan who intends to serve the people of the world with the way of a saint. Come arrange it!"

   "Wen Xiangnan! You don't want to achieve this wish! You are the ones who are pseudo-learners, and we are the decent ones. We are the only ones who can read the Four Books and Five Classics!"

  Yang Jingchen immediately objected loudly.

  (end of this chapter)