Chapter 143: A white horse is not a horse, only scales and claws

The emperor has been planning to build the school for more than a year.

In the beginning, the major Taoist temples asked for money, and later they took money from the treasury and added a lot of it.

All in all, a lot of money was spent.

However, as it was a rare matter for the emperor to personally intervene, it was unusual that almost no one took it to heart.

Seeing that Zhang Juzheng hadn’t come to visit for more than a year, you can probably tell what his status was in the hearts of court officials - a little emperor playing house.

But in contrast, the emperor himself seemed to attach great importance to it.

Not only did he hold the purse in his own hands, he also inspected it frequently. Even Cheng Dawei, a minor official, could enter the West Garden directly without being stopped.

It would have been fine if I didn't have time in the past, but since Zhang Juzheng was here today, I couldn't help but be curious and want to take a look around.

Faced with the student's proposal, although Xu Jie was a little annoyed because the topic was diverted, he still nodded reluctantly and agreed.

The two of them symbolically drank some tea and chatted about family matters, such as how Zhang's father was doing, when Xu Jie's family would come to Beijing to take care of him, and whether he needed disciples to look after him regularly.

After finishing their daily chat, the two walked out of the room together.

Look around.

Zhang Juzheng wanted to change the subject, so he took the initiative to ask about the academy.

"Teacher, I heard that the academy doesn't teach classics, but only teaches magic?"

This is also the reason why the court officials only regarded this as the emperor’s personal hobby and never took it seriously.

How can you take the imperial examination without studying the classics?

How can one become an official without taking the imperial examination?

Furthermore, the numbers are not worth mentioning.

Although the Ming Dynasty banned books on astronomy and prophecy, which occasionally involved mathematics, the common people usually did not learn any advanced skills in mathematics.

But the common people could not learn it, but the Imperial Academy could teach it - "In addition to the original classics of the Four Masters, they also learned Liu Xiang's Shuoyuan, as well as laws and regulations, books, mathematics, and the Imperial Edicts."

This is one way, and any student from an orthodox background can learn it.

The Imperial College also had a collection of banned books on the market. Even those who were not allowed to show off their skills in mathematics among the common people could become a doctor of miscellaneous subjects in the Imperial College.

It's simply because there is no imperial examination and food is tasteless.

Therefore, the academy established by the emperor specialized in teaching mathematics, and when students from the Imperial Academy passed by, they would often make sarcastic remarks like "ya hui".

Xu Jie shook his head, his expression somewhat amused: "It is true that I don't study the classics, but it is not just mathematics. In the past six months, in addition to mathematics, I have gradually learned more things."

"Since we are talking about counting, let me show you how to count first."

The floor of the college is paved with bluestone slabs and the walls are painted red.

It doesn’t have the charm of an old government office that has been accumulated over the years, but it has a brand new feeling.

Zhang Juzheng followed Xu Jie and looked around.

Unlike a formal academy like the Imperial College, where there were a lot of candidates in their thirties and forties, most of the people here were teenagers in their teens, and there were even children as young as five or six years old.

Xu Jie glanced at them and explained, "Most of these are children of noble families. When I came here, they were all children of noble families. Although I recruited some other students from other places, they are still mainly children of noble families."

"Most of them are bastards who can't inherit the title, so they just try their best."

Zhang Juzheng could occasionally see some familiar faces, such as the grandson of Duke Yingguo Zhang Rong and the youngest son of Marquis Taining Chen Liangbi.

He asked curiously, "What benefits did His Majesty promise?"

In private, some things are said without much consideration.

His Majesty is an expert at making empty promises. Anyone who has worked for the emperor has experienced this to some extent.

At this time, Xu Jie suddenly raised his nose and said modestly: "I have re-established a new school system for Your Majesty, and it should be submitted to the Cabinet for drafting after the new year."

Zhang Juzheng didn't ask any questions and just looked at Xu Jie quietly.

Xu Jie remained reserved for a while, and when he didn't hear any movement, he let out a displeased sound.

He continued, "Unlike officials, they have no rank and can only be used within the academy, not outside."

"As a 'student', you can study in the academy and receive instruction. Accommodation is provided, and you are given two dan of rice per month and two sets of clothing for each of the four seasons."

As soon as he finished speaking, Zhang Juzheng interrupted him: "How can ordinary people go to school? Education for all?"

Distributing rice and clothes was not uncommon, and both the Imperial College and the provincial schools had this benefit.

However, there was a threshold for admission to the Imperial College. One had to at least pass the imperial examination. Otherwise, anyone could come to collect rice, and the people would have flocked to it long ago.

But he doesn't seem to see any threshold at the moment.

Xu Jie denied Zhang Juzheng's conjecture and said slowly: "The students are all selected. At least they have to pass the entrance examination to be shortlisted. And according to your majesty's intention, the lower house will still charge appropriate tuition fees in the future."

Zhang Juzheng nodded and motioned Xu Jie to continue.

Xu Jie didn't take it seriously and continued, "After taking the exam, you will be taught general knowledge such as mathematics, vernacular writing, and judgment."

"Students take one exam each in winter and summer, and study for six years, a total of twelve exams. If they fail twice, they will be expelled. The rest will graduate based on their performance."

"They can return home, or be selected by the Ministry of Revenue, the Imperial Observatory, and the prefectures and counties of Northern Zhili to serve as clerks, or stay in the academy for further study."

"Those who stay in the academy are called 'scholars' and study mathematics, physics, agricultural reclamation and other things."

"If they have any meritorious service, Your Majesty will personally review it and reward them according to their merits."

"Those who have made minor achievements will be awarded the title of Liangjiang Scholars, meaning that they have mastered the knowledge of the Yellow River and the Yangtze River. With this honor, they will be given a house and a monthly salary equivalent to that of the seventh rank."

"Those who have made great achievements will be granted the title of Scholars from All Over the World, which means integrating all four corners of the world. With this honor, they can enter the court to meet the emperor, and be granted a house and a monthly salary equivalent to that of the fourth rank."

Zhang Juzheng heard this but didn't find it surprising.

No matter how loud the title is, it is all empty. Power needs to have a supervisory object to be effective.

A bunch of honorary titles and material rewards, really don't have much prospects.

For matters like this, let alone the cabinet drafting a bill, even the Ministry of Personnel would not be in the mood to pay too much attention to it - after all, the money is paid from the imperial treasury, so there is no room for quibbling.

It's the level of just reading the title and stamping it.

Zhang Juzheng was no longer interested in hearing about any other titles after hearing this, and only replied: "So all the nobles sent their illegitimate children here, hoping to get a title of scholar, so as to avoid having too many descendants and not enough to divide the family property?"

Xu Jie looked strange and repeated: "Mixed?"

When he thought of the crowded rooms in Cheng Dawei's house, it was hard to associate them with chaos.

But Xu Jie didn't explain anything.

The two walked in the corridor, speechless for a while.

Soon, the two came to a lecture hall, and the lecturer's intermittent voice could be heard from the inner room from time to time.

There are more than twenty students in the hall.

On the stage was a young lecturer in his twenties, holding a charcoal pencil in one hand and writing and drawing on a slate with the other.

Perhaps he was too engrossed in the work, or perhaps he was unfamiliar with official etiquette, so when he saw an important person coming in, he didn't react at all and just explained something with a calm face.

Xu Jie led Zhang Juzheng in through the back door and quietly sat down in the empty seat in the last row of the study.

The former introduced: "Mathematics itself was taught by Cheng Dawei, but your majesty said that he was a good scholar but not a good teacher, so he gave Cheng Dawei the title of Liangjiang Scholar, asking him to compile teaching materials, organize what he learned, and specialize in research."

"This lecturer is the former shopkeeper of the Huizhou Commercial Bank of Cheng Dawei. His name is Li Xie. He was invited to the college this summer."

Zhang Juzheng understood.

Huizhou, that’s how it is.

Since the Song Dynasty moved south, the elites fled south, and the trade in Wuhu, Xuanzhou and Huizhou areas became increasingly prosperous.

Especially in this dynasty, after the rise of the "Gangyun System" in which officials and businessmen underwrote sales, no one knew what was happening in Huizhou, but trade became uncontrollable and businesses sprang up like mushrooms after a rain.

In recent years, most of the Jinshi scholars in Huizhou come from business families.

As commerce flourished, the requirements for the math skills of the shop owners of major businesses also became higher. At the same time, if one became rich, one could buy a certain status, and some math banned books were no longer considered banned books.

In this way, mathematics is naturally much better than other places.

I heard someone writing on the blackboard and asking a question: "If the circumference of a money field is 20 feet, the diameter is 3 feet, and the inner hole of the money field is 12 feet in diameter, and the value of pi is 3, what is the product of 1,000?"

This is how it is said, but it is more straightforward when written. Suppose there is a field in the shape of a coin, and its outer circle is...

That’s all, there seems to be a punctuation mark?
As for the symbols such as × and = above, they were automatically blocked by him.

Zhang Juzheng was puzzled and asked Xu Jie in a low voice: "Why are your hands and mouths inconsistent? What's the matter with the punctuation?"

Xu Jie curled his lips and said, "It is the rule set by His Majesty. In order to take care of the people and express accurately, we have to write in vernacular Chinese on the blackboard in class, and add punctuation to separate the sentences."

The work of the academy over the past year was almost the same as that of the Siyi Hall.

That's translation! Lots of translation!
The collections of the imperial palace, the private collections of officials and businesses, and the collections of the Imperial College, including "Nine Chapters of the Yellow Emperor", "Zhoubi Suanjing", "Arithmetic of the Five Classics", "Arithmetic Qia Yi", "Sea Mirror for Measuring Circles", and "Arithmetic of Arcs and Arrows", almost everything the emperor could find was dragged over and translated into plain language.

And replace them with symbols designated by the emperor and Cheng Dawei.

Match them one by one. It sounds simple, but the actual workload is huge!

The academy is already short of staff, and this matter requires some mathematical skills.

The progress is naturally slow, and now it is not even half completed.

They could only do things as they went along - sometimes they would even capture students to do hard labor in order to catch up with the progress required by the emperor.

For this thankless task, Xu Jie didn't know how to evaluate the emperor's actions.

Zhang Juzheng seemed to understand.

He nodded slightly and said with emotion: "Your Majesty has really put a lot of effort into measuring the land."

This question was not difficult. After all, he had listened carefully to the optional mathematics class in the provincial school.

Even as for the symbols, I could understand them somewhat by guessing.

Xu Jie glanced at Zhang Juzheng and said softly, "The difficulty of measuring the land is not this."

With so many officials in the Ministry of Revenue, how much difference can there be if there are fewer people who can count?
Even without this preparation, it will just take a little longer and has nothing to do with success or failure.

As for where the difficulty lies, the two of them know it tacitly.

After hearing this, Zhang Juzheng fell silent.

Just then he tried out a performance evaluation system, and impeachment against him almost never stopped.

Now they are even resorting to such shady means as exposing posts.

If we really start measuring the land, there's no telling how bad the situation will get.

Xu Jie was trying to get him back to the main topic in another way.

But Zhang Juzheng still did not respond and used silence as an answer to Xu Jie.

When Zhang Juzheng shut up, Xu Jie also lost interest and stopped talking.

The two of them sat there quietly, listening to half of the class before Zhang Juzheng came back to his senses from his thoughts.

He smiled at Xu Jie apologetically: "I was lost in thought just now. Let's go and look at something else."

Xu Jie didn't say anything, just nodded, and the two of them went out through the back door together.

"It just so happens that there is a royal relative taking classes here today, let's go and take a look together."

Xu Jie was walking in front, and his voice came lightly.

Zhang Juzheng was puzzled: "Imperial relatives?"

Xu Jie didn't keep it a secret this time: "It's your Majesty's cousin, Li Chengming, who has been very favored by the emperor recently."

As he spoke, he pointed forward.

It’s not too far, it’s just next door to the school.

The two of them found their way to the back door with ease.

However, because Li Chengming knew the two of them, he was afraid of disturbing the order of the class, so the two of them stood outside the door, leaning against the door and listening, with no intention of going in.

"...Yesterday, some students complained that the explanation was too complicated and they did not understand what a subject is and what a logical subject is."

"Today I will keep it simple and try to illustrate with examples."

Zhang Juzheng turned sideways and looked inside.

It was indeed Li Chengming who was speaking. He was standing on the podium and talking eloquently.

"This course currently doesn't teach anything else but one thing, which is..."

As he spoke, he picked up a charcoal pencil and wrote the word "judgment" heavily on the slate.

Li Chengming knocked on the slate habitually and asked, "There are two types of judgment: factual judgment and inference judgment. There are also differences between the two."

"Let me give you an example and first make a factual judgment."

"A white horse is not a horse, everyone. Is this statement correct or not?"

Li Chengming wrote the four words "A white horse is not a horse" on the stone slab again.

This is from the famous story in Gongsun Longzi's Theory of the White Horse. Although a horse is a horse, a white horse is not a horse.

At this time, a very smart student immediately said, "Teacher! This is correct! The word "horse" is used to describe the shape, and the word "white" is used to describe the color. The color does not describe the shape, so a white horse is not a horse."

This is just copying the original text. "Horse" describes the shape, and "white horse" describes the color. The concepts are different, so a white horse is naturally not a horse.

Zhang Juzheng outside the door frowned.

I couldn't help but look at Xu Jie: "Why are you still using sophistry?"

If that were the case, he would have to petition to have it banned.

Xu Jie shook his head and said nothing.

Zhang Juzheng had no choice but to continue listening.

Li Chengming stretched out his hand to signal for people to sit down, cleared his throat and said, "That's not right."

"That is what I mean. The subject is particular, the predicate is general."

"The white horse is an individual, that is, a unique color; the horse is general, that is, it represents the universal species."

"This species manifests itself in different colors, sizes, ages, and postures; similarly, horses of different colors, sizes, ages, and postures all have one thing in common, that is, they belong to the same species, and there is no horse of a certain color that does not manifest this commonality."

"So, this is what is called sophistry, and we can judge it as 'wrong'."

Zhang Juzheng was listening outside and breathed a sigh of relief.

I thought they were teaching some sophistry or the theories of famous scholars.

Xu Jie, who was standing by, commented: "This is what your majesty meant."

"This royal relative is close to His Majesty, so he has seen and heard a lot, so he has different opinions when he talks about these things."

The two were whispering outside.

I heard the voice from inside again.

"I said, if it rains tomorrow, you will not come to listen to the lecture. Other than that, I have no other instructions."

Li Chengming paused, looked around at the students and asked, "Then if you find that it doesn't rain tomorrow, do you think you will definitely come to the lecture?"

Everyone hesitated for a moment, and then nodded.

Li Chengming shook his head, poked the slate with the charcoal pencil, and said in a deep voice: "Absurd!"

"I only ordered that it not to rain. If it does not rain, what you do has nothing to do with me."

"That is, reasoning 'error'."

"On the contrary, everyone knows that cows and horses have four legs. So, I would say that animals with eight legs are definitely not cows and horses, right?"

He looked at the students with a smile.

The students who had been fooled once looked at each other, hesitant.

Zhang Juzheng, who was standing outside the door, nodded slightly: "This is a good lesson. Censors should learn more from it."

Let alone making any judgment, the censors could even call a horse a deer and claim that they heard it by hearsay.

After saying that, he leaned towards Xu Jie, indicating that he should go to another place to listen.

Xu Jie understood, straightened up, and led the way again.

"There are also two 'laboratories', one for agricultural reclamation and one for physics."

“The former are two plots of farmland, but they are not here. They are bought two streets away.”

"The latter is a bit messy. Although I'm in the mansion, I'm thinking about when to move out. There are always bangs and bangs. The people nearby thought I was developing firearms and came to complain several times."

When Zhang Juzheng heard this, he naturally had no interest in running two blocks to see the reclaimed fields.

He came from a military family and did a lot of farming when he was young.

Zhang Juzheng asked casually, "How come the name 'physics' sounds like the study of science?" while letting the teacher lead the way.

Neo-Confucianism is naturally the study of the principles of all things.

Otherwise there is no point in studying things.

The names are very similar, so it is hard not to ask whether the emperor secretly believed in Neo-Confucianism - although Neo-Confucianism is an official textbook, there is no need to believe it so firmly.

Xu Jie shook his head and denied Zhang Juzheng's guess: "Although the name is somewhat similar, you must not say this in front of His Majesty."

Zhang Juzheng asked curiously, "Why is this?"

Xu Jie had a strange look on his face as he recalled the emperor's original words.

He cleared his throat pretentiously and said, "Your Majesty said that we should start anew. Don't get involved with the old learning, lest it bring bad luck!"

(End of this chapter)