The procuratorial system and the collection system originated in the Western Han Dynasty and were mainly used in the Eastern Han Dynasty. Jiupin Zheng Zhi originated from Cao Wei in the Three Kingdoms period and was mainly used in Wei, Jin, Southern and Northern Dynasties. The imperial examination system originated from Sui and Tang Dynasties and was mainly used in Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties.
Among these four ways of selecting officials, the methods of selecting officials are quite different, mainly by recommendation, supplemented by examination, or by local officials to inspect at any time within their jurisdiction. If you meet people with good reputation in rural areas, you can recommend them to the Central Committee, and then the recommended people can take the exams held regularly in Beijing. Finally, the court will hire them according to their examination conditions.
Or removed by officials or counties. After the trial, officials or counties will recommend to the court with their achievements, and they can become officials after passing. Or, the central government sends officials to inspect various places, and determines their grades according to their personal conduct and family background, and then reports them to the central government in the form of grades, and then the court selects officials according to the grades set by the officials sent by them.
However, the imperial examination system is completely different from the imperial examination system, the recruitment system and the Nine Grades Zhengzhong system. You don't need anyone's recommendation, such as an official or county magistrate, and you don't look at your character or family background. As long as candidates think they have enough knowledge to pass the exam, they can sign up for the formal selection exam. After passing the exam, he can become an official.
That is to say, before the Sui and Tang Dynasties, if he wants to achieve the goal of "serving Tian Shelang day and night", he must meet one condition, that is, he has a prominent family background. Without exception, the imperial examination system, the conscription system and the Jiupin Zheng Zhi system all need the recommendation of ministers or ministers. Without their recommendation, unless you have a high reputation, even if you have the ability, you won't get into the ninth five-year plan, which is above the temple.
Looking back, when the imperial examination system and the nine-grade Zheng Zhi system prevailed, the right of recommendation was controlled by some people with ulterior motives, which eventually led to "raising scholars without knowing books;" Cha Xiaolian, his father separated, "there is no poverty in the top grade and no gentry in the bottom grade" is such a situation that people can't help laughing.
Therefore, before the Sui and Tang Dynasties, being an official was never something that poor children could count on. Although during the 800 years from the Qin and Han Dynasties to the Southern and Northern Dynasties, poor children such as Kuang Heng and Cai Yi came to the official position with "less family poverty", they were all children with more power and background such as Gong Sunhe, Zhuang and Tian Fan. It can be said that before the Sui and Tang Dynasties, being an official was always the privilege of the powerful children, who controlled all the important positions in the imperial court and continued from generation to generation.
However, with the birth of the imperial examination system, being an official is no longer the privilege of the children of the powerful, but has become the power that all students in the world can touch, and the poor can be born from now on. With the help of the characteristics of the imperial examination system, such as fair competition, examination by subject, merit-based admission, etc., as long as he is diligent and knowledgeable, no matter how poor he is, as long as he is innocent and not a crowd forbidden by the imperial court to participate in scientific research, he can directly sign up for the imperial examination, and as long as he can pass the imperial examination, he will have the opportunity to be an official.
Since its birth, the imperial examination system has been favored by rulers of past dynasties and has become the most important way for the imperial court to select officials. It was welcomed by the rulers of past dynasties, mainly because it can maintain the current rulers' rule over the world.
First of all, the central government can weaken the control of aristocratic families on the imperial court by using the imperial examination system, that is, deciding whether to appoint or not according to knowledge. At first, the government selected officials through inspection, expropriation and nine-grade zhong Zheng, which basically required the recommendation of the above officials. Only when they recommend, can the government appoint them as officials.
Therefore, this form of selecting officials will cause a very serious problem, because they can be officials, and most of them rely on the ministers and county orders who recommend them. Therefore, either because of gratitude or because of gratitude, they can easily collude with officials who recommend them to be officials, and even form a party against the court. At the same time, the right of recommendation is in the hands of officials, which is equivalent to giving them the right of selection and appointment of court officials, and it is easy for the emperor to lose control of the court. In this way, these official selection systems are not conducive to centralized rule in essence.
However, with the emergence of the imperial examination system, these problems have been greatly curbed. The emperor directly controlled the selection and appointment of officials, making those scholars "children of the emperor". In this way, except for a few officials with "ambitions", most officials will only be grateful to the emperor and loyal to the monarch, not to others, so that the monarch can strengthen centralized rule.
At the same time, taking advantage of the characteristics of selecting officials in the imperial examination, the emperor can also control the "mind" of the students all over the world through the contents of the examination, and only choose Confucian classics full of loyalty to the monarch and patriotism, which can make Confucianism such as feudal unification and divine right of monarch deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, thus gradually controlling the students all over the world, so that they can only obey the rule of the current ruler and are willing to be driven by the current ruler.
In addition, the most important thing is that because the standard for selecting officials in the imperial examination is "everything depends on the future of Wencheng", no matter how you read it, meritocracy is the best choice. Without talent, even if your family background is prominent, there are not many opportunities for you to be an official in the DPRK. However, if aristocratic families are unsuccessful, they will often "it runs in the family" and decline rapidly. In this way, an aristocratic family that can't last for a hundred years will never pose any threat to the central court, and will never be able to replicate the "feat" of the aristocratic family in the Eastern Jin Dynasty in suppressing imperial power and ruling the world.
At the same time, the fundamental reason why the imperial examinations were held in the Sui and Tang Dynasties was that the Emperor of the Sui and Tang Dynasties hoped to use the imperial examinations to restrict the imperial clan's control over the country's highest military and political affairs, so as to allow more children of ordinary people to enter the court, thus countering the existence of imperial clan and ensuring the absolute security and stability of imperial power. After the Sui and Tang Dynasties, although the aristocratic families had declined and the imperial power began to occupy a dominant position, they were still threatened by the intertwined gentry. They are friends who oppose imperial power and even threaten it. Therefore, the later emperors still need to use the imperial examination to let more children of ordinary people with no subordinate power and innocent background enter the officialdom to help them deal with these gentry.
In this way, it is precisely because the imperial examination is very conducive to the rule of the incumbent over the world. Therefore, since the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the imperial examination has been continued by the rulers of past dynasties and has become the most important way to select officials for more than 200 years.
Of course, no matter what kind of system, as long as someone intervenes, it will inevitably decline one day. When it no longer adapts to social development, it will naturally be abandoned by the times. Although the imperial examination played a great role in governing and stabilizing the world in feudal times, in the end, it inevitably declined. In the thirty-first year of Guangxu (1905), with the imperial edict of the Qing court: "Starting from the afternoon of the third month (1906), all rural examinations and general examinations were stopped, that is, the annual examinations and general examinations in all provinces were stopped.
However, whether the imperial examination exists or not, objectively speaking, it must be reasonable that the imperial examination system can last for more than a thousand years. For China in feudal times, it had both positive and negative effects.
So, what is the positive influence of the imperial examination system on the feudal era of China? Where are the negative effects?
The first is the positive impact.
The most positive influence of the imperial examination system is undoubtedly to create a fair way of selecting officials, that is, to select talents through the ability-based examination, so that the bottom elite has the opportunity to compete fairly with the upper dignitaries and thus flow to the upper society.
Since the emergence of the imperial examination, the selection of officials is no longer based on family background, but on knowledge. As long as you are talented, you will have the opportunity to go out and enter the stage. On the contrary, if you have no talent, even if you are the son of a public official, you won't have many opportunities to look at each other. As the saying goes, "A good scholar is the son of Shu Ren, and a bad scholar is the son of Shu Ren." As long as you are talented, you can become a commoner even if you are poor, but if you are incompetent, even the son of a commoner can only be a commoner.
Of course, it is undeniable that in that feudal era, people with power always had power. As long as power exists, any system, no matter how perfect, will sometimes be influenced by power, and the imperial examination system is no exception. Since the appearance of the imperial examination, it is not uncommon to record cheating in the imperial examination in the history books of past dynasties. However, despite the existence of "abuse of power for personal gain" and "abuse of power for personal gain" in the imperial examinations of past dynasties, we can't deny that the supreme rulers of past dynasties are striving to make the imperial examinations more fair.
Everyone hopes that the imperial examination can achieve "everyone is equal before the imperial examination." To this end, these supreme rulers have formulated a series of systems to prevent cheating in the imperial examination, such as the "locked courtyard" system to prevent examiners from assisting candidates to cheat; The "avoidance" system to prevent examiners, deputy examiners and invigilators from helping their children and relatives cheat; In order to prevent powerful people from using their power to seek personal gain for their children, a system of "admission of children of officials and people in separate volumes" was set up; In order to prevent examiners from colluding with landlords and help their children cheat, a "paste name" system was set up to ensure the fairness and justice of the imperial examination.
As Yu Xiansheng said: "The greatest advantage of the imperial examination system is that it fundamentally broke the monopoly of the rich gentry on political power and made the composition of the state administrative organs open to the largest society possible. The imperial examination system shows such a passion: all talents in this land have the possibility of promotion, even if they are old and late, as long as they can catch up with the exam, they will always leave you with opportunities. It can be said that in the feudal environment at that time, the imperial examination was the fairest system for selecting officials for the world, which was irreplaceable.
Furthermore, another positive influence of imperial examination is that it can continuously inject more fresh blood into the imperial court, thus improving the management efficiency of the central court to the world.
Since the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the imperial court has been able to obtain more than 100 Jinshi after each court examination. Although a few of these Jinshi may be admitted by taking advantage of loopholes and practicing fraud, most of them are elites killed out of thousands of troops, which is really one in a million. Judging from the fact that almost all the officials who made a difference in the past dynasties were students who stood out from the imperial examinations, such as Di Renjie, Ouyang Xiu, Wang Anshi, Yu Qian, Wang Yangming, Lin Zexu, Li Hongzhang, etc., the imperial examinations did select many officials with real talents and practical knowledge for the imperial court.
Think about it, with the continuous participation of these talented officials, this will undoubtedly improve the efficiency of the court's management of the world and enhance the ability of the government to implement local laws. After all, at this time, most of these newly graduated college students are young adults in their thirties and forties. They lack neither experience nor ability and energy, and it is also the moment when energy, ability and experience reach their peak.
And with their participation, it can not only fill the vacancies all over the country, but also strengthen the court's control over the world. At the same time, after years of experience, they can also replace those old officials who are 60 or 70 years old, dying and blind. In this way, with the mature officials replacing older officials, with the vigorous energy of mature officials, the policies reached by the imperial court can naturally be implemented more quickly and efficiently throughout the country, which will undoubtedly strengthen the central government's rule over the world.
Secondly, the appearance of the imperial examination also had a positive impact, that is, it promoted the development of education and cultural undertakings in feudal times. Since the Sui and Tang Dynasties, officials have been selected through the imperial examination, regardless of birth or family background, and the imperial examination is based on the examination of the situation, that is, knowledge determines who can be an official. As a result, more and more people who want to take the imperial examination and be an official in Yuelongmen have gone to study and embarked on the road of "learning and being excellent".
Take the Ming and Qing Dynasties as an example. During the Ming Dynasty, as many as 9,000 students studied in imperial academy. In the Qing dynasty, the number of students in government and state schools added up to more than one million. Therefore, at that time, in order to meet the needs of these huge number of scholars, the government and the people opened a large number of academies and private schools for them to study. At the same time, with the increase in the number of readers, the demand for supporting books is also increasing, so books such as classics, history, philosophers and collections are also printed in large quantities and widely circulated.
It can be said that the reason why China's ancient literature is so prosperous can influence many neighboring countries and make Chinese civilization dominate the East for more than a thousand years, which is absolutely inseparable from the imperial examination. It is precisely because reading can give you the opportunity to be an official that more and more people join the ranks of scholars. With the increase of scholars, their literature naturally prospers. At this time, China's famous ministers, celebrities, politicians, thinkers, writers, educators, scientists and poets, such as Zhang Jianzhi, Kou Zhun, Sima Guang, Fan Zhongyan, Su Shi, Su Zhe, Shen Kuo and Xu Guangqi, all came from the imperial examinations.
First of all, realistically speaking, the imperial examination system had no negative influence in feudal times. For the upper rulers, it can not only help them stabilize the rule of the world and strengthen the centralized rule, but also help them stabilize the imperial power and let the imperial power override the court. For the bottom people, they have finally been given a chance to compete fairly with the children of powerful people. At this time, being an official is no longer an illusion for them, but something that can be touched. The imperial examination system can be said to be the fastest way to the upper class for them.
It can be seen that in the feudal era, the imperial examination system was of great benefit to the emperor and the people at the bottom. And if we must say its disadvantages, I am afraid it is aimed at those dignitaries. The influx of civilians into the court will inevitably squeeze the position of the court's dignitaries, thus damaging their political interests. However, to be honest, it is not a bad thing for the people to harm the interests of the powerful, but it is still a good thing. If their interests are not harmed, how can poor children turn over?
Of course, from a modern point of view, the imperial examination system has its negative effects. First of all, for China, the greatest negative impact of the imperial examination system was that it hindered the development of ancient science and technology and severely imprisoned people's innovative ideas. You know, the fundamental purpose of the imperial examination is to stabilize the incumbent's rule over the world, so everything is developing in the direction of benefiting the incumbent. The incumbent at that time obviously wouldn't let the scholars who were disloyal to him pass the imperial examination. Therefore, in order to prevent scholars who are disloyal to themselves from taking the imperial examination, and then to their disadvantage, the contents of the imperial examination are restricted, and most of them are Confucian statements of loyalty to the monarch and patriotism.
In this way, if a scholar wanted to be an official at that time, he had to and could only learn the saying "even the interested party". Imagine, under the influence of this Confucian chicken soup, which only teaches scholars to be loyal to the monarch and patriotic, but does not teach them how to govern the country and how to care about the sufferings of the people, how many scholars who have been admitted will really care about the life and death of the people? Of course, there are undeniable ones, such as Bao Zheng, Yu Qian, Zhang and Hai Rui. They all have the ability to rule the world. Of course, this is only a minority, not a majority.
But most scholars who don't know the sufferings of the people don't care how the country should be governed at all. In their minds, they only know that "they don't listen to things outside the window, but only read sage books", because as long as they understand and understand those Confucian classics, they can get all the fame and fortune. Moreover, under the deliberate connivance of the upper rulers who don't care about talents but only care about loyalty to the monarch, these scholars have long forgotten the original intention of "cultivating themselves, saving the country and helping the people" and only know "wealth and loyalty to the monarch"
In the Sui and Tang Dynasties, when the imperial examination first appeared, there were practical subjects such as Ming Jing (Confucian Classics), Fa Ming (Law), Zi Ming (Writing) and Shu Ming (Arithmetic), but in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, only the Jinshi was left, and the examination content changed from emphasizing time strategy in the Sui and Tang Dynasties to emphasizing poetry and paying attention to time strategy. This time, in order to completely control the thoughts of scholars, the Ming and Qing emperors really reduced them to a pedantic minister who only knew loyalty to the monarch but not to the world. They are eight-part essays.
"Because of the narrow scope of the proposition, scholars ponder the test questions, read the selected works and imitate them, but they can't learn anything new without reading the book." Because the content of the imperial examination was limited to the "four books and five classics" by the Ming and Qing emperors, and most of these books only talked about how to be loyal to the monarch, not how to govern the country. So although it is beneficial to the emperor, it is really harmful to the world and will only make.
It can be said that in the Ming and Qing dynasties, the imperial examination only focused on loyalty to the monarch, but not on practical education. As a result, scholars all over the world only study the Four Books and Five Classics, poems and songs, which in turn inhibited the development of ancient natural science and technology in China. As a result, it goes without saying that the brilliant civilization that once created the "Four Great Inventions" has no new technology. In addition, the Ming and Qing dynasties pursued the national policy of "closing the country to the outside world", which once occupied a dominant position.
As Gu said, "stereotyped writing is like burning books, and corrupt talents are not only trapped in the suburbs of Xianyang." It can be said that the imperial examinations in Ming and Qing Dynasties did great harm to China, and only made China fall behind more and more, without any other benefits.
However, it is true that looking at these imperial examinations from the present perspective, there are indeed many problems, such as binding the people's thoughts and the development of China. However, we should know that there is no perfect system in the world, and the imperial examination system is no exception. As mentioned above, the imperial examination can exist for more than a thousand years without being abolished. It has a reason to exist, because under the circumstances at that time, it was the only system that was fairest to the bottom elite.
The purpose of the imperial examination system is to give all scholars in the world a fair and just selection method, so that all scholars in the world have the opportunity to serve the country. So there is nothing wrong with the system itself. If users can use it fairly, they can provide a steady stream of energetic and talented fresh blood for the country. With the addition of these fresh blood, the whole country will certainly develop healthily and stably. Therefore, it is precisely because of this function of the imperial examination system that many of its systems are still adopted by modern society, such as the examination system, the paste name system, the lock name system and so on. From this point, we can see that although the imperial examination has shortcomings, it also has advantages.
In a word, whether in feudal times or in contemporary society, facing a country with a huge population base like China, this form of selecting talents through examinations is still the most suitable way for China. It must be said that we should not blindly deny the imperial examination system. What we should do is to deeply understand its advantages and disadvantages, then take its essence and discard its dross, and then apply it correctly to various fields. This is what we should do.