Wang Yang-ming became acquainted as early as 1519 with the first European rifles, imported by the Portuguese who had landed in 1517. (The Chinese then called them Fu-lang-chi, meaning Franks.  Wang was the first Chinese who spoke of the “Franks".) The Chinese had already had mortars which hurled stones, as early as the second century A.D.  In the seventh or eighth century their mortars had sent stones of a couple of hundredweights some four hundred yards.  There is mention in the eleventh century of cannon which apparently shot with a charge of a sort of gunpowder.  The Mongols were already using true cannon in their sieges.  In 1519, the first Portuguese were presented to the Chinese emperor in Nanking, where they were entertained for about a year in a hostel, a certain Lin Hsuen learned about their rifles and copied them for Wang Yang-ming.  In general, however, the Chinese had no respect for the Europeans, whom they described as “bandits” who had expelled the lawful king of Malacca and had now come to China as its representatives.  Later they were regarded as a sort of Japanese, because they, too, practised piracy.

12 Machiavellism

All main schools of Chinese philosophy were still based on Confucius.  Wang Yang-ming’s philosophy also followed Confucius, but he liberated himself from the Neo-Confucian tendency as represented by Chu Hsi, which started in the Sung epoch and continued to rule in China in his time and after him; he introduced into Confucian philosophy the conception of “intuition”.  He regarded intuition as the decisive philosophic experience; only through intuition could man come to true knowledge.  This idea shows an element of meditative Buddhism along lines which the philosopher Lu Hsiang-shan (1139-1192) had first developed, while classical Neo-Confucianism was more an integration of monastic Buddhism into Confucianism.  Lu had felt himself close to Wang An-shih (1021-1086), and this whole school, representing the small gentry of the Yangtze area, was called the Southern or the Lin-ch’uan school, Lin-ch’uan in Kiangsi being Wang An-shih’s home.  During the Mongol period, a Taoist group, the Cheng-i-chiao (Correct Unity Sect) had developed in Lin-ch’uan and had accepted some of the Lin-ch’uan school’s ideas.  Originally, this group was a continuation of Chang Ling’s church Taosim.  Through the Cheng-i adherents, the Southern school had gained political influence on the despotic Mongol rulers.  The despotic Yung-lo emperor had favoured the monk Tao-yen (c. 1338-1418) who had also Taoist training and proposed a philosophy which also stressed intuition.  He was, incidentally, in charge of the compilation of the largest encyclopaedia ever written, the Yung-lo ta-tien, commissioned by the Yung-lo emperor.

Wang Yang-ming followed the Lin-ch’uan tradition.  The introduction of the conception of intuition, a highly subjective conception, into the system of a practical state philosophy like Confucianism could not but lead in the practice of the statesman to machiavellism.  The statesman who followed the teaching of Wang Yang-ming had the opportunity of justifying whatever he did by his intuition.