Page:Eminent Chinese Of The Ch’ing Period - Hummel - 1943 - Vol. 1.pdf/434

Rh on such subjects as economics, government and military defense.

In 1645, after the fall of Peking, he was given a minor official post in the court of the Prince of Fu (see under ) at Nanking. When the Manchus advanced to Kiangnan he and several friends, including, directed the defense of their native city, K'un-shan, but when the city fell on August 26, 1645 Ku was with his foster-mother in a neighboring district and so escaped death. His foster-mother, unwilling to live under Manchu rule, starved herself for a number of days and died on September 19, expressing on her deathbed a wish that her adopted son would never serve the Manchus in any official capacity. Meanwhile the Ming Prince of T'ang (see under ), then in Fukien, appointed Ku a second class assistant secretary in the Office of Discipline in the Board of War. In the autumn of 1647 Ku attended to the burial of his foster-mother, and three years later began to travel in order to escape persecution by an enemy who coveted the family property. A slave of the family had conspired with this person to accuse Ku of seditious relations with. In 1655 Ku apprehended the slave and drowned him. For this act he was imprisoned, but with the help of friends the sentence was commuted to flogging. His opponent, however, was relentless, and in 1656 engaged an assassin to pursue him when he was on his way to Nanking. The assault took place not far from the city and Ku was wounded. Believing it unwise to remain at home, he began in 1657 to travel in North China, moving back and forth in the provinces of Shantung, Chihli, Shansi, Honan and Shensi. He frequently paid his respects at the tombs of the Ming emperors north of Peking, as he had previously done at the tomb of the first emperor of that dynasty, just outside of Nanking. Except for two visits to Kiangnan in 1660–61 and in 1667, he passed the remainder of his life in the northern provinces, supporting himself while traveling by working for brief periods in the homes of his friends, by managing a farm in Chang-ch'iu, Shantung, and by breaking land for cultivation on the northern frontier of Shansi. He is reported to have encouraged the merchants of Shansi in the perfection of their nation-wide banking system, known as p'iao-hao 票號. At the same time he encouraged the use of labor-saving machinery and the opening of mines. Some sources hold that he secretly cherished the hope of some day overthrowing the Manchu power, and that he operated his farms to finance a future uprising. Others assert that his many journeys were designed to assemble supporters and to take notes on the strategic places in the empire. In 1668 he was imprisoned for more than half a year in Tsinan, Shantung, on the false charge of having sponsored the printing of a book unfavorable to the Manchu regime. He managed, however, to clear himself by his own defense and by the help of friends. In the following year joined him as a pupil.

In 1677 Ku Yen-wu went to Peking and while there paid his respects at the Ming tombs for the sixth and last time. A year later his name was proposed for the honorary examination known as po-hsüeh hung-tz'ŭ (see under ), but he vehemently declined to compete, although his nephews, and, sons of his younger sister, were then influential officials in the capital. When the Historiographical Board for the writing of the history of the defunct dynasty (Ming-shih) was set up in 1679 he resisted all efforts of friends to have him appointed to it. Thereafter, except for occasional journeys, he lived in Hua-yin, Shensi, a place where he could study in quiet and yet keep in touch with events in other parts of the empire. He died while traveling through Ch'u-wo in south Shansi. A nephew, Ku Yen-shêng 顧衍生 (b. 1646), who was his adopted son, escorted the remains to K'un-shan to rest with those of his ancestors in the family cemetery. Ku Yen-wu's only son had died in infancy.

The thought and activity of Ku Yen-wu can be understood only against the background of social and political turmoil in which he lived. As a young man he had resisted the Manchus and was compelled, in the next thirty-seven years of his life, to live under Manchu rule. The weakness which the nation showed against the invaders he attributed to the preceding centuries of empty philosophizing by the followers of the Sung Neo-Confucian school whose teaching came to be known as Sung-hsüeh 宋學, or Li-hsüeh 理學 ("Rationalism"), the chief founders of that school being, among others, Ch'êng Hao and Chu Hsi (see under ). In the Ming period a branch of this school developed, under the influence of Wang Shou-jên (see under ), an extreme intuitonalismintuitionalism [sic] which Ku recognized as having in reality been derived, not from an 422