Fan Zuyu believes in his book Tang Jian that after the establishment of the new dynasty, the biggest problem is how to stabilize this new dynasty and continue to receive the support and support of the people. The Tang Dynasty did this, and Fan Zuyu believed that the reason for this was that it could achieve "loyalty to the Emperor and Ming, outsourcing the four wildernesses, and subjugating all things", which he believed was the reason why the Tang Dynasty was able to prosper.
The most important factor in governing the country is that both the king and the subject can do the most correct thing, under the ancient social system, the king is the most fundamental factor, the subject is the auxiliary factor, for the king, the most important thing is to achieve "ming". "Ming" is not the intellectual intelligence of the individual, but the enlightenment and wisdom of politics. If the monarch can be politically enlightened and wise, he can identify, judge, and select the best talents to serve as officials at all levels, which ensures that "subject loyalty" is not an illusion pretended by the minister in order to please the king, but the quality of a real person who is a subject. "Loyalty" is not the personal loyalty of the subject to the king, but the greatest loyalty and responsibility of the subject to the fate of the whole country and the fundamental interests of the entire people. The "loyalty" of a subject demanded by an enlightened and wise king should be such a "loyalty", not a subject's obedience to the king himself, or even flattery. If the monarch can achieve this kind of "ming" and "loyalty", the entire ruling mechanism can achieve the best effect.
The criterion for measuring this best effect should be objective, not subjective, and the objective criterion is "outsourcing the four wildernesses and bringing down all things." The Four Wastes refer to the distant directions, that is, to allow the monarch to care about the whole world, not only to the place in front of him and its affairs. All things are all people and things in the whole world, so that all people and things can achieve their own goals and realize their own interests, which is the so-called "fulfillment". Thus, meaning complete. Using "outsourcing the four wildernesses, under the clouds" as an objective criterion for measuring the rule of the world by the monarch is very effective, and other things cannot effectively measure the effect of the monarch's rule of the country, no matter how the literati and inkers or the ministers and bureaucrats sing the praises and praises, they cannot really measure the real effect of the monarch's rule of the country, and only from the actual situation of the four wildernesses and all things can we truly see the actual effect of the monarch's rule of the country. Therefore, fan Zuyu said that the success and stability of the Tang Dynasty's governance were enough to reveal the truth with just these few words.
This is the most concise and effective conclusion that a historian can draw through a holistic and in-depth analysis of history. This conclusion is valid enough to observe which dynasty it may be.
However, what the monarchs in the early days of the Tang Dynasty could do did not necessarily guarantee that the later monarchs could also do it, which caused the Tang Dynasty to change from prosperity to decline, from strong to weak, from victory to destruction. Fan Zuyu studied the whole process of the history of the Tang Dynasty, and of course saw that the Tang Dynasty was only a short period, and then gradually declined, and he examined the fundamental reasons for this historical transformation, arguing that this is:
The descendants forget the industriousness of their predecessors, the heavens are tired of the top, the people are separated from the bottom, the Uchi (圮) is cracked, and the ruler is not protected, and the reason for this is abolished.
"Descendants forget the industriousness of their predecessors" precisely shows that the later monarchs of the Tang Dynasty could not govern the country as diligently as the early monarchs, became slack, and could not do their best to govern the country, which made "the heavens are tired of the top, and the people are separated from the bottom", that is, the heavens above no longer help the Tang Dynasty, and the people below no longer obey the tang dynasty.
The so-called heavenly help does not mean that heaven has the will to intentionally help a dynasty, but that the entire objective environment no longer provides favorable conditions for the Tang Dynasty, so that the Tang Dynasty's rule has produced factors of division and destruction. When Tang first rebelled against Sui, it seemed that there was help from heaven, so it was able to succeed smoothly. At that time, Tiansuke was not a willful heavenly help, but the confluence of various factors in the whole world at that time became a comprehensive condition favorable to Tang Qibing to replace Sui, and when the Tang Dynasty went from prosperity and decline to its demise, there were also such objective comprehensive factors that could be called heaven, which were not intentionally caused or subjectively decided by any one person, but the comprehensive effect of the various factors of the entire objective environment converging, so the ancients used "heaven" to illustrate this situation. That is to say, whether it is the rise and prosperity of a dynasty or the decline or demise, there are objectively comprehensive factors in the whole, which causes the rise and fall of a dynasty, so ancient China recognized this very early and put forward a famous saying: "Follow the heavens and should be followed by people", referred to as "shun tian should be people".
This is a sentence from the most famous ancient Chinese classic, Zhou Yi Ge Gua:
Heaven and earth are transformed into four hours, Tang Wu GE is destined, and it is up to the heavens to respond to people, and the time of revolution is great!
What the Ge Gua means is that the heavens and the earth are constantly changing, thus constituting the changes of the four seasons, which means that change is the fundamental law of the objective world, that everything is constantly changing, and there is nothing that never changes. The historical "GEGE Order" of Shang Tang and King Wu of Zhou, that is, they took military action to eliminate the corrupt and brutal Xia Jie and Yin Shu Kings, so that the Mandate of Heaven was transferred from the hands of the previous dynasties to their own hands, and completed the replacement of the dynasty, which is what ancient China called "GE Destiny", that is, "the change of the Mandate of Heaven" (GE refers to change, fate refers to the Mandate of Heaven), and the reason why Shang Tang and king Wu were able to succeed was because they obeyed the heavens and responded to people, that is, they conformed to the will of Heaven and the people's hearts. When Providence and the people's hearts demand reform, to comply with this demand is to follow the heavens and respond to the people, thus completing the major changes in history, that is, "the time of revolution is great." The so-called "big" means that change has important significance in the development of things, and it can make fundamental changes in the whole world and everything.
The rise and prosperity of the Tang Dynasty was in accordance with heaven and man; its weakness and demise were also the objective requirements of Providence and the human heart, which made the Tang Dynasty have to be so satisfied. In this sense, the ancients said that "shun tian should respond to people" is that various objective factors have caused the rise and fall of a dynasty. Fan Zuyu said that "the heavens are tired of the top, and the people are separated from the bottom", it is precisely the Tang Dynasty that cannot conform to the heavens, nor can it respond to the people, and the heavens and the people have abandoned the Tang Dynasty, so the Tang Dynasty will inevitably change from prosperity to decline, from strong to weak, and gradually to extinction, that is, Fan Zuyu said that "the Yu Inner Circle (圮) is split, the ruler is not secure, and the reason for this is abolished." Uchi is the whole world, the split is the fragmentation, and the abolition is the abolition of the dynasty's rule. It can be seen that an important lesson that Fan Zuyu summed up from the history of the Tang Dynasty is that a dynasty must conform to heaven and people, conform to the requirements of the objective environment and the needs of the people's hearts and minds of the world.
to be continued