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ideas; for them, talk of li or ren or the tao was all mumbo jumbo and
vain imagining. Legalists thought people were to be motivated not
by any of these amorphous philosophical considerations, but by fear
of punishment and longing for reward. Taking their cue from the
Confucian philosopher Xunzi, Legalists insisted that humankind was
stupid and predisposed toward evil. The followers of Xunzi soon
parted company with Legalism when Legalists refused to believe in
any possible perfectibility of human beings. (Xunzi taught that people
could indeed overcome their innately evil natures and gain ren if they
submitted to li and allowed it to change them.) Legalists insisted that
people were unreformable and had to be constantly controlled through
laws specifying punishments and rewards for every conceivable
behavior.
Legalists heartily disagreed with Confucianists and Taoists who
harked back to a lost golden age. For many Legalists, there never was
a golden age in the first place. They were out to create an ideal society
and state here and now, for the first time in history. Some Legalists
argued that even if there had been a golden age in the past, it would
be impossible to restore or replicate it now because the times had
changed drastically; yesterday's methods were incapable of solving
today's problems.
Legalist thinkers formulated their ideas over two or three centuries.
Various Legalist ideas and governmental techniques were eventually
synthesized by a Legalist named Han Fei, who died in 233 B.C. His
topic, Han Feizi (Master Han Fei), was a compendium of administrative
technique, law, and criticisms of Confucianism, Taoism, and other
minor schools of thought. The teachings of the topic might well be char-
acterized as ruthless and brutal. Han Fei spells out, among other things,
his contention that the methods of the golden ages imagined by
Confucians and Taoists were utterly inapplicable to the current situa-
tion. In his most famous passage, he uses a parable to illustrate his point:
If somebody in this present age should praise the ways of Yao and
Shun
he would certainly be ridiculed by contemporary [Legalist]
sages. Hence the sage does not seek to follow the ways of the ancients,
nor does he regard precedents as the rule. He examines the circum-
stances of his own time and plans his course of action accordingly.
There was once a man of Sung who tilled his field. In the midst of his
field stood the stump of a tree, and one day a hare, running at full speed,
bumped into the stump, broke its neck, and died. Thereupon the man
left his plow and kept watch at the stump, hoping that he would get
another hare. But he never caught another hare, and was only ridiculed
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