Chapter 98: The Tenth Old Man's Salted Fish Contribution
Yin'e and the Ninth Prince exchanged a glance and nodded slightly to each other. Then, under Gu Badai's watchful gaze, they obediently opened the "Great Learning" and began to recite it aloud.
"The way of the Great Learning consists in manifesting one's bright virtue, in loving the people, and in abiding in perfect goodness..."①
Seeing that they didn't cause any trouble but obediently recited the article, Gu Badai nodded with satisfaction.
After watching Yin'e and the Ninth Prince recite the first two hundred words of "The Great Learning," which are the essence and outline of the entire article, Gu Badai stopped watching and moved to the Fifth Prince's desk to check what he had recited during his morning reading.
As soon as Gu Badai left, the reading voices of Yin'e and the Ninth Prince dropped eight notes.
If the Fifth Prince's desk hadn't been just a few steps away from them, and if Gu Badai hadn't been nearby, Yin'e and the Ninth Prince would have already given up, only mouthing the words without making a sound.
The morning reading session in the Imperial Study Room from Yin Shi (3-5 AM) to Mao Shi (5-7 AM) was arranged with two tutors on duty in shifts.
Because today was the first day of school for Yin'e and the Ninth Prince, Gu Badai volunteered to be on duty this morning to intimidate them. The other teacher on duty hadn't appeared yet; he wouldn't arrive to take over for half an hour.
With his head down, staring at the "Great Learning" in front of him, Yin'e mechanically recited it, completely oblivious to the fact that the text had entered his mind. He absorbed no knowledge whatsoever, remaining in a dazed state of reading without understanding what he was saying.
At the hour of Yin (3-5 AM), it was the dead of night. Outside the brightly lit study, the night was deep and dark, and nothing could be seen or distinguished.
This is the best time to fall asleep, and it's also the time when most people sleep the deepest and sweetest.
But the poor Yin'e and others had no choice but to study hard while others were sound asleep, which was really exhausting—and most importantly, they weren't doing it voluntarily, but were forced into it.
Yin'e, who got out of bed at 1-3 AM, went back to bed as soon as he got up yesterday, and actually got plenty of sleep. He was tired mentally, not physically, because his sleep schedule had been suddenly disrupted and he was mentally exhausted from studying late into the night.
As Yin'e recited the Great Learning verbatim, he felt that with each word he spoke, he became more and more mentally exhausted.
It was as if he was expending not energy, but his life force, when he read aloud; as he recited, his soul seemed to float out of his mouth, leaving only an empty shell.
The Great Learning consists of over two thousand characters, and reciting it in its entirety would take about fifteen minutes. If one were to read the Great Learning one hundred and twenty times, it would take at least fifteen hours.
Fortunately, the Imperial Study was not so extreme as to require Yin'e and the Ninth Prince to read articles continuously for fifteen hours; fortunately, although the teaching pace in the Imperial Study was fast, it was not to the point of learning the entire "Great Learning" in one day.
Today is the first day of school for Yin'e and the Ninth Prince. They don't need to finish learning the entire article immediately. They only need to read the first two hundred characters of "The Great Learning" and memorize the essential outline of the article.
Reading from "The way of the Great Learning lies in manifesting one's bright virtue" to "Cultivate oneself, then regulate one's family; regulate one's family, then govern the state; govern the state, then bring peace to the world" takes about a minute for two hundred characters, and reading them one hundred and twenty times is just from the time of Yin (3-5 AM) to the time of Mao (5-7 AM).
Spend an hour repeatedly reading through these two hundred characters, pondering and delving into their profound meaning until you have memorized them completely.
But clearly, Yin'e and the Ninth Prince were not the kind of obedient children who would read the article a hundred and twenty times.
When Gu Badai walked away to check on the Seventh Prince and Eighth Prince's morning reading, Yin'e's reading aloud suddenly stopped.
He opened his mouth wide and yawned, propped his head up on the table with his left hand, and held "The Great Learning" in his right hand. He used the trick he used to deceive his teachers in his student days, pretending to be studying hard, but in fact his eyes and mouth were already closed, and he was "resting his mind".
On the other side, the Ninth Prince was no less exhausted. He collapsed onto the smooth, cool tabletop, his body and mind both tired from lack of sleep, and buried the "Great Learning" at the very bottom.
As the Fifth Prince read on, he suddenly realized that he was the only one left with his voice in the area.
Feeling suspicious, the Fifth Prince turned around and looked behind him. He saw that behind the two tables placed side by side, Yin'e and the Ninth Prince had one hand supporting his head and his eyes closed, while the other had already slumped over.
Fifth Prince: ?
No, are you serious? Really sleeping in the Imperial Study? Are you that bold?
The Fifth Prince was stunned. Suddenly, he realized that compared to them, his laziness in the Imperial Study was not so bad. At least he never dared to sleep in the Imperial Study; at most, he would just get distracted and not focus on his studies.
Um... it seems he's not much better than the ninth or tenth brother.
The Fifth Prince lowered his head in shame, suddenly feeling a little guilty. He felt that he, as the elder brother, had not set a good example, which was why his ninth and tenth brothers followed suit and did not strive for improvement.
Yin'e rested his chin on his hand with his eyes closed for a while, then opened them as the Fifth Prince suddenly began to recite with great passion.
After 3 a.m., when the night was at its darkest, Yin'e was no longer so sleepy and suddenly became energetic—after all, he had slept enough, and the reason he felt sleepy was mostly because he was not yet used to this kind of schedule and was not used to being awake in the middle of the night.
With a slight effort, Yin'e pulled the brand-new thread-bound book in front of him, having been holding the Great Learning loosely in his right hand.
I lowered my head and focused my gaze on the article. This time, I finally understood the content of "The Great Learning" and no longer just mechanically recited it without thinking.
Today they are only learning the first two hundred characters, which is really not long, and the principles they are explaining are not that difficult to understand. If we don't expand on the key points of those two hundred characters, it is not difficult at all to learn the first two hundred characters of the Great Learning.
Yin'e still felt tired from speaking loudly, so he didn't read aloud. Instead, he silently read through what he had learned that day, slowly trying to understand its deeper meaning, while also silently memorizing the entire passage.
After reading it once, Yin'e's gaze fell on the last line: "Cultivate oneself, regulate one's family, govern the state, and bring peace to the world," and his thoughts began to wander slightly.
The principle conveyed in this passage is not far removed from Yin'e's own life. It was revealed in his life and in the life of Emperor Kangxi, and was proven correct by Kangxi's experiences.
Emperor Kangxi ascended the throne at a young age. During the early period of quiet preparation, he studied diligently and tirelessly, thus completing the step of "self-cultivation".
Later, when Kangxi assumed power at a young age, he gained the support of the Hesheli clan through marriage and successfully seized power. This can be considered as achieving "family harmony" – when Kangxi was still a young emperor, he won support for himself through marriage and skillfully balanced all the support he had won over.
After assuming power, Kangxi was in high spirits. He captured Oboi, quelled the Rebellion of the Three Feudatories, subdued Taiwan, expelled the Russians and reclaimed Yaksa, and personally led an expedition against Galdan. This series of actions can be considered as Kangxi's achievement in governing the country.
However, these achievements were made during Kangxi's youth and prime. As Kangxi aged and his sons grew older, he gradually lost the ability to maintain a harmonious family. For an emperor, this disharmony within his family directly impacted the governance of the nation.
In the mid-to-late Kangxi reign, the struggle between the Crown Prince and the First Prince fully surfaced. Other princes, gradually coming of age, also secretly coveted the throne. The struggle for succession began, and the "Nine Princes' Struggle" pushed everything in a worse direction.
In his later years, Emperor Kangxi was caught up in a treacherous and dangerous power struggle over the succession, and many of the ministers from the previous dynasty were also drawn into it.
The ministers either actively participated in the struggle for the throne in order to gain merit from supporting the emperor, or were coerced into joining. The entire court was in constant turmoil due to the secret struggle for the throne among the princes.
That's not all. In his later years, Emperor Kangxi became weary of his duties and was too lenient and tolerant towards his officials, which led to rampant corruption among them. As a result, the administration gradually deteriorated, and the country fell into chaos due to the lack of effective governance.
If families are not in order, the country cannot be governed, and the world cannot be at peace. As the emperor, Kangxi had no private affairs; even the smallest matter could profoundly affect the overall situation of the country.
If Emperor Kangxi had been able to maintain a proper family and properly educate his sons, preventing them from developing ambitions and from becoming suspicious of the crown prince, which led to his later loss of control and descent into madness, would the future have been different? Would it have prevented them from ending up killing each other?
Regardless of how out of control the Crown Prince was in his later years, Crown Prince Yinreng, who has just completed his formal education, is truly outstanding and has gained recognition and support from both the court and the public.
The Crown Prince was personally raised by Emperor Kangxi. He was the most outstanding son among the "holy father and holy son" whom Emperor Kangxi had painstakingly cultivated, and one of Kangxi's greatest and most outstanding achievements. In terms of overall qualities, the Crown Prince far surpassed the other princes, and was a truly well-rounded, all-around well-rounded individual.
If the crown prince had ascended the throne earlier, regardless of whether his governing ability was superior to that of Yongzheng, at least the struggle for the throne would have been settled earlier, avoiding the cruel and dangerous struggle for the throne that would have occurred in the later years of the Kangxi reign. It would also have prevented the rampant corruption and chaotic administration that led to turmoil in the country during the Kangxi era.
It can only be said that the crown prince was established too early, and Kangxi lived too long—just as Crown Prince Yinreng himself later said, how could there be a crown prince for forty years?
Exhaling, Yin'e, who had been lost in thought, stopped his wandering ideas and calmed his racing mind.
Because Yin'e realized that he couldn't help or play a positive role in the matter of managing the family and governing the country.
Yin'e was quite self-aware. The only thing he could do was to keep the Ninth Prince from participating in the struggle for the throne, and to keep him away from the Eighth Prince and prevent him from becoming an appendage of the Eighth Prince and a member of the Eighth Prince's faction.
So his only contribution was turning the struggle for the throne among the nine princes in the late Kangxi era into a struggle among the seven princes?
Um... to be honest, this "Seven Princes' Succession Struggle" sounds a bit strange, not as sophisticated as the "Nine Princes' Succession Struggle".
After all, there is an old saying that the dragon has nine sons, and the struggle for the throne among the nine sons perfectly matches this saying, which sounds familiar and is more acceptable.
After supervising the Seventh and Eighth Princes' morning reading, Gu Badai moved to the vicinity of the Third and Fourth Princes.
Gu Badai and the Fourth Prince had always gotten along very well and were close friends despite their age difference. After Empress Xiaoyi passed away, the Fourth Prince became much more silent, and Gu Badai inevitably paid more attention to him, so she lingered by his side for a while longer.
The Fourth Prince attracted most of Gu Badai's attention, allowing the Ninth Prince to sleep soundly on the table unnoticed. However, Gu Badai remained dutiful and did not forget to keep an eye on the other princes.
Just as Gu Badai was about to circle back, Yin'e quickly stretched out his hand and pushed the Ninth Prince: "Ninth Brother, wake up, get up!"
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The author's note: ① The way of great learning consists in manifesting one's bright virtue, in loving the people, and in abiding in perfect goodness. (From *The Great Learning*)
②Only when things are investigated can knowledge be extended; only when knowledge is extended can the will be sincere; only when the will is sincere can the heart be rectified; only when the heart is rectified can the person be cultivated; only when the person is cultivated can the family be regulated; only when the family is regulated can the state be governed; only when the state is governed can the world be at peace. (From *The Great Learning*) Thank you to the little angels who voted for me or watered my plants between 2023-04-02 22:52:51 and 2023-04-03 19:44:29!
Thank you to the little angels who watered the nutrient solution: Luming~youyouyou, Huangui 20 bottles; Keshuilong 6 bottles; Tianwaifeixian 2 bottles; ·w·, Pear, Yunxi 1 bottle;
Thank you so much for your support! I will continue to work hard!
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