Abstract:
In China, as other nations, existed a period of “ruling under wizards” with the popularity of animism. The situation of “ruling under wizards” was not replaced by “ruling under ancestral gods” or “ruling under heaven” until the establishment of monarchy in the Shang and Zhou dynasties. Kings in West Zhou took advantage of people’s fear of heaven to control the hierarchical order through the power of ghosts, gods or military troops and thereby forced the lower working class and the conquered to undergo labor service and pay gongna permanently. The assigned labor system of forceful labor service and gongna by a fixed group of people was however breaking apart during the period of Spring and Autumn and Warring States. Through the reformation in every state, the kings carried on military tax based on the land and Chengqiu, in which there was a standard in the proportion of the exploitation and people had a degree of personal freedom. As a result, humans’ value was recognized, which strengthened their independence and corrected their view on heaven. Under the influence of Confucianism, people began to give up their belief in ghosts and gods gradually while they knew the difference between heaven and humans, but it was impossible to give up their belief in ghosts and gods totally, which was difficult to be accepted by most of people in traditional society at that period of time. Legalists believing in Confucianism yet maintaining their new thinking carried on farming and wars, which was helpful in realizing the unity of all the states, but was nevertheless contrary to people’s willing of a peaceful life. Therefore, after the end of the large wars during the Han Dynasty, Dong Zhongshu recommended to Emperor Wu that the ruling way in the Qin Dynasty should be changed and “disasters owing to heaven’s will” and “human behaviors finding responses in heaven” should be borrowed to reconnect the relationship between heaven and man. Besides, heavenly way,Yinyang(阴阳), metal(金), wood（木）, water, fire, earth(土) and nature should be treated as the basis of “king’s authority and his ruling principles”. The theory of imperial autocracy dominated by “the ruling principles” was the result of history, representing its existing rationality, but it is not compatible with modernization. In this way, we must have caution in going back to superstition and “the ruling principles” when we carry forward the excellent traditional Chinese cultures.
