First of all, burning books to enslave Confucians is not the burning books to embarrass Confucians as we know it. The books burned were Confucian poetry books such as "Shang Shu" and "The Book of Songs" and poetry books of hundreds of other schools of thought. Practical books such as medicine, farming books, and divination were not included in the destruction. Confucian scholars, but alchemists, are those who pretend to be gods and ghosts. The incident of burning books and entrapping Confucians was first recorded in Sima Qian's "Historical Records. Volume 121": By the end of the Qin Dynasty, poems and books were burned, and sorcerers were entraped. The six arts were thus in short supply. However, at this time, there was no such thing as entrapping Confucians. Sima Qian clearly said that he was trapping sorcerers, and he was not burning all the books in the country, but burning poems and books. Burning books to embarrass Confucians really turned into burning all pre-Qin classics and ensnaring Confucian scholars. In the "Preface to Shangshu" written by Kong Anguo in the late Western Han Dynasty, he said that Qin Shihuang destroyed the ancient books, burned books to embarrass Confucian scholars, and the world's scholars Escape and dissolve. ?Since then, Qin Shihuang has simply burned poems and books and tricked the alchemists at the beginning, and turned into burning all the classics of the pre-Qin Dynasty and tricking the world's Confucian scholars as propagated by later Confucians.
In fact, Qin Shihuang himself? Burning poems and books and trapping alchemists? There is nothing wrong in the sense of ruling. Why?
First, why did the First Emperor burn poems and books?
First of all, what is a poetry book? Poems in ancient times refer to classics such as "Shang Shu" and "The Book of Songs". So why did the First Emperor burn these poetry books? "Shangshu" records the governance philosophy of the ancient sage kings, that is, the Three Emperors and Five Emperors. Do you think the First Emperor, the first emperor in the ages who boasts of "Three Emperors of Great Contribution and Five Emperors of Demai", would allow this kind of governance that is contrary to his own rule? Do ideas appear where he rules? Obviously not. What he wants to do is to let people in the world only know his philosophy of governing the country, but not the philosophy of the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors. At the same time, what is the Book of Songs for? To put it simply, it is to praise the great achievements of the monarchs of the Zhou Dynasty, including the six kingdoms destroyed by the First Emperor. Do you think any emperor is willing to rule by himself, and his people will praise other monarchs? ? Moreover, the Six Kingdoms had just been destroyed, and the survivors of the Six Kingdoms were still ready to stir up trouble. Do you think the First Emperor would tolerate the existence of such books praising the monarchs of the Six Kingdoms? Isn't this asking for trouble?
In fact, the ultimate purpose of burning books is to unify thoughts and implement ignorant management. What the First Emperor wants to do is to let everyone know that he is the only one, and to let everyone know that the only one they need to praise and the only one who needs to obey is him . Of course, at that time, what the First Emperor did was not wrong. Which of the many emperors in China did not implement obscurant education? Who hopes that their dynasty will always have voices opposing their rule? So in itself, there was nothing wrong with the First Emperor burning books.
2. Why did the First Emperor trick the sorcerers?
We all know that the First Emperor was an emperor who was keen on immortality and seeking immortality. It was precisely because of this that he gathered a large number of people who pretended to be gods and ghosts, among whom we are familiar with Lu Sheng and Xu Fu. People, and we all now know that these warlocks were completely deceiving Qin Shihuang. They just wanted to get glory and wealth by doing this. But the First Emperor didn't know it at the beginning, so he gave them a lot of gold and silver treasures and asked them to find the elixir of life. But we all know now that it is absolutely impossible for them to find it, so they have always been there. The key to deceiving the First Emperor was that they should not deceive the First Emperor and often secretly insult and slander the First Emperor. To put it simply, they said that the First Emperor was a fool and had a lot of money. Until the First Emperor found out, they simply ran away with a large amount of treasures.
At this time, the First Emperor could be said to be furious. According to the "Historical Records: The Chronicles of the First Emperor of Qin": When the First Emperor heard that (Hou Sheng and Lu Sheng) were dead, he was furious and said: "I have failed to collect the letters from the world." Throw away all users. I have summoned many literary and alchemists to create peace, and the alchemists want to practice in order to obtain strange medicines. Now I heard that the Korean people went away without repaying, and Xu Shi and others spent huge amounts of money, but in the end they couldn't get the medicine, and they were just reporting for profit. Lu Sheng and others have been given very generous gifts by me, but now they are slandering me to emphasize my bad character. Those who were born in Xianyang, I will ask people to be honest, or they may make trouble for Guizhou. ?. So the First Emperor ordered the censors to arrest those alchemists who had not escaped and let them report each other. In the end, more than 460 alchemists were reported together and were buried alive.
In fact, from our point of view, there is nothing wrong with what the First Emperor did. After all, as a generation of emperors, who can tolerate being teased like this? It would be strange not to get angry. And those alchemists should indeed be killed. If they hadn't deceived the First Emperor to seek immortals, why would the First Emperor waste so much money on the people and money? How many people's treasures were completely stolen by these alchemists? Do you think it was wrong to kill them?
So to sum up, in fact, the First Emperor did not do anything wrong at the time, and this was not a disaster. Given his position, the First Emperor doing this would only be beneficial to him and the rule of the Qin Dynasty, and not to others. Harmless. It is not a disaster for the Chinese nation. After all, what was burned were only some useless books praising the king's merits. Those practical books, such as medicine and farming books, etc. were not burned. Furthermore, even those books praising virtues were not burned. Not all of his books were killed. Qin Shihuang's royal library also backed up these books.
Not to mention the ones who were killed, what use were the people who deceived the world and stole their reputation?
Furthermore, later generations always like to use the burning of books and the humiliation of Confucians as evidence that the First Emperor was a tyrant, but in fact? In fact, the First Emperor was not a tyrant, but he governed the world with the law, which was sometimes too harsh. At that time, it was still a time of troubled times, and when the survivors of the Six Kingdoms were still ready to take action, do you want to rely on benevolence and righteousness to govern the world of troubled times? Do you hope that benevolence and righteousness will deter these nobles from the six countries who are ready to make a move? Isn't this wishful thinking?
The reason why the First Emperor of later generations received such a bad reputation was actually because he was slandered by those Confucians who deceived the world and stole his reputation. After Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty only respected Confucianism, the Confucianists used their power to slander the First Emperor. Its purpose is self-evident, it is nothing more than to declare to the world that if you use Confucianism, you can become an eternal wise king, but if you use other schools of thought, you will become an eternal tyrant.