greet the emperor as all citizens had to do; now they were exempt from
this rule. On the other hand, the first Sung emperor was willing to
throw himself to the earth in front of the Buddha statues, but he was
told he did not have to do it because he was the "Buddha of the present
time" and thus equal to the God. Buddhist priests participated in the
celebrations on the emperor's birthday, and emperors from time to time
gave free meals to large crowds of monks. Buddhist thought entered the
field of justice: in Sung time we hear complaints that judges did not
apply the laws and showed laxity, because they hoped to gain religious
merit by sparing the lives of criminals. We had seen how the main
current of Buddhism had changed from a revolutionary to a reactionary
doctrine. The new greater gentry of the eleventh century adopted a
number of elements of this reactionary Buddhism and incorporated them in
the Confucianist system. This brought into Confucianism a metaphysic
which it had lacked in the past, greatly extending its influence on the
people and at the same time taking the wind out of the sails of
Buddhism. The greater gentry never again placed themselves on the side
of the Buddhist Church as they had done in the T'ang period. When they
got tired of Confucianism, they interested themselves in Taoism of the
politically innocent, escapist, meditative Buddhism.

Men like Chou Tun-i (1017-1073) and Chang Tsai (1020-1077) developed a
cosmological theory which could measure up with Buddhistic cosmology and
metaphysics. But perhaps more important was the attempt of the
Neo-Confucianists to explain the problem of evil. Confucius and his
followers had believed that every person could perfect himself by
overcoming the evil in him. As the good persons should be the _élite_
and rule the others, theoretically everybody who was a member of human
society, could move up and become a leader. It was commonly assumed that
human nature is good or indifferent, and that human feelings are evil