Deng Zhi did not dwell with Guo Youzhi on the question of whether his words were inconsistent, but refuted him from another angle: "Lord Guo's words are absurd, only emphasizing talent and not morality, that was Cao Mengde's routine back then. At that time, Cao Mengde once issued a recruitment order to recruit talented people from all over the world, no matter what the other party's virtue was, as long as he was talented, he could be reused.

The end result? Now that the court of Wei is full of smoke and miasma, it has almost destroyed the country, isn't this the hidden disaster buried by Cao Mengde's indiscriminate recruitment of talents?

Your Majesty, according to Weichen's view, a person's virtue is far more important than his talent, and his knowledge and talent can be learned slowly, but the country is easy to change, and a person's nature is difficult to change. Therefore, Weichen believes that His Majesty should pay first attention to virtue when recruiting talents. Deng Zhi said one round to this Guo Youzhi, and then said another round to Liu Hougong.

His remarks have attracted the approval of many people, which is also the basic tone of Confucianism on talents, and China has basically selected talents according to this standard for thousands of years. At first, the state's method of selecting talents was through "promoting filial piety", that is, the magistrate recommended the filial sons and honest officials in the jurisdiction. "Filial piety" and "honesty" are a kind of moral standards.

If you want to be an official, you must have such a moral level. However, the method of judging this moral level is often the decision of the magistrate, and it is conceivable how much water there is in such a selection ~ of moral talents, and how much corruption may breed from it.

Later dynasties used the imperial examination to select talents, and this form of selection through examinations was originally very advanced, thousands of years ahead of the world, and even later generations were still selecting talents through various examinations. However, the problem lies in the content of the examination, which is the content of the Four Books and Five Classics, which are actually Confucian moral norms.

It is conceivable that most of the so-called "talents" selected in this way ~ do not understand current affairs, and they can quote scriptures and classics to talk endlessly, but let them do something practical, they can only stare at it. Of course, there are no absolutes in the world, and everything must be viewed by dialectical methods, and not all officials selected by the imperial examination are mediocre. There have been many famous ministers in all dynasties, and there is no doubt that most of these famous ministers have been selected through the imperial examination~.

The problem is that not all of the officials selected through the imperial examination, which is a method of examining Confucian moral classics, are honest and honest. It can even be said that there are many corrupt and bad officials. This proves once again that it is not feasible to try to test a person's moral level through written exams and interviews.

Liu Hou was really a little dissatisfied with Deng Zhi's remarks, everyone has selfish intentions, where to find so many moral perfection people. If you blindly ask people to be gentlemen, you will definitely create a lot of hypocrites in the end.

Many times, it is often difficult to tell whether a person is a gentleman or a hypocrite, because hypocrites have a very important skill, that is, they will hide their true colors. This Cao Xiu is a typical example, if he didn't face a threat to his life, everyone might think that he was a strong man, but when he really wanted to cut off his head, he immediately showed his true colors.

There's a saying that until the last minute, you often don't know what to choose for yourself. I can't fully understand myself, let alone others.

In other words, it is actually difficult to know whether a person is loyal or not, and you can't force them to the point of life and death decisions one by one to test their moral level.

Therefore, Liu Hou felt that it would not work to select talents by judging a person's moral level. Since morality is difficult to test effectively, it is easy to select hypocrites hidden in it by using morality as the criterion. What's more, if these hypocrites are talented, then that's fine, if they are neither talented nor virtuous, then they are really cups.

Of course, this is not to say that morality is not important, if a person does not even have the most basic moral bottom line, then the greater his ability, the greater the destructive power. Such examples abound throughout history.

Liu Hou's definition of talent is: to have talent, to be able to handle specific affairs, and solve practical difficulties. There is a basic moral bottom line, and it is not required to be morally perfect.

As for how to prevent these morally imperfect officials from doing bad things, it is necessary to rely on the system to restrain their behavior, so that they will not have the opportunity to do bad things, so that they will understand that the sky net is restored and will not be leaked, and once they do bad things, they will be caught and severely punished. Liu Hou believes that this is far more reliable than selecting the so-called "morally perfect people" to become officials.

However, this is obviously biased towards Legalism and contrary to Confucianism, and Liu Hou does not dare to put forward this view now. Since Dong Zhongshu deposed Confucianism from all schools, Confucianism has become the orthodoxy of society, and Legalism has become ~ a street rat that everyone shouts and beats. If Liu Hou put forward this kind of thinking at this time, it would be easy for the Confucian scholars in the world to attack him.

This will have an unfavorable impact on his early unification of the world. Therefore, Liu Hou can only bury these thoughts deep in his heart, and everything can only be slowly planned after the world is peaceful. At that time, he will have the prestige of unifying the world, and he will naturally have the prestige of his words, and it will be much easier to subdue the world's scholars.

The ministers expressed their opinions and discussed for a while, and basically divided into two factions, one faction supported Deng Zhi and believed that Cao Xiu's surrender should not be accepted, and the other faction supported Guo Youzhi's opinion and believed that his surrender could be accepted. However, Bu Qi considered the problem from another angle, he said that it was precisely because Cao Xiu was a member of the Cao clan that he had to accept him to surrender.

Cao Xiu will be a benchmark, and he is like a horse bone in the story of a daughter buying a horse bone. The emperor can use this incident to convey such a message to the people of the world: as long as he sincerely surrenders to the Holy Son of Heaven, no matter what his status, no matter how many bad things he has done before, and how much damage he has caused to the Han Dynasty, the emperor can not only guarantee a life, but even continue to be an official.

Doing so will greatly benefit future battles, and many people will surrender without a fight. In particular, some members of the royal family in Wei and Wu, Cao Pi, Sun Quan's henchmen, etc., they had only one choice before, that is, to accompany their lords to resist to the end until they died in battle.

Because with their status, even if they wanted to surrender, they were worried that the Shu army would not accept their surrender, or did not trust them to surrender sincerely. Then they will only have to resist to the end.

Now, with Cao Xiu's demonstration unit, oh, no, it should be said that it is an example, everyone can finally rest assured. Even a member of the Wei clan like Cao Xiu, who still has heavy troops in his hands, has fought with the Shu army for many years, and has a general whose hands are stained with the blood of the Shu army, the little emperor of Shu can forgive him, let him go, and let him continue to be an official, so what else do you have to worry about, why do you have to resist the heavenly army so hard and dangerously, just put down your weapons anyway.

Bu Qi believes that this is conducive to breaking the determination of many people to resist, and can make many places can be recovered through "surrendering troops without a fight". In this way, the speed of unification of the world can be greatly accelerated.