Gwon Ram and Han Myeong-hoe (6)

Han Gi tilted his head after hearing what I said, then asked in return.

“I am truly grateful that you think so highly of my inadequate son. However, even though he is twelve years old, he is so poor at his studies that he has not even memorized the Classic of Filial Piety in its entirety. How can you say he is exceptionally intelligent?”

Those who passed the civil service examination had generally finished the Classic of Filial Piety before turning eleven.

And by seventeen, they had memorized the Four Books and Three Classics in their entirety.

Among them, those called geniuses were said to memorize the Four Books and Three Classics completely by the age of twelve.

After that, they steadily devoted themselves to preparing for the civil service examination while memorizing important passages from books such as Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand Historian.

“Some exceptionally intelligent people memorize all the Four Books and Three Classics before they even turn twelve. But can one really determine a person’s intelligence solely by how quickly or slowly they memorize the words of the sages?”

“That is true, but even I, who passed the examination in the third division, had memorized all the Four Books and Three Classics by the time I was sixteen. I memorized the Analects and the Classic of Filial Piety at ten. Surely you, my lord, who passed first, did so even earlier?”

“After serving in office myself, I found that who memorized the Four Books and Three Classics first was not all that important. After someone has spent about ten years in office, is it not common for an ordinary person who passed in the first division to be passed over for promotion by someone who passed in the third division but possesses outstanding administrative ability?”

Though it could hardly be called boasting, I had possessed the intellectual capacity of a sage from birth, so I had mastered the Thousand Character Classic at the age of two...