In the west the ideal of the universal man that developed during the Renaissance period was akin to the Chinese concept of a ‘Literati’. The ‘Renaissance man’ was a wealthy man of leisure who was expected to be well-versed in letters, science, art and classical antiquity.

The scholar study offered the Chinese literati a haven from the tumult of court politics, the pressures of business or the oppression of a foreign rule, and gave him solitude and cultivated surroundings for his contemplative pursuits.