吳澄元至大四年在國子監推行改革，卻遭到了中書省臣李孟等人的打擊，這一場鬥爭的背後有明顯的政治因素，但勝利者所加之給吳澄的「罪名」卻是學術層面的，即吳澄推崇陸學而不合于朱學。這一事件引發了我們對元代儒學生態的思考。在元代前期，南方重內聖的儒士與北方重治術重吏事的儒士是比較隔膜的。南人儒士逐漸認識到：若想用事於當時，則必須向元廷政治生態與北方儒學生態靠近，這勢必又要求他們從內聖性哲學中拔出腳來，向「儒吏並重」的現實做出妥協。

In the year 1311 (the fourth year of the Emperor Wuzong of Yuan, Külüg Khan), Wu Cheng carried out his reformation on the Imperial College, which encountered the attack from people like Li Meng, based on that Wu Cheng professes Lu’s theories rather than that of Chu Hsi’s. This incident makes us think of the system of Confucianism in Yuan Dynasty.
In the early period of Yuan Dynasty, those Confucianists in the Southern China who prefer self perfection to devotion to politics are distant from those in the Northern China whose preference is the opposite. For those Southern scholars, if they really wanted to put their theories into practice, they have to slant to those Northern ones belonging to the Yuan
government, which, in turn, asks Wu Cheng and his peers that hold to merging Chu Hsi’s theories with Lu Jiuyuan’s theories to face the reality. That is to say, they have to diverge their attention from learning to self-perfection onto the ways to practicing what they have
learned.