Author
Meng Ke and disciples (c. 372–289 BC)
Written by Mencius and his disciples Wan Zhang...
Written by Mencius and his disciples Wan Zhang and Gongsun Chou, in seven books and some thirty-five thousand characters. Mencius (Meng Ke), studied under a disciple of Zisi, and took as his charge "to bring order to the world — if not I, then who?" He spent his life persuading the courts of Qi and Liang, eloquent as a flood, yet never saw his Way carried out, and retired to write with his disciples. The book’s most moving quality is its qi (vital force): the doctrine of innate goodness exalts human dignity; benevolent governance speaks the people-first truth; the "flood-like qi" nurtures character that stands between heaven and earth. Its prose is the first-rank eloquence of the pre-Qin masters — fond of debate, masterly in metaphor, questioning in layers to carry all before it: "fish and bear’s paw," "climbing a tree to seek fish," "pulling up seedlings to help them grow" live still. Zhu Xi ranked it among the Four Books, and Mencius rose to "Second Sage" — from then on this most individual of books stood beside the Analects as a double spring of the Chinese spirit: one teaches us how to be good; the other, how to be great.
Mencius’ theory of human nature begins with a thought experiment: "If anyone suddenly saw a child about to fall into a well, all would feel alarm and pity" — not to court the parents’ favor, nor to win praise, but a spontaneous pang. Hence his Four Beginnings: the feeling of pity is the sprout of ren; the feeling of shame and dislike, the sprout of yi (righteousness); the feeling of deference, the sprout of li (propriety); the feeling of right and wrong, the sprout of wisdom. All four are in everyone "as the four limbs are" — goodness is no external doctrine but the seed of human nature.
"Anyone can become a Yao or a Shun" — the weight of this declaration had no equal in the ancient world: it announced the possibility of moral equality. Education’s charge is to extend the good sprouts — "with proper nourishment, nothing fails to grow"; politics’ charge is to shelter the people’s livelihood — "protect the people, and kingship follows." This optimistic trust in human nature makes Mencius the warmest pole of Chinese culture — whenever they doubt humanity, the Chinese recall that heartbeat at the well.
"The people are most precious; the altars of state come next; the ruler is the least." Nine characters, the sharpest sentence in Chinese political thought. Mencius argues on: it is by winning the multitude’s hearts that one becomes Son of Heaven — legitimacy flows from the people; "if a ruler treats his ministers as dirt and grass, they will treat him as a foe" — the ruler-minister bond is a two-way covenant; "I have heard of the execution of the tyrant Zhou, but not of the assassination of a ruler" — a tyrant may be executed; revolution is justified. In an age of absolute kingship such words bordered on treason: Ming Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang read them in fury and once ordered Mencius censored and expelled from the Confucian temple.
Yet the seed did not die: Tang Zhen wrote "all emperors and kings are bandits," Huang Zongxi wrote "the ruler alone is the great harm of the realm"; when modern democratic thought arrived, literati found its native docking point in the Mencius at once. People-first is not democracy, but it is the local pier toward which the bridge of democracy lands — two thousand years on, in the depths of "the people above all" there still sounds those nine characters.
自反而缩，虽千万人，吾往矣。 — When self-examination shows me right, I go forward though thousands oppose me.——Mencius, "Gongsun Chou I"
Asked what he excelled at, Mencius answered, "I understand words; I am good at nourishing my flood-like qi" — a moral courage "great and firm," "filling heaven and earth," grown by accumulated righteous deeds: "born of accumulated righteousness, not seized by a single act." Its discipline is "neither forget nor force": pull at the seedlings and they die; leave the field untended and it goes to weeds. Here is an operational regimen: character is not gained in a flash but cultivated day upon day.
From this grew the character-mottos every Chinese knows: "Wealth cannot corrupt him, poverty cannot sway him, power cannot bend him"; "Life is what I desire, and righteousness too — if I cannot have both, I will give up life for righteousness." Wen Tianxiang’s Song of Righteousness — "between heaven and earth there is an upright qi"; Tan Sitong before execution — "I face the blade with a laugh" — the tradition of the great man was written stroke by stroke by Mencius. When the Chinese speak of "moral fiber" (qijie), that very word qi was raised in the Mencius.
The Mencius is pre-Qin prose at its most eloquent: let loose, then gather in; question layer upon layer; let the opponent entrap himself, then break through — "with your spear, pierce your own shield." He excels in metaphor: "climbing a tree to seek fish" mocks seeking hegemony by force; "pulling up seedlings to help them grow" mocks defying nature; "fifty paces laughing at a hundred" mocks self-deception; "fish and bear’s paw" figures life-and-death choice — abstract truth, at his touch, becomes a visible picture.
His prose surges like the long river, pouring a thousand li — Wenxin Diaolong judged it "exalted in reason, elegant in diction"; Tang-Song masters of classical prose took it as their model; Han Yu called Mencius "pure through and through"; the memorial-prose of Su Xun and Su Shi descends from him. Reading Mencius remains the best training in Chinese argument and expression: it taught generations how to make reason sharp and beautiful, firm and graceful at once.