favourite stepped in and diverted him from his purpose. The
disciple told his master what had occurred, reproaching the
favourite for his ill-timed intervention; Mencius, however,
said to him, “A man’s advancement or the arresting of it may
seem to be effected by others, but is really beyond their power.
My not finding in the marquis of Lû a ruler who would confide
in me and put my lessons in practice is from Heaven.”
Mencius accepted this incident as a final intimation to him of the will of Heaven. He had striven long against adverse circumstances, but now he bowed in submission. He withdrew from courts and the public arena. According to tradition he passed the last twenty years of his life in the society of his disciples, discoursing to them, and giving the finishing touches to the record of his conversations and opinions, which were afterwards edited by them, and constitute his works. Mencius was not so oracular, nor so self-contained, as Confucius; but his teachings have a vivacity and sparkle all their own.
Mencius held with Confucius—and it was a doctrine which had descended to them both from the remotest antiquity—that royal government is an institution of God. An ancient sovereign had said that “Heaven, having produced the people, appointed for them rulers, and appointed for them teachers, who should be assisting to God.” Our philosopher, adopting this doctrine, was led by the manifest incompetency of all the rulers of his time to ask how it could be known on what individual the appointment of Heaven had fallen or ought to fall, and he concluded that this could be ascertained only from his personal character and his conduct of affairs. The people must find out the will of Heaven as to who should be their ruler for themselves. There was another old saying which delighted Mencius—“Heaven sees as the people see; Heaven hears as the people hear.” He taught accordingly that, while government is from God, the governors are from the people;—vox populi vox Dei. No claim then of a “divine right ' should be allowed to a sovereign if he were not exercising a rule for the good of the people. “The people are the most important element in a nation; the altars to the spirits of the land and grain are the second; the sovereign is the lightest.” Mencius was not afraid to follow this utterance to its consequences. The monarch whose rule is injurious to the people, and who is deaf to remonstrance and counsel, should be dethroned. In such a case “killing is no murder.” But who is to remove the sovereign that thus ought to be removed? Mencius had three answers to this difficult question. First, he would have the members of the royal house perform the task. Let them disown their unworthy head, and appoint some better individual of their number in his room. If they could not or would not do this, he thought, secondly, that any high minister, though not allied to the royal house, might take summary measures with the sovereign, assuming that he acted purely with a view to the public weal. His third and grand device was what he called “the minister of Heaven.” When the sovereign had become a pest instead of a blessing, he believed that Heaven would raise up some one for the help of the people, some one who should so conduct himself in his original subordinate position as to draw all eyes and hearts to himself. Let him then raise the standard not of rebellion but of righteousness, and he could not help attaining to the highest dignity. Mencius hoped to find one among the rulers of his day who might be made into such a minister, and he counselled one and another to adopt measures with that object. It was in fact counselling rebellion, but he held that the house of Châu had forfeited its title to the throne.
A good government according to his ideal must be animated by a spirit of benevolence, and ever pursue a policy of righteousness. Its aims must be, first, to make the people well off, and next, to educate them. No one was fit to occupy the throne who could be happy while any of the people were miserable, who delighted in war, who could indulge in palaces and parks which the poorest did not in a measure share with him. Game laws received his emphatic condemnation. Taxes should be light, and all the regulations for agriculture and commerce of a character to promote and encourage them. The rules which he suggested to secure those objects had reference to the existing condition of his country, but they are susceptible of wide application. They carry in them schemes of drainage and irrigation for land, and of free trade for commerce. But it must be, he contended, that a sufficient and certain livelihood be secured for all the people. Without this their minds would be unsettled, and they would proceed to every form of wild licence. They would break the laws, and the ruler would punish them—punish those whom his neglect of his own duties had plunged into poverty, of which crime was the consequence. He would be, not their ruler, but their “trapper.”
Supposing the people to be made well off Mencius taught that education should be provided for them all. He gave the marquis of Thang a programme of four kinds of educational institutions, which he wished him to establish in his state—in the villages and the towns, for the poor as well as the rich, so that none might be ignorant of his duties in the various relations of society. But after all, unless the people could get food and clothing by their labour, he had not much faith in the power of education to make them virtuous. Give him, however, a government fulfilling the conditions that he laid down, and he was confident there would soon be a people, all contented, all virtuous. And he saw nothing to prevent the realization of such a government. Any ruler might become, if he would, “the minister of Heaven,” who was his ideal, and the influence of his example and administration would be all-powerful. The people would flock to him as their parent, and help him to do justice on the foes of truth and happiness. Pulse and grain would be abundant as water and fire, and the multitudes, well clothed, and well principled, would sit under the shade of their mulberry trees, and hail the ruler “king by the grace of Heaven.”
Opinions were much divided among his contemporaries on the subject of human nature. Some held that the nature of man is neither good nor bad; he may be made to do good and also to do evil. Others held that the nature of some men is good, and that of others bad; thus it is that the best of men sometimes have bad sons, and the worst of men good sons. It was also maintained that the nature of man is evil, and whatever good appears in it is the result of cultivation. In opposition to all these views Mencius contended that the nature of man is good. “Water,” he said, “will flow indifferently to the east or west; but will it flow indifferently up or down? The tendency of man’s nature to goodness is like the tendency of water to flow downwards. By striking water you may make it leap over your forehead; and by damming and leading it you may make it go up a hill. But such movements are not according to the nature of water; it is the force applied which causes them. When men do what is not good, their nature has been dealt with in this way.” With various, but equally felicitous, illustration he replied to his different opponents. Sometimes he may seem to express himself too strongly, but an attentive study of his writings shows that he is speaking of our nature in its ideal, and not as it actually is—as we may ascertain, by an analysis of it, that it was intended to be, and not as it has been made to become.
Mencius insists on the constituents of human nature, dwelling especially on the principles of benevolence, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom or knowledge, the last including the judgment of conscience. “These,” said he, “are not infused into us from without. Men have these four principles just as they have their four limbs.” But man has also instincts and appetites which seek their own gratification without reference to righteousness or any other control. He met this difficulty by contending that human nature is a constitution, in which the higher principles are designed to rule the lower. “Some constituents of it are noble and some ignoble, some great and some small. The great must not be injured for the small, nor, the noble for the ignoble.”
One of his most vigorous vindications of his doctrine is the following: “For the mouth to desire flavours, the eye colours, the ear sounds, and the four limbs ease and rest belong to man’s nature. An individual’s lot may restrict him from the gratification of them; and in such a case the superior man will not say, ‘My nature demands that pleasure, and I will get it.’ On the other hand, there are love between father and son, righteousness between ruler and minister, the rules of ceremony between host and guest, and knowledge seen in recognizing the able and virtuous, and in the sage’s fulfilling the heavenly course;—these are appointed (by Heaven). But they also belong to our nature, and the superior man will not say, ‘The circumstances of my lot relieve me from them.’ ”
When he proceeded from his ideal of human nature to account for the actual phenomena of conduct, he was necessarily less successful. “There is nothing good,” he said, “that a man cannot do; he only does not do it.” But why does he not do it? Against the stubborn fact Mencius beats his wings and shatters his weapons—all in vain. He mentions a few ancient worthies who, he conceived, had always been, or who had become, perfectly virtuous. Above them all he extols Confucius, taking no notice of that sage’s confession that he had not attained to conformity to his own rule of doing to others as he would have them do to him. No such acknowledgment about himself ever came from Mencius. Therein he was inferior to his predecessor: he had a subtler faculty of thought, and a much more vivid imagination; but he did not know himself nor his special subject of human nature so well.
A few passages illustrative of his style and general teachings will complete all that can be said of him here. His thoughts, indeed, were seldom condensed like those of “the master” into aphorisms, and should be read in their connexion; but we have from him many words of wisdom that have been as goads to millions for more than two thousand years. For instance:—
“Though a man may be wicked, yet, if he adjust his thoughts, fast, and bathe, he may sacrifice to God.”
“When Heaven is about to confer a great office on any man, it first exercises his mind with suffering, and his sinews and bones with toil. It exposes his body to hunger, subjects him to extreme poverty, and confounds his undertakings. In all these ways it stimulates his mind, strengthens his nature, and supplies his in competencies.”
“The great man is he who does not lose his child-heart.”
