by Will Durant
(On the other hand) Chieh came into the accumulated wealth of many generations; to him belonged the honor of the royal seat; his wisdom was enough to enable him to set at defiance all below; his power was enough to shake the world. He indulged the pleasures to which his eyes and ears prompted him; he carried out whatever it came into his thoughts to do. Brightly came he to his death. Of all mortals never was one whose life was so luxurious and dissipated as his. Chou (Hsin) came into the accumulated wealth of many generations; to him belonged the honor of the royal seat; his power enabled him to do whatever he would; . . . he indulged his feelings in all his palaces; he gave the reins to his lusts through the long night; he never made himself bitter by the thought of propriety and righteousness. Brightly came he to his destruction. Of all mortals never was one whose life was as abandoned as his.
These two villains, during their lives, had the joy of gratifying their desires. Since their death, they have had the (evil) fame of folly and tyranny. But the reality (of enjoyment) is what no fame can give. Reproach them—they do not know it. Praise them—they do not know it. Their (ill) fame is no more to them than the trunk of a tree, or a clod of earth.162
How different all this is from Confucius! Again we suspect that time, who is a reactionary, has preserved for us the most respectable of Chinese thinkers, and has swallowed nearly all the rest in the limbo of forgotten souls. And perhaps time is right: humanity itself could not long survive if many were of Yan Chu’s mind. The only answer to him is that society cannot exist if the individual does not cooperate with his followers in the give and take, the bear and forbear, of moral restraints; and the developed individual cannot exist without society; our life depends upon those very limitations that constrain us. Some historians have found in the spread of such egoist philosophies part cause of that disintegration which marked Chinese society in the fourth and third centuries before Christ.163 No wonder that Mencius, the Dr. Johnson of his age, raised his voice in scandalized protest against the epicureanism of Yang Chu, as well as against the idealism of Mo Ti.
The words of Yang Chu and Mo Ti fill the world. If you listen to people’s discourses about it, you will find that they have adopted the views of the one or the other. Now Yang’s principle is, “Each for himself”—which does not acknowledge the claims of the sovereign. Mo’s principle is, “To love all equally”—which does not acknowledge the peculiar affection due to a father. To acknowledge neither king nor father is to be in the state of a beast. If their principles are not stopped, and the principles of Confucius set forth, their perverse speaking will delude the people, and stop up the path of benevolence and righteousness.
I am alarmed by these things, and address myself to the defense of the doctrines of the former sages, and to oppose Yang and Mo. I drive away their licentious expressions, so that such perverse speakers may not be able to show themselves. When sages shall rise up again, they will not change my words.164
3. Mencius, Mentor of Princes
A model mother—A philosopher among kings—Are men by nature good?—Single tax—Mencius and the communists—The profit-motive—The right of revolution
Mencius, destined to be second in fame to Confucius alone in the rich annals of Chinese philosophy, belonged to the ancient family of Mang; his name Mang Ko was changed by an imperial decree to Mang-tze—i.e., Mang the Master or Philosopher; and the Latin-trained scholars of Europe transformed him into Mencius, as they had changed K’ung-fu-tze into Confucius.
We know the mother of Mencius almost as intimately as we know him; for Chinese historians, who have made her famous as a model of maternity, recount many pretty stories of her. Thrice, we are told, she changed her residence on his account: once because they lived near a cemetery, and the boy began to behave like an undertaker; another time because they lived near a slaughterhouse, and the boy imitated too well the cries of the slain animals; and again because they lived near a market place, and the boy began to act the part of a tradesman; finally she found a home near a school, and was satisfied. When the boy neglected his studies she cut through, in his presence, the thread of her shuttle; and when he asked why she did so destructive a thing, she explained that she was but imitating his own negligence, and the lack of continuity in his studies and his development. He became an assiduous student, married, resisted the temptation to divorce his wife, opened a school of philosophy, gathered a famous collection of students about him, and received invitations from various princes to come and discuss with them his theories of government. He hesitated to leave his mother in her old age, but she sent him off with a speech that endeared her to all Chinese males, and may have been composed by one of them.
It does not belong to a woman to determine anything of herself, but she is subject to the rule of the three obediences. When young she has to obey her parents; when married she has to obey her husband; when a widow she has to obey her son. You are a man in your full maturity, and I am old. Do you act as your conviction of righteousness tells you you ought to do, and I will act according to the rule which belongs to me. Why should you be anxious about me?165
He went, for the itch to teach is a part of the itch to rule; scratch the one and find the other. Like Voltaire, Mencius preferred monarchy to democracy, on the ground that in democracy it is necessary to educate all if the government is to succeed, while under monarchy it is only required that the philosopher should bring one man—the king—to wisdom, in order to produce the perfect state. “Correct what is wrong in the prince’s mind. Once rectify the prince, and the kingdom will be settled.”166 He went first to Ch’i, and tried to rectify its Prince Hsuan; he accepted an honorary office, but refused the salary that went with it; and soon finding that the Prince was not interested in philosophy, he withdrew to the small principality of T’ang, whose ruler became a sincere but ineffectual pupil. Mencius returned to Ch’i, and proved his growth in wisdom and understanding by accepting a lucrative office from Prince Hsuan. When, during these comfortable years, his mother died, he buried her with such pomp that his pupils were scandalized; he explained to them that it was only a sign of his filial devotion. Some years later Hsuan set out upon a war of conquest, and, resenting Mencius’ untimely pacifism, terminated his employment. Hearing that the Prince of Sung had expressed his intention of ruling like a philosopher, Mencius journeyed to his court, but found that the report had been exaggerated. Like the men invited to an ancient wedding-feast, the various princes had many excuses for not being rectified. “I have an infirmity,” said one of them; “I love valor.” “I have an infirmity,” said another; “I am fond of wealth.”167 Mencius retired from public life, and gave his declining years to the instruction of students and the composition of a work in which he described his conversations with the royalty of his time. We cannot tell to what extent these should be classed with those of Walter Savage Landor; nor do we know whether this composition was the work of Mencius himself, or of his pupils, or of neither, or of both.168 We can only say that the Book of Mencius is one of the most highly honored of China’s philosophical classics.
His doctrine is as severely secular as that of Confucius. There is little here about logic, or epistemology, or metaphysics; the Confucians left such subtleties to the followers of Lao-tze, and confined themselves to moral and political speculation. What interests Mencius is the charting of the good life, and the establishment of government by good men. His basic claim is that men are by nature good,169 and that the social problem arises not out of the nature of men but out of the wickedness of governments. Hence philosophers must become kings, or the kings of this world must become philosophers.
“Now, if your Majesty will institute a government whose action will be benevolent, this will cause all the officers in the kingdom to wish to stand in your Majesty’s court, and all the farmers to wish to plough in your Majesty’s fields, and all the merchants to wish to store their goods in your Majesty’s market-places, and all traveling strangers to wish to make their tours on your Majesty’s roads, an
d all throughout the Kingdom who feel aggrieved by their rulers to wish to come and complain to your Majesty. And when they are so bent, who will be able to keep them back?”
The King said, “I am stupid, and not able to advance to this.”170
The good ruler would war not against other countries, but against the common enemy—poverty, for it is out of poverty and ignorance that crime and disorder come. To punish men for crimes committed as the result of a lack of opportunities offered them for employment is a dastardly trap to set for the people.171 A government is responsible for the welfare of its people, and should regulate economic processes accordingly.172 It should tax chiefly the ground itself, rather than what is built or done on it;173 it should abolish all tariffs, and should develop universal and compulsory education as the soundest basis of a civilized development; “good laws are not equal to winning the people by good instruction.”174 “That whereby man differs from the lower animals is but small. Most people throw it away; only superior men preserve it.”175
We perceive how old are the political problems, attitudes and solutions of our enlightened age when we learn that Mencius was rejected by the princes for his radicalism, and was scorned for his conservatism by the socialists and communists of his time. When the “shrike-tongued barbarian of the south,” Hsu Hsing, raised the flag of the proletarian dictatorship, demanding that workingmen should be made the heads of the state (“The magistrates,” said Hsu, “should be laboring men”), and many of “The Learned,” then as now, flocked to the new standard, Mencius rejected the idea scornfully, and argued that government should be in the hands of educated men.”176 But he denounced the profit-motive in human society, and rebuked Sung K’ang for proposing to win the kings to pacifism by persuading them, in modern style, of the unprofitableness of war.
Your aim is great, but your argument is not good. If you, starting from the point of profit, offer your persuasive counsels to the kings of Ch’in and Ch’i, and if those kings are pleased with the consideration of profit so as to stop the movements of their armies, then all belonging to those armies will rejoice in the cessation (of war), and will find their pleasures in (the pursuit of) profit. Ministers will serve the sovereign for the profit of which they cherish the thought; sons will serve their fathers, and younger brothers will serve their elder brothers, from the same consideration; and the issue will be that, abandoning benevolence and righteousness, sovereign and minister, father and son, younger brother and elder, will carry on all their intercourse with this thought of profit cherished in their breasts. But never has there been such a state (of society), without ruin being the result of it.177
He recognized the right of revolution, and preached it in the face of kings. He denounced war as a crime, and shocked the hero-worshipers of his time by writing: “There are men who say: ‘I am skilful at marshaling troops, I am skilful at conducting a battle.’ They are great criminals.”178 “There has never been a good war,” he said.179 He condemned the luxury of the courts, and sternly rebuked the king who fed his dogs and swine while famine was consuming his people.180 When a king argued that he could not prevent famine, Mencius told him that he should resign.181 “The people,” he taught, “are the most important element (in a nation); . . . the sovereign is the lighest”;182 and the people have the right to depose their rulers, even, now and then, to kill them.
The King Hsuan asked about the high ministers. . . . Mencius answered: “If the princes have great faults, they ought to remonstrate with him; and if he do not listen to them after they have done so again and again, they ought to dethrone him.” . . . Mencius proceeded: “Suppose that the chief criminal judge could not regulate the officers (under him), how would you deal with him?” The King said, “Dismiss him.” Mencius again said: “If within the four borders (of your kingdom) there is not good government, what is to be done?” The King looked to the right and left, and spoke of other matters. . . . The King Hsuan asked, “Was it so that T’ang banished Chieh, and that King Wu smote Chou (Hsin)?” Mencius replied, “It is so in the records.” The King said, “May a minister put his sovereign to death?” Mencius said: “He who outrages the benevolence (proper to his nature) is called a robber; he who outrages righteousness is called a ruffian. The robber and the ruffian we call a mere fellow. I have heard of the cutting off of the fellow Chou, but I have not heard of putting a sovereign to death.”183
It was brave doctrine, and had much to do with the establishment of the principle, recognized by the kings as well as the people of China, that a ruler who arouses the enmity of his people has lost the “mandate of Heaven,” and may be removed. It is not to be marveled at that Hung-wu, founder of the Ming Dynasty, having read with great indignation the conversations of Mencius with King Hsuan, ordered Mencius to be degraded from his place in the temple of Confucius, where a royal edict of 1084 had erected his tablet. But within a year the tablet was restored; and until the Revolution of 1911 Mencius remained one of the heroes of China, the second great name and influence in the history of Chinese orthodox philosophy. To him and to Chu Hsi* Confucius owed his intellectual leadership of China for more than two thousand years.
4. Hsün-tze, Realist
The evil nature of man—The necessity of law
There were many weaknesses in Mencius’ philosophy, and his contemporaries exposed them with a fierce delight. Was it true that men were by nature good, and were led to evil only by wicked institutions?—or was human nature itself responsible for the ills of society? Here was an early formulation of a conflict that has raged for some eons between reformers and conservatives. Does education diminish crime, increase virtue, and lead men into Utopia? Are philosophers fit to govern states, or do their theories worse confound the confusion which they seek to cure?
The ablest and most hardheaded of Mencius’ critics was a public official who seems to have died at the age of seventy about the year 235 B.C. As Mencius had believed human nature to be good in all men, so Hsün-tze believed it to be bad in all men; even Shun and Yao were savages at birth.184 Hsün, in the fragment that remains of him, writes like another Hobbes:
The nature of man is evil; the good which it shows is factitious.* There belongs to it, even at his birth, the love of gain; and as actions are in accordance with this, contentions and robberies grow up, and self-denial and yielding to others are not to be found (by nature); there belong to it envy and dislike, and as actions are in accordance with these, violence and injuries spring up, and self-devotedness and faith are not to be found; there belong to it the desires of the ears and the eyes, leading to the love of sounds and beauty, and as the actions are in accordance with these, lewdness and disorder spring up, and righteousness and propriety, with their various orderly displays, are not to be found. It thus appears that to follow man’s nature and yield obedience to its feelings will assuredly conduct to contentions and robberies, to the violation of the duties belonging to every one’s lot, and the confounding of all distinctions, till the issue will be a state of savagery; and that there must be the influence of teachers and laws, and the guidance of propriety and righteousness, from which will spring self-denial, yielding to others, and an observance of the well-ordered regulations of conduct, till the issue will be a state of good government. . . . The sage kings of antiquity, understanding that the nature of man was thus evil, . . . set up the principles of righteousness and propriety, and framed laws and regulations to straighten and ornament the feelings of that nature and correct them, . . . so that they might all go forth in the way of moral government and in agreement with reason.185
Hsün-tze concluded, like Turgeniev, that nature is not a temple but a workshop; she provides the raw material, but intelligence must do the rest. By proper training, he thought, these naturally evil men might be transformed even into saints, if that should be desirable.186 Being also a poet, he put Francis Bacon into doggerel:
You glorify Nature and meditate on her;
Why not domesticate her and regulate her?
&n
bsp; You obey Nature and sing her praise;
Why not control her course and use it?
You look upon the seasons with reverence, and await them;
Why not respond to them by seasonly activities?
You depend on things and marvel at them;
Why not unfold your own ability and transform them?187
5. Chuang-tze, Idealist
The Return to Nature—Governmentless society—The Way of Nature—The limits of the intellect—The evolution of man—The Button-Moulder—The influence of Chinese philosophy in Europe
The “return to Nature,” however, could not be so readily discouraged; it found voice in this age as in every other, and by what might be called a natural accident its exponent was the most eloquent writer of his time. Chuang-tze, loving Nature as the only mistress who always welcomed him, whatever his infidelities or his age, poured into his philosophy the poetic sensitivity of a Rousseau, and yet sharpened it with the satiric wit of a Voltaire. Who could imagine Mencius so far forgetting himself as to describe a man as having “a large goitre like an earthenware jar?”188 Chuang belongs to literature as well as to philosophy.
He was born in the province of Sung, and held minor office for a time in the city of Khi-yüan. He visited the same courts as Mencius, but neither, in his extant writings, mentions the other’s name; perhaps they loved each other like contemporaries. Story has it that he refused high office twice. When the Duke of Wei offered him the prime ministry he dismissed the royal messengers with a curtness indicative of a writer’s dreams: “Go away quickly, and do not soil me with your presence. I had rather amuse and enjoy myself in a filthy ditch than be subject to the rules and restrictions in the court of a sovereign.”189 While he was fishing two great officers brought him a message from the King of Khu: “I wish to trouble you with the charge of all my territories.” Chuang, Chuang tells us, answered without turning away from his fishing:
