(Part II)
3. Kindly sympathy is interpreted by Mencius himself as: “There never has been a kindly sympathetic man who neglected his parents.” “The feeling of commiseration is the beginning of kindly sympathy.” “'The richest fruit of kindly sympathy is this: the service of one's parents.” “The kindly sympathetic man loves others.” “Kindly sympathy is man's mind.” “Affection shows kindly sympathy.” “He, who is affectionate to his parents, would be lovingly disposed to people generally. He, who is lovingly disposed to people generally, would be kind to things material.” From these interpretations we could see that “loving others” is the basic meaning of “kindly sympathy.” To love others is a kind of sympathy in protecting, caring about, understanding and helping others. Kindly sympathy starts with those who are close to you and then develops to others who are not so close to you. “One is able to treat aged people in other families well only when he is treating the aged in his own family well; one is able to treat child in other families well only when he is treating the child in his own family well.”
Righteousness is interpreted by Mencius himself as: “The substance of righteousness is this: the obeying one's elder brothers.” “Respect for elders is the working of righteousness.” “To take what one has not a right to is contrary to righteousness;” “There never has been a righteous man who made his sovereign an after consideration.” “There are no righteous wars in the Spring and Autumn Period.” From his interpretations we can see righteousness means to obey one’s elder brother, respect the older and the sovereign and to oppose wars of annexation. We can say righteousness embodies the conduct of kindly sympathy.
Propriety occupied an important place in Confucian thinking. It used to be a political concept in the archaic period of China. In the mind of Confucius, propriety was not only ceremonies and protocols of sacrificial offerings, but also acts, laws and regulations. In the eyes of Mencius, propriety was only moral benchmarks and only related to sacrificial ceremonies as he said, “To receive people,” “to offer gifts in a manner according to propriety.” “The feeling of modesty and complaisance is the beginning of propriety.” “The substance of propriety is this: the ordering and adorning those two things (kindly sympathy and righteousness).”
Intellect is a concept of epistemology and ethics. Mencius interpreted it as “The richest fruit of wisdom is this: the knowing those two things, and not departing from them.” “The feeling of what is right and wrong is the beginning of the intellect.” So the meaning of intellect is to know what are kindly sympathy and righteousness and to do what is right. We could see from the above, kindly sympathy and righteousness is the core while propriety and intellect are subordinate to the core. Here Mencius made a great contribution to Confucianism by adding “righteousness” to the kindly sympathy, and making the two the basic moral benchmarks of the society.
(a) The Value, Role of Morality and the Ideal of Men
Mencius held that the heaven endowed good nature makes human being different from beasts. He thought the strength of morality is unlimited, it could decide a man’s grace or disgrace, even life and death, as he said, “Kindly sympathy brings glory to a prince and the opposite of it brings disgrace.” “From the want of kindly sympathy and the want of intellect will ensue the entire absence of propriety and righteousness; -- he who is in such a case must be the servant of other men.” “A man of kindly sympathy is invincible.” He said further that “If the Head of a State is not kindly sympathetic, he would lose his rule. If a duke is not kindly sympathetic, he would lose the spirits of land and grain. If the high official is not sympathetic, he would lose his ancestral temple. If a scholar or a common person is not kindly sympathetic, he cannot preserve his four limbs.” So, the moral standing of the sovereign, the duke and the high officials is closely linked with the fate of a state. He said repeatedly that “If the sovereign is kindly sympathetic, everyone else would be kindly sympathetic; if the sovereign is righteous, everyone else would be righteous; if the sovereign is upright, everyone else would be upright. A sovereign of integrity would secure the entire state firmly safe.”
Mencius also noticed the relations between material life and moral standard, as he said, “The way of the people is this: If they have a certain livelihood, they will have a fixed heart; if they have not a certain livelihood, they have not a fixed heart. If they have not a fixed heart, there is nothing which they will not do in the way of self-abandonment, of moral deflection, of depravity, and of wild license.”
In the mind of Mencius, the real value of a man was not wealth, but the realization of his good nature. He said, “To dwell in the wide house of the world, to stand in the correct seat of the world, and to walk in the great path of the world; when he obtains his desire for office, to practice his principles for the good of the people; and when that desire is disappointed, to practice them alone; to be above the power of riches and honors to make dissipated, of poverty and mean condition to make swerve from principle, and of power and force to make bend - these characteristics constitute the great man.” Here Mencius adored the dignity of man and despised those in power and authority. This spirit of uncompromising honesty and unyielding will has nurtured a lofty moral standard and formed an independent personality for the Chinese nation.
Mencius placed righteousness as the highest priority, as he said, “For a great man, righteousness is the only consideration, and at the price of not honoring his words or action.” Righteousness is even more important than life, and not to be righteous is even worse than death. He said, “I like life, and I also like righteousness. If I cannot keep the two together, I will let life go, and choose righteousness.” This spirit of devoting one’s life for righteousness advocated by Mencius has encouraged generations of people with high ideals to sacrifice their lives for the nation and state.
(c). Self-Cultivation in Morality
Mencius was fully aware that alongside men with virtue there were men without virtue and among men with virtue the level of morality maybe different, so he stressed the importance of self-cultivation. He proposed ways for self-cultivation such as “keeping sincerity in mind”, “nurturing mind”, “seeking of lost mind”, “expand good beginnings”, “building up brio in oneself” and “seeking the cause of failure in oneself.”
Mencius taught us that we should be aware of our good nature and often think of it. He said, “The faculty of mind is thinking. Obtaining things begins with thinking, if you don’t think first, you would get anything.” Mind is where the good nature resides, one has to start it up.
Mencius also said, “The best way to nurture one’s mind is to have few desires.” One would lose his good nature if he desires too much. The less desire for material life the more of his good nature. He held that “To seek for one’s lost mind is the only way of learning, there are no other ways.”
Having gained back one’s lost mind cannot make him a noble person. One has to turn the four beginnings as we listed in the foregoing into four virtues of kindly sympathy, righteousness, propriety and intellect. He said, “Since all men have these four beginnings in themselves, let them know to give them all their development and completion, and the issue will be like that of fire which has begun to burn, or that of a spring which has begun to find vent. Let them have their complete development, and they will suffice to love and protect all within the four seas.”
To build up brio in oneself is to be audacious and firm in the stand for righteous cause. One has to nurture such a mental power with righteousness. Such mental power has to be accumulated little by little. He said, “If a man love others, and no responsive attachment is shown to him, let him turn inwards and examine his own benevolence. If he is trying to rule others, and his government is unsuccessful, let him turn inwards and examine his wisdom. If he treats others politely, and they do not return his politeness, let him turn inwards and examine his own feeling of respect. When we do not, by what we do, realize what we desire, we must turn inwards, and examine ourselves in every point. When a man's person is correct, the whole kingdom will turn to him with recognition and submission.” He also said, “The man who would be kindly sympathetic is like the archer. The archer adjusts himself and then shoots. If he misses, he does not murmur against those who surpass himself. He simply turns round and seeks the cause of his failure in himself.”
Mencius also suggested that we should learn from Shùn, who “performed good deeds with others, give up his weakness and follow strong points of others, and regard it a pleasure to learn from others in doing good deeds.”
(d). The Thought of Taking People as the Foundation
Mencius keenly advocated this thought all his life, for he could see clearly how powerful the people are and the importance of people in social and political life.
He concluded that people and the heart of the people are the decisive factor in winning or losing state power. He said, “Jié and Zhòu's losing the throne arose from their losing the people, and to lose the people means to lose their heart.” So, people are the foundation of a state. A state would maintain its stability and develop only when it gets the support of its people. We mentioned in the foregoing that he also regarded people as the key factor in deciding who could win wars and his famous parlance: “The people are the most important element in a nation; the spirits of the land and grain are the next; the sovereign is the lightest.”
(e) His Theory on a Benevolent Government
Benevolent government is the political proposition of Mencius, which is a natural conclusion in politics from his thought of “people are the foundation of a state power” and is based on his theory of the good nature of men.
Mencius held that after the sovereign won the state power with the support of people, he must show concern with the livelihood of the people and help them to overcome their difficulties and improve their living standard, in order to be able to do so, the sovereign has to introduce the system of a benevolent government. He made the following recommendations for the introduction:
1. In the field of economy
(1) Mencius proposed that the government should stipulate regulations to allow the people to own properties, because with fixed assets, the people will be able to raise their parents, wife and children. If people have no secured way of living, it would be very easy for them to commit things evil and go against the law. At his time, people were mainly farmers; land would be the main content of their property. Mencius suggested for a household of eight persons, a hundred mu of land may be allotted to the household with five mu for the family to build its house. He described the prospect of such an arrangement, “Let mulberry-trees be planted about the homesteads with their five mu, and persons of fifty years may be clothed with silk. In keeping fowls, pigs, dogs, and swine, let not their times of breeding be neglected, and persons of seventy years may eat flesh. Let there not be taken away the time that is proper for the cultivation of the farm with its hundred mu, and the family of eight mouths that is supported by it shall not suffer from hunger. Let careful attention is paid to education in schools, the inculcation in it especially of the filial and fraternal duties, and grey-haired men will not be seen upon the roads, carrying burdens on their backs or on their heads. It never has been that the ruler of a State where such results were seen, the old wearing silk and eating flesh, and the black-haired people suffering neither from hunger nor cold, did not attain to the royal dignity.”
(2) The second important thing to do is not to miss the proper time of farming. A kind government starts from the fact that people do not suffer from hunger and people have no major complaints.
(3) The third thing to do is to low taxes. While he thought he supported proper taxation to provide normal expenditure of the state, he was opposed to heavy taxation. He proposed in the suburbs, the sovereign should tax one ninth of the farming products, the specific method was to divide one square mile of land into nine plots, for eight families with each getting one plot, and the remaining plot is for the public, the yield from the public plot is for the state. All families should work on the public plot first. For people in the capital city, each family should pay one tenth of their income as tax. In the mind of Mencius, this is the most ideal and popular way of taxation. We should note here that Mencius suggested not to tax the vendors in the market; instead, he asked the government to buy in goods that could not be sold out very quickly from businessmen. The purpose of doing so, he said was to attract more business and more visitors to the state. These words might be the cause for Michael Hart to say that Mencius was one who advocated free trade. In any case, this idea of protecting businessmen injected something new into Confucianism.
2. In the field of military affairs.
Mencius advocated reigning by virtue and opposed to wars of annexation. He said he who executed kindly sympathy by way of virtue would reign in the state; he who executed “kindly sympathy” by way of force was a despot. He said if the state power was won by way of virtue, the people would sincerely support you in a way like the way the seventy-two disciples followed Confucius, their master, such a way of support was like water, which would always flow downwards, and such a momentum is formidable. He also said that if the state power was won by way of force, the people were only subdued for the time being, and when the strength of the people was fortified they would overturn the ruler. He was opposed to wars of annexation, because he saw disasters wars brought to the people. He therefore castigated at the so called “nice ministers” who helped dukes to realize their ambitions in conquering other states and enlarging their territory. Yet, he supported wars that could help the people to free themselves from sufferings.
3. In education, Mencius held that human relationships must be taught at schools. His proposition that it was ordinary people who should be educated played a positive role at the time.
4. As far as organization is concerned, Mencius spent a lot of space to illustrate the importance to use able persons in the government and he gave quite a number of examples in history.
5. In the aspects of culture and recreation, Mencius proposed that the sovereigns should share pleasures in music and other forms of arts with the people, as he said, “When a ruler rejoices in the joy of his people, they also rejoice in his joy; when he grieves at the sorrow of his people, they also grieve at his sorrow. Sympathy of joy will pervade the kingdom; sympathy of sorrow will do the same - in such a state of things, it cannot be but that the ruler attain to the royal dignity.”
6. Criticizing heresies to defend Confucianism. At his time, Confucianism was not really popular, on the contrary, as he said, “The words of Yáng Zhū and Mò Dí fill the country. If you listen to people's discourses throughout it, you will find that they have adopted the views either of Yáng or of Mò.” We shall not go into the details of these battles. What we should know is that it was Mencius who raised the profile of Confucianism and rendered it into a prominent and more influential school of thinking.
Studies of the Book of Mencius
At the time of Mencius, his thoughts of benevolent government and reigning by virtue were not accepted by the contending dukes, because they could not serve their immediate political purpose. After the State of Qín unified the entire country, they carried out the policy of “burning books and bury scholars”; as a result, the whole contingent of Confucianism was wiped out.His name was only restored in the Hàn when Emperor Wǔ of Hàn introduced the policy of “Respect Confucianism only and reject the other hundred schools of thought”. It appeared as a complimentary book to the classics and canons. At this time, a few books giving notes to “The Book of Mencius” were written, but only “The Chapters and Sentences of the Book of Mencius” by Zhào Qí (108-201赵岐《孟子章句》) survived and is still available today.
The following three books are most influential in the studies of Mencius. The first is “Collected Annotations of the Book of Mencius” by Zhū Xī (1130-1200 朱熹《孟子集注》). This book established the position of Mencius as the Second Sage, and “The Book of Mencius” became a classic and was included into the “Four Books.” The second is “Scholium of Words and Their Meaning in the Book of Mencius” by Dài Zhèn (1724-1777 《孟子字义疏证》). The third is “The Correct Meaning of the
Book of Mencius” by Jiāo Xún (1763-1820 《孟子正义》).
Researches on Mencius came to a standstill before in the People’s Republic of China before 1960 when Yang Bójùn’s (1909-1992) “Interpretation and Annotation of the Book of Mencius” (《孟子译注》) was published. Since the late 70s in the last century till today, the study flourished with a landmark by the Shāndōng University, which published “Collected Writings on the Study of Mencius” (《孟子研究论文集》) in 1985.
In closing, I wish to point out what Michael H Hart said of the style of the writing of Mencius may not be right. He said, “Mencius lacked Paul’s unusual proselytizing ability.” I don’t know if Mr. Hart can read Chinese or from where he got this impression. What the Chinese people feel about the writing of Mencius is entirely different. Let me quote Mr. Lín Yǔtáng (1895-1976), a modern scholar and prose writer in both Chinese and English, who wrote, “I love Mencius when I was small, for he was an idealist among Confucian scholars, you can detest a vigor and vitality in his writings. This is something that delights me and touches me.” May I quote Mr. Féng Yǒulán (1895-1990), a contemporary philosopher who said so accurately that Mencius’ words: “building up the brio in oneself so that I could be overpowering, virile, bold and generous” have been used so frequently nowadays, they are a symbol in the Chinese culture. Only when you fully grasped these words can you come to understand Chinese culture and the national spirit of China.
