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We have seen that Shintoism, Mencius and Wan Yang Ming, have all clearly taught it; but Bushido and all other militant schools of ethics, engrossed, doubtless, with questions of immediate practical need, too often forgot duly to emphasize this fact. Life has grown larger in these latter times. Callings nobler and broader than a warrior's claim our attention to-day.
The question, however, of man's original nature was not set permanently at rest by the arguments of Mencius. He supports this view by the following arguments. From his earliest years, man is actuated by a love of gain for his own personal enjoyment. His conduct is distinguished by selfishness and combativeness. He becomes a slave to envy, hatred, and other passions.
Mencius says, "a Chuntse when creating a dynasty aims at things that can be handed down as good examples." Is it not the greatest misfortune to set up an example that cannot be handed down as a precedent? The present state of affairs is causing me no small amount of anxiety.
Then will thy people be loyal to thee and formidable towards thy foes. Thou shalt make thy subjects loyal friends, for the benevolent one has no enemy." On one occasion the Emperor Hsuan of Chi visited Mencius in the Snow Palace, and asked him, "Do the people find enjoyment in music and in the chase?"
Now Mencius had been a great man, a Man's son, as they say; and very likely he and Ts'in Shi Hwangti might have hit it off well enough. But there was no Mencius, no Man's son, among the literati now. The whole class was wily, polite, sarcastic, subtle, unimaginative, refined to a degree, immovable in conservatism. The Taoist teachers had breathed in a new spirit, but it had not reached them.
Mencius was reared by his widowed mother, whose virtue and wisdom are still proverbial in China. The first forty years of his life are virtually a blank to us, so that we know very little of his early education. He is said, however, to have studied under Khung Chi, the grandson of Confucius.
"I fully understand language," he said, "and nourish well my vast-flowing vigor." "I beg to ask what you call vast-flowing vigor?" said his companion. "The explanation," replied Mencius, "is difficult. This vigor is supremely great, and in the highest degree unbending. Nourish it correctly and do it no injury, and it will fill up the vacancy between heaven and earth.
The order included the works of the great Confucius, who had edited and condensed the more ancient books of the empire, and of his noble disciple Mencius, and was of the most tyrannical and oppressive character.
The Mang-tsze contains the teachings of Mencius. The State Religion of Ancient China. Confucius never imagined himself to be a reformer of the religion of his country. The religion of China is in the main the same to this day as it was before he appeared, and what is called Confucianism is simply that old system.
One of the acknowledged distinctions of Mencius is his acquaintance with the odes, his quotations from which are very numerous; and Hsuen Khing survived the extinction of the Kau dynasty, and lived on into the times of Khin. The Shih was all recovered, after the fires of Khin.
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