The transmission
Mencius (Mengzi, Meng Ke, c.372-289 BCE) was the most influential Confucian thinker after Confucius himself, active during the Warring States period and born in the state of Zou. Like Confucius he traveled among rival courts urging rulers toward benevolent government, and his teachings were recorded in the book that bears his name, the Mencius, one of the Four Books that later defined the Confucian canon.
He is remembered above all for his bold and systematic claim that human nature is inherently good. For Mencius, every person is born with the “four sprouts” or beginnings: the feeling of compassion that grows into benevolence (ren), of shame into righteousness (yi), of deference into propriety (li), and of right-and-wrong into wisdom (zhi).
These are innate but fragile, requiring cultivation to flourish, much as seeds need tending. He also taught the nourishing of one’s “flood-like qi,” a vast moral vitality built up through accumulated rightness. For the mind-power lineage, Mencius is significant for locating the source of transformation within: the good is already latent in the self, and the work of life is to attend to, protect, and grow these inner capacities.
(His placement under the “taoism” tag is an approximate grouping with Chinese cultivation traditions; his thought is properly Confucian, not Daoist.)
What they gave
Innate goodness: Argued that human nature is originally good, locating the seed of transformation within the self.
- The four sprouts: Identified four inborn moral capacities that grow through cultivation into the cardinal virtues.
- Nourishing the flood-like qi: Taught the building of a vast moral vitality through accumulated right action.
- Cultivation of the inner: Made attending to and developing one’s latent nature the central task of self-formation.
In their words
Benevolence is man’s mind, and righteousness is man’s path. How lamentable is it to neglect the path and not pursue it, to lose this mind and not know to seek it again! When men’s fowls and dogs are lost, they know to seek for them again, but they lose their mind, and do not know to seek for it. The great end of learning is nothing else but to seek for the lost mind.
He who has exhausted all his mental constitution knows his nature. Knowing his nature, he knows Heaven. To preserve one’s mental constitution, and nourish one’s nature, is the way to serve Heaven.
The great man is he who does not lose his child’s-heart.
Men must be decided on what they will NOT do, and then they are able to act with vigour in what they ought to do.
The feeling of commiseration is the principle of benevolence. The feeling of shame and dislike is the principle of righteousness. The feeling of modesty and complaisance is the principle of propriety. The feeling of approving and disapproving is the principle of knowledge.
From the feelings proper to it, it is constituted for the practice of what is good. This is what I mean in saying that the nature is good. If men do what is not good, the blame cannot be imputed to their natural powers.
Thus, 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, and subjects him to extreme poverty. It confounds his undertakings. By all these methods it stimulates his mind, hardens his nature, and supplies his incompetencies.
That, when looking up, he has no occasion for shame before Heaven, and, below, he has no occasion to blush before men; this is a second delight.
The line they stand in
Influenced by: Confucius and the early Confucian tradition; the school associated with Confucius’s grandson Zisi; the Zhou ethical heritage.
- Influenced: The orthodox Confucian tradition; Neo-Confucianism and the School of Mind (Wang Yangming); East Asian theories of innate moral nature; modern discourse on human goodness and self-cultivation.
Revelations they taught
Essential Works
- The Mencius (Mengzi)c.300 BCE