Mencius: The Philosopher Who Shaped Confucianism in Ancient China

Mencius, known in Chinese as Mengzi, was a Confucian philosopher who lived c. 372–289 BC, during the Warring States period. He argued that human nature is fundamentally good and that rulers should govern through benevolence, putting the welfare of the people first. The book of his conversations, the Mencius, became one of the Four Books at the heart of Chinese education for centuries, and he is honoured as the “Second Sage” after Confucius.

Life

Mencius’s personal name was Meng Ke. He came from Zou, a small state close to Lu, the home of Confucius, in what is now Zoucheng in Shandong province. His traditional dates, c. 372–289 BC, are estimates. According to Sima Qian, he studied with followers of Zisi, the grandson of Confucius.

Later tradition told how his widowed mother moved house three times, first away from a graveyard and then from a market, until she settled near a school where the boy imitated scholars. The story comes from the Han-dynasty collection Biographies of Exemplary Women and is best treated as a moral tale.

He lived in the middle of the Warring States period, when large kingdoms such as Qi, Wei, Qin and Chu competed for supremacy and rulers sought advisers who could make them rich and strong. Philosophers of many schools travelled between courts, and the Qi capital at Linzi hosted a famous gathering of scholars known as the Jixia Academy.

Like Confucius, Mencius spent much of his life travelling with disciples from court to court, hoping to find a ruler who would put his ideas into practice. He visited King Hui of Wei (also called King Hui of Liang), King Xuan of Qi and the rulers of smaller states such as Song and Teng. For a time he held an honorary ministerial post in Qi. In the end no ruler adopted his programme, and he retired to teach.

Human nature is good

Mencius’s best-known teaching is that human nature is good. He argued that all people have four “sprouts” (duan): feelings of compassion, of shame, of deference and of approving right and disapproving wrong. If nourished, these grow into the four virtues of benevolence (ren), righteousness (yi), propriety (li) and wisdom (zhi).

To illustrate this, he described someone who suddenly sees a small child about to fall into a well. Anyone, he said, would feel alarm and pity, not to win favour with the parents or praise from neighbours, but simply because compassion is part of being human. Evil comes from neglecting or damaging these sprouts, as hillsides lose their trees through constant cutting and grazing.

Mencius defended this view in debates with a thinker named Gaozi, who held that human nature is neither good nor bad, like water that flows east or west depending on where a channel is cut. Mencius replied that water may not prefer east or west, but it always flows downwards, as human nature tends towards goodness.

Benevolent government

For Mencius, good government follows from good character. The book opens with King Hui of Liang asking how Mencius could profit his state. Mencius replied that the king should speak instead of benevolence and righteousness, because a state where everyone pursues profit will be torn apart.

He urged rulers to keep taxes light, avoid needless wars and make sure people had enough land and food. He described an ideal “well-field” system in which eight families farmed private plots around a shared central field worked for the state. He also declared that the people are the most important element in a state, the altars of the land and grain come next, and the ruler counts for least.

Most strikingly, he argued that a ruler who becomes a tyrant loses the right to rule. Asked whether it was right for King Wu of Zhou to kill the last Shang king, Mencius said he had heard only of the punishment of an outcast, not the murder of a sovereign. This idea linked the Mandate of Heaven to the wellbeing of the people.

The book of Mencius

The Mencius is a collection of conversations between Mencius and rulers, disciples and opponents, together with shorter sayings. It is divided into seven books, each in two parts, and runs to about 35,000 Chinese characters, roughly twice the length of the Analects of Confucius. It was probably compiled by Mencius’s disciples, perhaps with his involvement, and the earliest surviving commentary on it was written by Zhao Qi, who died in AD 201.

The book is known for its lively arguments and memorable parables. In one, a farmer from the state of Song, worried that his crops were growing too slowly, went into the fields and pulled on each sprout to help it along; by the next day the plants had withered. Mencius used the story to show that moral growth cannot be forced, but neither can it be neglected.

Another passage describes Ox Mountain, once covered in fine trees but stripped bare by axes and grazing animals, so that people assumed it had never been wooded. In the same way, Mencius argued, people who seem bad have simply lost their natural goodness through neglect. He also spoke of cultivating a “flood-like qi”, a vital energy that grows strong through consistently doing what is right.

Rivals and critics

Mencius saw himself as defending Confucius’s teaching against rival schools. He attacked the followers of Yang Zhu, who stressed concern for oneself, and of Mozi, who preached equal care for all people. He thought both undermined proper family relationships.

The greatest Confucian challenge came after his death from Xunzi (c. 310–c. 235 BC), who argued that human nature is bad and must be corrected by ritual and education. Xunzi’s pupils included Han Fei, a leading Legalist thinker discussed in Han Feizi and Legalism.

Rise to classic status

For centuries the Mencius was respected but not part of the official canon. The Tang writer Han Yu (768–824) championed Mencius as the true heir of Confucius. In the Song dynasty, the philosopher Zhu Xi grouped the Mencius with the Analects, the Great Learning and the Doctrine of the Mean as the Four Books, publishing his commentaries in 1190.

From 1313, under the Yuan dynasty, the Four Books with Zhu Xi’s commentaries became the basis of the imperial civil-service examinations, a role they kept until the examinations were abolished in 1905. In 1330 Mencius was officially given the title Second Sage. His statements limiting royal power were not always welcome: the first Ming emperor briefly removed him from the Confucian temples and ordered an edition of the book with passages cut out.

Timeline

• c. 372 BC: Traditional date of Mencius’s birth in Zou.
• c. 320 BC: Mencius visits King Hui of Liang in Wei.
• c. 319–312 BC: He serves at the court of King Xuan of Qi.
• c. 289 BC: Traditional date of his death.
• 1190: Zhu Xi publishes the Four Books with his commentaries.
• 1313: The Four Books become the basis of the civil-service examinations.
• 1330: Mencius is officially titled the Second Sage.
• 1905: The examination system is abolished.

Why it matters

Mencius gave Confucianism its optimistic view of human nature and its argument that government exists for the people. Through the Four Books his ideas shaped the education of Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese elites for more than six centuries.