and search for it, and you will have abundance of teachers'.' This was firmly said, yet not unkindly. It agrees with his observation:-'There are many arts in teaching. I refuse, as inconsistent with my character, to teach a man, but I am only thereby still teaching him.'

5. The state of China had waxed worse and worse during the interval that elapsed between Confucius and Mencius. The elements State of China of disorganization which were rife in the times of in Mencius's time. the earlier sage had gone on to produce their natural results. One feeble sovereign had followed another on the throne, and the dynasty of Châu was ready to vanish away. Men were persuaded of its approaching extinction. The feeling of loyalty to it was no longer a cherished sentiment; and the anxiety and expectation was about what new rule would take its place.

4

Many of the smaller fiefs or principalities had been reduced to a helpless dependence on, or been absorbed by, the larger ones. Of Lu, Chăng, Wei, Wu, Chăn, and Sung3, conspicuous in the Analects, we read but little in Mencius. Tsin had been dismembered, and its fragments formed the nuclei of three new and vigorous kingdoms, -Wei, Châo, and Han". Ch'i still maintained its ground, but was barely able to make head against the State of Ch'in in the West, and Ch' in the South. The struggle for supremacy was between these two; the former, as it was ultimately successful, being the more ambitious and incessant in its aggressions on its neighbours.

The princes were thus at constant warfare with one another. Now two or more would form a league to resist the encroaching Ch'in, and hardly would that object be accomplished before they were at war among themselves. Ambitious statesmen were continually inflaming their quarrels. The recluses of Confucius's days, who withdrew in disgust from the world and its turmoil, had given place to a class of men who came forth from their retirements provided with arts of war or schemes of policy which they recommended to the contending chiefs. They made no scruple of changing their allegiance, as they were moved by whim or interest. Kung-sun Yen and Chang I may be mentioned as specimens of those characters. 'Are they not really great men?' it was once asked of Mencius. ? Bk. VI. Pt. II. xvi. ·魯, 鄭, 衞, 吳, 陳, 宋 ·晉. ·魏,趙,韓.‘秦‧་楚‧

1 Bk. VI. Pt. II. ii. 6.

'Let them once be angry, and all the princes are afraid. Let them live quietly, and the flames of trouble are extinguished throughout the kingdom'.'

It is not wonderful that in such times the minds of men should have doubted of the soundness of the ancient principles of the acknowledged sages of the nation. Doctrines, strange and portentous in the view of Mencius, were openly professed. The authority of Confucius was disowned. The foundations of government were overthrown; the foundations of truth were assailed. Two or three paragraphs from our philosopher will verify and illustrate this representation of the character of his times :

A host marches in attendance on the ruler, and stores of provisions are consumed. The hungry are deprived of their food, and there is no rest for those who are called to toil. Maledictions are uttered by one to another with eyes askance, and the people proceed to the commission of wickedness. Thus the royal ordinances are violated, and the people are oppressed, and the supplies of food and drink flow away like water. The rulers yield themselves to the bad current, or they urge their evil way against a good one; they are wild; they are utterly lost?.?

The five chiefs of the princes were sinners against the three kings. The princes of the present day are sinners against the five chiefs. The great officers of the present day are sinners against the princes. . . . The crime of him who connives at and aids the wickedness of his prince is small, but the crime of him who anticipates and excites that wickedness is great. The officers of the present day all go to meet their sovereigns' wickedness, and therefore I say that they are sinners against them".'

'Sage sovereigns cease to arise, and the princes of the States give the reins to their lusts. Unemployed scholars indulge in unreasonable discussions. The words of Yang Chú and Mo Ti fill the kingdom.

If

you listen to people's discourses, you will find that they have adopted the views either of Yang or of Mo. Now, Yang's principle is—“each one 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. But to acknowledge neither king nor father is to be in the state of a beast. Kung-ming I said, "In their kitchens there is fat meat. In their

1 Bk. III: Pt. II. i.

Bk. I. Pt. II. iv. 6, 8.

3 Bk. VIL. Pt. II. vii. 1, 4.

stables there are fat horses. But their people have the look of hunger, and on the wilds there are those who have died of famine. This is leading on beasts to devour men." If the principles of Yang and Mo are not stopped, and the principles of Confucius not set forth, those perverse speakings will delude the people and stop up the path of benevolence and righteousness. When benevolence and righteousness are stopped up, beasts will be led on to devour men, and men will devour one another 1.'

Mencius the first time in Ch't; some time between B.C. 332 and 323.

6. It is in Ch'i that we first meet with Mencius as a counsellor of the princes, and it was in this State that he spent much the greater part of his public life. His residence in it, however, appears to have been divided into two portions, and we know not to which of them to refer many of the chapters which describe his intercourse with the prince (or king, as he claimed to be) and his ministers; but, as I have already observed, this is to us of little moment. Our interest is in what he did and said. It matters little that we cannot assign to each saying and doing its particular date.

That he left Ch'i the first time before B. C. 323 is plausibly inferred from Bk. II. Pt. II. xiv. 33; and assuming that the conversation in the same Book, Pt. I. ii, took place immediately before or after his arrival, we can determine that he did not enter the State before B. C. 331, for he speaks of himself as having attained at forty years of age to 'an unperturbed mind.' The two chapters contain the most remarkable expressions indicative of Mencius's estimate of himself. In the first, while he glorifies Confucius as far before all other men who had ever lived, he declines having comparisons drawn between himself and any of the sage's most distinguished disciples. In the

Bk. III. Pt. II. ix. 9. 2 In the 'Annals of the Nation' (vol. i. proleg. p. 134), Mencius's visit to king Hûi of Liang is set down as having occurred in B. c. 335, and under BC. 318 it is said-‘Mencius goes from Liang to Ch'l.' The visit to Liang is placed too early, and that to Ch'i too late. The disasters of king Hûi, mentioned in Bk. I. Pt. I. v. 1, had not all taken place in B. C. 318; and if Mencius remained seventeen years in Liang, it is strange we have only five conversations between him and king Hui. So far from his not going to Ch'i till B.C. 318, it will be seen from the next note that he was leaving Ch'i before B. c. 323. 'Mencius's words are-'From the commencement, of the Châu dynasty till now more than 700 years have elapsed.' It was to the purpose of his argument to make the time appear as long as possible. Had 800 years elapsed, he would surely have said so. But as the Châu dynasty commenced in B. C. 1121, the year B.C. 3aa would be its 800th anniversary, and Mencius's departure from Ch'i did not take place later than the year before B. C. 323. * This chapter and the one before it have very much the appearance of having taken place on the way from Tsâu to Ch'i. Mencius has been invited to a powerful court. He is emerging from his obscurity. His disciples expect great things for him. Kung-sun Ch'âu sees him invested with the government of Ch'î, and in the elation of his heart makes his inquiries.

second, when going away sorrowful because he had not wrought the good which he desired, he observes:- Heaven does not yet wish that the kingdom should enjoy tranquillity and good order. If it wished this, who is there besides me to bring it about?'

We may be certain that Mencius did not go to Ch'i uninvited. His approach was waited for with curious expectation, and the king, spoken of always by his honorary epithet of Hsuan, 'The Illustrious,' sent persons to spy out whether he was like other men'. They had their first interview at a place called Ch'ung, which was so little satisfactory to the philosopher that he resolved to make only a short stay in the State. Circumstances occurred to change this resolution, but though he remained, and even accepted office, yet it was only honorary ;-he declined receiving any salary2.

From Ch'ung he appears to have retired to P'ing-lû, where Ch'û, the prime minister, sent him a present, wishing, no doubt, to get into his good graces. I call attention to the circumstance, though trifling in itself, because it illustrates the way in which Mencius carried himself to the great men. He took the gift, but subsequently, when he went to the capital, he did not visit the minister to acknowledge it. His opinion was that Ch' might have come in person to P'ing-là to see him. There was a gift, but no corresponding respect3.'

With the governor of P'ing-lû, called K'ung Chü-hsin, Mencius spoke freely, and found him a man open to conviction. If one of your spearmen,' said Mencius to him, 'were to lose his place in the ranks three times in one day, would you put him to death or not?' 'I would not wait for three times to do so,' replied Chu-hsin. Mencius then charged home upon him the sufferings of the people, saying they were equivalent to his losing his place in the ranks. The governor defended himself on the ground that those sufferings were a consequence of the general policy of the State. To this the other replied, 'Here is a man who receives charge of the sheep and cattle of another, undertaking to feed them for him ;-of course he must search for pasture-ground and grass. If, after searching for those, he cannot find them, will he return his charge to the owner? or will he stand by and see them die?' The governor's reply was, 'Herein I am guilty'.'

When Mencius presented himself at the capital of the State, he

Bk. IV. Pt. II. xxxii.

2 Bk. II. Pt. II. xiv.

3 Bk. II. Pt. II. v.

Bk. II. Pt. II. iv.

was honourably received by the king. Many of the conversations with the sovereign and officers which are scattered through the seven Books, though the first and second are richest in them, must be referred to this period. The one which is first in place1, and which contains the fullest exposition of the philosopher's views on government, was probably first likewise in time. It sets forth the grand essential to the exercise of royal government,—a heart on the part of the sovereign impatient of the sufferings of the people, and eager to protect them and make them happy; it brings home to king Hsüan the conviction that he was not without such a heart, and presses on him the truth that his not exercising it was from a want of will and not from any lack of ability; it exposes unsparingly the errors of the course he was pursuing; and concludes by an exhibition of the outlines and happy issues of a true royal sway.

Of this nature were all Mencius's communications with the sovereign; but he lays himself open in one thing to severe censure. Afraid apparently of repelling the prince from him by the severity of his lessons, he tries to lead him on by his very passions. 'I am fond of beauty,' says the king, and that is in the way of my attaining to the royal government which you celebrate.' 'Not at all,' replies the philosopher. Gratify yourself, only do not let your doing so interfere with the people's getting similar enjoyment for themselves. So the love of money, the love of war, and the love of music are dealt with. Mencius thought that if he could only get the good of the people to be recognised by Hsuan as the great aim which he was to pursue, his tone of mind would be so elevated, that the selfish passions and gratifications of which he was the slave would be purified or altogether displaced. And so it would have been. Where he fails, is in putting his points as if benevolence and selfishness, covetousness and generosity might exist together. Chinese moralists rightly find fault with him in this respect, and say that Confucius never condescended to such a style of argument.

Notwithstanding the apparent cordiality of the king's reception of him, and the freedom with which Mencius spoke his mind at their interviews, a certain suspiciousness appears to have been maintained between them. Neither of them would bend to the other. 1 Bk. I. Pt. L. vii. "I judge that this was the first set conversation between king Hsüan and Mencius, because of the inquiry with which the king opens it,- May I be informed by you of the transactions of Hwan of Ch'î, and Wăn of T'sin?' A very brief acquaintance with our philosopher would have taught him that he was the last person to apply to about those characters. Bk. I. Pt. II. i. iii. v; et al.