you think that he is a man of talents and virtue. From such men the rules of ceremonial proprietics and right proceed; but on the occasion of this Mang's second mourning, his observances exceeded those of the former. Do not go

وو

to see him, my prince." The duke said, "I will not; and carriage and horses were ordered back to their places. As soon as Yoh-ching had an audience of the duke, he explained the charge of impropriety which had been brought against Mencius; but the evil was done. The duke had taken his course. "I told him," said Yoh-ching, "about you, and he was coming to see you, when Tsang Ts'ang stopped him." Mencius replied to him, "A man's advancement is effected, it may be, by others, and the stopping him is, it may be, from the efforts of others. But to advance a man or to stop his advance is really beyond the power of other men; my not finding in the prince of Loo a ruler who would confide in me, and put my counsels into practice, is from Heaven. How could that scion of the Tsang family cause me not to find the ruler that would suit me? "1

2

Mencius appears to have accepted this intimation of the will of Heaven as final. He has a remarkable saying, that Heaven controls the development of a man's faculties and affections, but as there is an adaptation in his nature for these, the superior man does not say "It is the appointment of Heaven." In accordance with this principle he had striven long against the adverse circumstances which threw his hopes of influencing the rulers of his time again and again in the dust. On his first leaving Ts'e we saw how he said:" Heaven does not yet wish that the empire should enjoy tranquillity and good order." For about fifteen years, however, he persevered, if peradventure there might be a change in the Heavenly councils. Now at last he bowed in submission. The year after and he would reach his grand climacteric. We lose sight of him. He retired from courts and great officers. We can but think and conjecture of him, according to tradition, passing the last twenty years of his life amid the more congenial society of his disciples, discoursing to them, and compiling the Works which have survived as his memorial to the present day. 11. I have endeavoured in the preceding paragraphs to

'Bk I. Pt II. xvi.

2 Bk III. Pt II. xiv

put together the principal incidents of Mencius' history as they may be gathered from his Writings. There is no other source of information about him, and we must regret that they tell us nothing of his domestic life and habits. In one of the stories about his mother there is an allusion to his wife, from which we may conclude that his marriage. was not without its bitternesses. It is probable that the Măng Chung, mentioned in Bk II. Pt II. ii., was his son, though this is not easily reconcileable with what we read in VI. Pt I. v., of a Măng Ke, who was, according to Chaou K'e, a brother of Mãng Chung. We must believe that he left a family, for his descendants form a large clan at the present day. He-wăn, the 56th in descent from Mencius, was, in the period Këa-tsing (a.d. 1522-1566), constituted a member of the Han-lin college, and of the Board in charge of the five King, which honour was to be hereditary in the family, and the holder of it to preside at the sacrifices to his ancestor.1 China's appreciation of our philosopher could not be more strikingly shown. Honours flow back in this empire. The descendant ennobles his ancestors. But in the case of Mencius, as in that of Confucius, this order is reversed. No excellence of descendants can extend to them; and the nation acknowledges its obligations to them by nobility and distinction conferred through all generations upon their posterity.

SECTION II.

HIS INFLUENCE AND OPINIONS.

1. CONFUCIUS had hardly passed off the stage of life before his merits began to be acknowledged. The duke Gae, who had neglected his counsels when he was alive, was the first to pronounce his eulogy, and to order that public sacrifices should be offered to him. His disciples proclaimed their estimation of him as superior to all the sages whom China had ever seen. Before long this view of him took possession

1 See Morrison's Dictionary, on Mencius.

of the whole nation; and since the Han dynasty, he has been the man whom sovereign and people have delighted to honour. The memory of Mencius was not so distinguished. We have seen that many centuries elapsed before his Writings were received among the classics of the empire. ment of Mencius' It was natural that under the same dynasty when this was done the man himself should be admitted to share in the sacrifices presented to Confucius.

Acknowledg

merits by the

government.

The emperor Shin-tsung,' in A.D. 1083, issued a patent, constituting Mencius "duke of the State of Tsow," and ordering a temple to be built to him in the district of Tsow, at the spot where the philosopher had been interred. In the following year it was enacted that he should have a place in the temple of Confucius, next to that of Yen Yuen, the favourite disciple of the sage.

In A.D. 1330, the emperor Wăn,2 of the Yuen dynasty, made an addition to Mencius' title, and styled him "duke of the State of Tsow, Inferior Sage." This continued till the rise of the Ming dynasty, the founder of which had his indignation excited in 1372 by one of Mencius' conversations with king Seuen. The philosopher had said:"When the ruler regards his ministers as his hands and feet, the ministers regard their ruler as their belly and heart; when he regards them as his dogs and horses, they regard him as any other man; when he regards them as the ground or as grass, they regard him as a robber and an enemy." To apply such names as robber and enemy in any case to rulers seemed to the imperial reader an unpardonable outrage, and he ordered Mencius to be degraded from his place in the temples of Confucius, declaring also that if any one remonstrated on the proceeding he should be dealt with as guilty of "Contempt of Majesty."

The scholars of China have never been slow to vindicate the memory of its sages and worthies. Undeterred by the imperial threat, Ts'ëen T'ang, a president of the Board of Punishments, presented himself with a remonstrance, saying "I will die for Mencius, and my death will be crowned with glory." The emperor was moved by his earnestness, and allowed him to go scathless. In the following year, moreover, examination and reflection produced a change of

1

A.D. 1068-1085.

3 Bk IV. Pt II. iii.

2

A.D. 1330-1333.

mind. He issued a second proclamation to the effect that Mencius, by exposing heretical doctrines and overthrowing perverse speakings, had set forth clearly the principles of Confucius, and ought to be restored to his place as one of his assessors.1

In 1530, the ninth year of the period Kea-tsing, a general revision was made of the sacrificial canon for the sage's temple, and the title of Mencius was changed into-" The philosopher. Măng, Inferior Sage." So it continues to the present day. His place is the second on the west, next to that of the philosopher Tsăng. Originally, we have seen, he followed Yen Hwuy, but Hwuy, Tsze-sze, Tsăng, and Măng were appointed the sage's four assessors, and had their relative positions fixed, in 1267.

2. The second edict in the period Hung-woo, restoring Mencius to his place in the temples of Confucius, states fairly enough the services which he is held to have rendered to his country. The philosopher's own estimate of Estimate of himself has partly appeared in the sketch of his Life. He seemed to start with astonish

self and by scholars.

Mencius by him

1 I have taken this account from "The Sacrificial Canon of the Sage's Temples" (Vol. I. Proleg. p. 103). Dr. Morrison in his Dictionary, under the character Măng, adds that the change in the emperor's mind was produced by his reading the remarkable passage in Bk VI. Pt II. xv., about trials and hardships as the way by which Heaven prepares men for great services. He thought it was descriptive of himself, and that he could argue from it a good title to the crown;-and so he was mollified to the philosopher. It may be worth while to give here the concluding remarks in "The Paraphrase for Daily Lessons, Explaining the Meaning of the Four Books" (Vol. I. Proleg. of larger Work, p. 131), on the chapter of Mencius which was deemed by the imperial reader so objectionable :-"Mencius wished that sovereigns should treat their ministers according to propriety, and nourish them with kindness, and therefore he used these perilous words in order to alarm and rouse them. As to the other side, the part of ministers, though the sovereign regard them as his hands and feet, they ought notwithstanding to discharge most earnestly their duties of loyalty and love. Yea, though he regard them as dogs and horses, or as the ground and grass, they ought still more to perform their part in spite of all difficulties, and oblivious of their person. They may on no account make the manner in which they are regarded, whether it be of appreciation or contempt, the standard by which they regulate the measure of their grateful service. The words of Confucius, that the ruler should behave to his ministers according to propriety, and the ministers serve their sovereign with faithfulness, contain the unchanging rule for all ages." The authors of the Daily Lessons did their work by imperial order, and evidently had the fear of the court before their eyes. Their language implies a censure of our philosopher. There will ever be a grudge against him in the minds of despots, and their creatures will be ready to depreciate him.

ment when his disciple Kung-sun Ch'ow was disposed to rank him as a sage; but he also said on one occasion— "When sages shall rise up again, they will not change my words." Evidently, he was of opinion that the mantle of Confucius had fallen upon him. A work was to be done in his generation, and he felt himself able to undertake it. After describing what had been accomplished by the great Yu, by Chow-kung, and Confucius, he adds:-"I also wish to rectify men's hearts, and to put an end to those perverse doctrines, to oppose their one-sided actions, and banish away their licentious expressions; and thus to carry on the work of the three sages." 993

3. The place which Mencius occupies in the estimation of the literati of China may be seen by the following testimonies, selected from those appended by Choo He to the prefatory notice of his Life in the "Collected Comments."

4

Han Yu says, "If we wish to study the doctrines of the sages, we must begin with Mencius." He also quotes the opinion of Yang Tsze-yun," "Yang and Mih were stopping up the way [of truth], when Mencius refuted them, and scattered their delusions without difficulty;" and then remarks upon it :-" When Yang and Mih walked abroad, the true doctrine had nearly come to nought. Though Mencius possessed talents and virtue, even those of a sage, he did not occupy the throne. He could only speak and not act. With all his earnestness, what could he do? It is owing, however, to his words, that learners now-a-days still know to revere. Confucius, to honour benevolence and righteousness, to esteem the true sovereign and despise the mere pretender. But the grand rules and laws of the sage and sage-emperors. had been lost beyond the power of redemption; only one in a hundred of them was preserved. Can it be said in those circumstances that Mencius had an easy task? Yet had it not been for him, we should have been buttoning the lappets of our coats on the left side, and our discourse would have been all-confused and indistinct;—it is on this account that I have honoured Mencius, and consider his merit not inferior to that of Yu."