Unit 14 · Mencius and Zhuangzi Close Up

Mencius is the Latin form of Mengzi, "Master Meng." Legge spells it Mang-tsze in the older system. He lived about a century after Confucius, traditionally c. 372–289 BCE, though scholars note the dates are uncertain. He traveled between the courts of the Warring States, trying to persuade kings to rule humanely.

The book named after him, the Mencius, has seven books. Each book is split into two parts, A and B. So 2A.6 means book 2, part A, chapter 6. Most of the book is dialogue: Mencius talking with kings, students and rival thinkers. It reads more like a set of debates than a list of sayings.

Later Confucians gave Mencius great honor. Zhu Xi, in the 1100s, placed the Mencius among the Four Books, the core texts for study and, from 1313, for the state exams. Mencius became known as the Yasheng, the "Second Sage." Some readers today call his teachings the most hopeful in the Confucian tradition.

Mencius loved comparisons. He compared human nature to water that flows downhill, to sprouts that need care, and to a mountain whose trees were cut down. An analogy explains an unfamiliar thing by pointing to a familiar one. Mencius used analogies both to teach and to win debates.

One famous example is the Ox Mountain story in 6A.8. The mountain was once covered in trees. People cut them, and cattle grazed on the new shoots, so it looks bare. Mencius says people might think the mountain never had trees. In the same way, a person whose good feelings are cut back might seem to have none.

Analogies have limits, and Mencius’s rivals pointed them out. A reader can test an analogy by asking where the two things are alike and where they differ. This course calls that testing an analogy. It is a key skill for reading Mencius, whose arguments often stand or fall on a comparison.

James Legge published The Works of Mencius as volume 2 of The Chinese Classics in 1861. A second, revised edition appeared in 1895. Like his Analects, it prints the Chinese text, Legge’s English and long notes. His notes often explain Chinese commentators, especially Zhu Xi.

Legge admired Mencius, but he also argued with him. In his introduction he questioned Mencius’s claim that human nature is good, from the point of view of his own Christian beliefs about human nature. Readers today can see both his care as a translator and the views he brought to the text.

Legge’s English uses some words that need a gloss. "Benevolence" is ren. "Righteousness" is yi. "Propriety" is li. "Knowledge" or "wisdom" is zhi. "Principle" in 2A.6 translates duan, a sprout or starting point. Knowing these helps a reader see the Chinese terms behind the English.

Mencius 2A.6 begins with a claim. Legge: "All men have a mind which cannot bear to see the sufferings of others." Then Mencius gives a test case. "If men suddenly see a child about to fall into a well, they will without exception experience a feeling of alarm and distress."

Mencius is careful about the reason. The feeling does not come, he says, from wanting to win the favor of the child’s parents. It does not come from wanting praise from neighbors and friends. It does not come from disliking the sound of the child’s cry. It comes first, before any of these reasons.

This is a thought experiment: an imagined case used to test an idea. Mencius does not say everyone will save the child. He says everyone will feel the jolt. The feeling is the starting point. Readers still debate whether the example shows what Mencius claims, and use it in modern discussions of empathy.

After the child at the well, Mencius lists four feelings. Legge: "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."

The four virtues are ren, yi, li and zhi. Each grows from a feeling. Mencius then compares them to the body: "Men have these four principles just as they have their four limbs." A person without them, he says, would hardly be human. Readers call these the four sprouts.

A sprout is small. It needs care or it dies. Mencius says the four beginnings must be developed, like a fire just lit or a spring just flowing. This is the core of his view that human nature is good. He means people start with good tendencies, not that everyone already acts well.

Gaozi was a thinker who debated Mencius. In 6A.1 he says human nature is like willow wood, and righteousness is like cups and bowls carved from it. Goodness, in this view, is shaped from outside. Mencius replies that carving a willow into bowls does violence to the tree. Would goodness then do violence to people?

In 6A.2 Gaozi tries water. Nature is like water swirling in a pool, he says. Open it east and it flows east; open it west and it flows west. So nature is neither good nor bad. Mencius turns the analogy around. Legge: "The tendency of man’s nature to good is like the tendency of water to flow downwards."

This is a rebuttal: an answer that turns an opponent’s point back on them. Mencius accepts water as the image, then argues it shows a direction after all. Readers ask who wins. Some say Mencius only changed the subject from east and west to up and down. Others find his move convincing.

In Mencius 1A.7 King Xuan spares a trembling ox and orders a sheep used instead. The people call him stingy. Mencius says the king saw the ox and did not see the sheep. His heart was moved by what was in front of him. Mencius calls this the working of benevolence.

Then Mencius makes his key move. He says the king’s kindness reaches animals but not his people. The problem is not that the king cannot. It is that he does not. Mencius compares it to someone who says he cannot lift a feather, when he simply does not try. The king must extend his feeling.

To extend means to carry something outward. Mencius urges the king to treat other people’s elders as he treats his own, and others’ children as his own. Readers see this as a plan for humane rule built from one small moment of feeling. Critics ask whether feeling alone is enough to guide a state.

Mencius 7B.14 is short and bold. Legge: "The people are the most important element in a nation; the spirits of the land and grain are the next; the sovereign is the lightest." The spirits of land and grain were honored at state altars. They stood for the state itself.

In a world of kings, this ranking was striking. Mencius goes on to say that a ruler who endangers the altars can be replaced. Elsewhere, in 1B.8, he says that a tyrant who destroys goodness has lost the right to be called a ruler. These passages link to the older idea of the Mandate of Heaven.

The Mandate of Heaven was the belief, older than Confucius, that Heaven grants the right to rule to a worthy ruler and can withdraw it. Mencius said Heaven sees as the people see. Later rulers were not always pleased. The first Ming emperor had an edition of the Mencius printed with dozens of passages cut out, though the full text was later restored.

Xunzi was a Confucian thinker of the third century BCE. In the chapter often called "Human Nature Is Bad," chapter 23 of the Xunzi, he argues against Mencius by name. People are born, he says, wanting gain and feeling envy. Left alone, they fight. Goodness comes from teachers, ritual and effort.

Xunzi uses his own analogies. A warped board must be steamed and pressed to become straight. Metal must be ground to become sharp. So people need li and learning to become good. Where Mencius sees sprouts that need care, Xunzi sees crooked wood that needs shaping.

Both men were Confucians. Both valued learning and ritual. They disagreed about the starting point. Later tradition, especially after Zhu Xi, sided with Mencius, and Xunzi was read less for centuries. Many scholars today study Xunzi closely again. They present the two as a real debate within the tradition.

For centuries, students memorized the Mencius for the state exams. They learned 2A.6 and 7B.14 by heart. Zhu Xi’s notes shaped how they read it. For many families, knowing Mencius well was a path to office and honor. Only men could sit the exams, and most candidates never passed.

Other readers used Mencius to criticize rulers. Scholars pointed to 7B.14 when rulers failed the people. In Korea and Japan too, Mencius was read, argued over and sometimes feared for his ideas about replacing bad rulers. In the twentieth century some writers linked Mencius to democracy. Others warned that his ideas are not the same as modern democracy.

Today, philosophers and psychologists sometimes cite the child at the well in discussions of empathy and moral feeling. Some Confucian revivalists see Mencius as the heart of the tradition. Some critics find his optimism too simple. A careful reader can describe all these uses and still return to the text itself.

Zhuangzi, "Master Zhuang," was named Zhuang Zhou. Tradition dates him c. 369–286 BCE, though the dates are uncertain. Legge spells him Kwang-ze. He lived in the Warring States period, around the time of Mencius. The two never mention each other in their books.

The book called the Zhuangzi is very different from the Daodejing. It is long and full of stories: talking animals, skilled workers, dreamers, and even Confucius as a character. It uses humor, parable and odd arguments. Many readers find it the funniest classic in Chinese philosophy.

Later Daoists honored the book too. In 742 CE a Tang emperor gave it the title Nanhua zhenjing, the "True Classic of Southern Florescence," and Zhuangzi an honored title. Religious and philosophical Daoists both read it. Chan Buddhists, known in Japan as Zen, also drew on its style and stories.

Early records say the Zhuangzi once had more chapters than it has today. Around 300 CE the scholar Guo Xiang edited it down to 33 chapters. He also wrote a commentary that shaped how people read it for centuries. Almost every later edition comes from his version.

Guo Xiang divided the book into three parts. The seven inner chapters are thought by many scholars to be closest to Zhuangzi himself. The outer and miscellaneous chapters seem to come from followers and other writers over time. Scholars still debate who wrote which parts.

Guo Xiang also had his own ideas. He stressed that each thing is content when it follows its own nature. Some modern scholars think he read his own philosophy into the text. This is common in commentary. A reader should know that the edition itself is already an interpretation.

The Zhuangzi makes readers laugh. A giant bird flies ninety thousand miles, and a cicada mocks it. A man with a twisted body lives a long life because no one drafts him into the army. Confucius shows up as a character, sometimes wise and sometimes teased. The jokes are part of the argument.

Many readers think the humor has a job. It unsettles fixed views about what is big or small, useful or useless, right or wrong. The book often shows that each point of view sees only part of things. Scholars call this interest in viewpoints perspectivism.

Readers disagree about where the book lands. Some see skepticism: doubt that we can be sure of anything. Some see a path to freedom and ease. Religious Daoists see a guide to spiritual life. Some see all of these at once. The Zhuangzi seems to enjoy leaving the question open.

Chapter 3 tells of Cook Ding, a butcher working for Lord Wenhui. He carves an ox with such rhythm that it looks like a dance. The lord praises his skill and asks how he learned it. Cook Ding answers that what he cares about is the Dao, which goes beyond skill.

At first, Cook Ding says, he saw only the whole ox. After three years he no longer saw the whole. Now he works by spirit, not by sight. He follows the natural lines and slips the blade into the spaces between the joints. His knife has lasted nineteen years and is still like new. Ordinary cooks hack and change blades every month.

Lord Wenhui says he has learned how to nourish life. Readers take the story in many ways. Some see wu wei, acting without forcing. Some see a picture of mastery, the ease that comes after long practice. Some see a guide to living through life’s hard places without wearing out.

Chapter 17, called "Autumn Floods," includes the frog in the well. The frog lives in a broken well. It boasts to a great turtle from the Eastern Sea. It can hop on the rim, rest in the cracks and rule its little pool. Why not come in and look, the frog asks the turtle?

The turtle tries, but its left foot will not even fit before its right knee sticks. So it steps back and describes the sea. Floods do not raise it. Droughts do not lower it. It is so vast that a thousand miles cannot measure it. The frog is stunned and at a loss.

The story became a Chinese saying: a frog at the bottom of a well, for someone with a narrow view. Readers link it to the chapter’s larger theme. The river god, at the start of chapter 17, thinks he is great until he sees the ocean. The lesson is about the limits of any single point of view.

The Hao bridge debate closes chapter 17. Zhuangzi says the fish are happy. Huizi says, you are not a fish, how can you know? Zhuangzi replies, you are not me, how do you know I don’t know? Huizi pushes his logic further. Zhuangzi then returns to Huizi’s first question.

The last move plays on the Chinese word an, which can mean "how" or "from where." You asked how, or from where, I know, Zhuangzi says. I know it from here, above the Hao. Translators handle this wordplay differently. Some explain it in a note. Some choose English that keeps a double meaning.

Readers split. Some think Zhuangzi cheats with a pun. Some think he makes a real point: all knowing happens from a place, and Huizi’s own question assumed that knowing across minds is possible. Some focus on the friendship. Huizi was Zhuangzi’s favorite partner in debate, and a later story shows Zhuangzi mourning him.

Chapter 2, "The Adjustment of Controversies" in Legge’s title, ends with a short story. Zhuangzi dreams he is a butterfly, fluttering about, happy, not knowing he is Zhuangzi. Suddenly he wakes and is Zhuangzi again. He cannot tell if he is Zhuangzi who dreamed of a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming it is Zhuangzi.

The story ends with a line about difference. There must be some distinction between Zhuangzi and a butterfly, it says. This is called the transformation of things. Things change into one another. The last line matters: the story does not say they are the same.

Readers bring many questions to it. Western philosophers compare it with Descartes’s worry about dreaming. Daoist readers stress calm acceptance of change. Buddhist readers in China linked it with ideas of illusion. Scholars warn against making the story too simple. It is short, but it holds several readings at once.

Chapter 18 tells of a hard moment. Zhuangzi’s wife has died. His friend Huizi comes to offer condolences. He finds Zhuangzi sitting on the ground, drumming on a pot and singing. Huizi is shocked. She lived with you, raised your children and grew old. Not weeping is bad enough. Drumming and singing is too much.

Zhuangzi answers that when she first died, he did grieve. Then he thought about her beginning. Once there was no life, no form, no breath. Then things changed and there was breath, form, and life. Now another change has come, like the turn of the seasons. To wail, he says, would show he did not understand fate.

This is one of the most debated passages in the book. Some readers find it calm and wise. Some find it cold. Some note that Zhuangzi admits his first grief. Traditional mourning rites, which Confucians stressed, called for years of set practice. The story challenges them, and readers still weigh that challenge with respect for grieving families.

Guo Xiang, around 300 CE, read the Zhuangzi as teaching that each thing finds ease by following its own nature. Later, Chan Buddhist teachers loved its stories and sudden turns. Tang emperors honored it as a Daoist scripture. Religious Daoists read its passages about the perfected person in light of their practices.

Poets and painters took from it too. Its big bird, its fish and its butterfly became common images in Chinese art and poetry. In the twentieth century, Western philosophers began to study it closely. Some read it as skepticism, some as a philosophy of skill, and some as a guide to freedom.

Scholars today also debate how much of the book is by one mind. This affects every reading. If the outer chapters are by followers, is the fish debate "Zhuangzi’s view"? Careful writers say "the Zhuangzi says" or "chapter 17 says" and note the authorship question when it matters. That keeps each attribution honest.

Mencius and Zhuangzi were near contemporaries in the fourth century BCE. Mencius argued with kings about humane rule. Zhuangzi, in his stories, often turned down office. In chapter 17 he says he would rather be a live turtle dragging its tail in the mud than a dead one honored in a temple.

Their methods differ. Mencius argues by analogy and aims to persuade. Zhuangzi tells strange stories and often leaves the question open. Mencius builds a firm view of human nature. Zhuangzi keeps asking how anyone could be sure. Both used analogy, but for different goals.

Both also stress feeling and practice rather than rules alone. Mencius’s sprouts must be nourished. Cook Ding’s skill comes from long practice. Readers compare these ideas of cultivation. Some Chinese scholars later saw Confucian and Daoist teachings as complementary. This course describes the contrast without ranking either thinker.