A hundred years after the time of Confucius the Chinese nation seemed to have fallen back into their original condition of lawlessness and oppression.  The King’s power and authority was laughed to scorn, the people were pillaged by the feudal nobility, and famine reigned in many districts.  The foundations of truth and social order seemed to be overthrown.  There were teachers of immorality abroad, who published the old Epicurean doctrine, “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.”  This teaching was accompanied by a spirit of cold-blooded egotism which extinguished every spark of Confucian altruism.  Even the pretended disciples of Confucius confused the precepts of the Master, and by stripping them of their narrow significance rendered them nugatory.  It was at this point that Mang-tsze, “Mang the philosopher,” arose.  He was sturdy in bodily frame, vigorous in mind, profound in political sagacity and utterly fearless in denouncing the errors of his countrymen.  He had been brought up among the disciples of Confucius, in whose province he was born B.C. 372, but he was much more active and aggressive, less a Mystic than a fanatic, in comparison! with his Master.  He resolved on active measures in stemming the tendency of his day.  He did indeed surround himself with a school of disciples, but instead of making a series of desultory travels, teaching in remote places and along the high-road, he went to the heart of the evil.  He presented himself like a second John the Baptist at the courts of kings and princes, and there boldly denounced vice and misrule.  It was not difficult for a Chinese scholar and teacher to find access to the highest of the land.  The Chinese believed in the divine right of learning, just as they believed in the divine right of kings.  Mang employed every weapon of persuasion in trying to combat heresy and oppression; alternately ridiculing and reproving:  now appealing in a burst of moral enthusiasm, and now denouncing in terms of cutting sarcasm the abuses which after all he failed to check.  The last prince whom he successfully confronted was the Marquis of Lu, who turned him carelessly away.  He accepted this as the Divine sentence of his failure, “That I have not found in this marquis, a ruler who would hearken to me is an intimation of heaven.”  Henceforth he lived in retirement until his ninety-seventh year; but from his apparent failure sprang a practical success.  His written teachings are amongst the most lively and epigrammatic works of Chinese literature, have done much to keep alive amongst his countrymen the spirit of Confucianism, and even Western readers may drink wisdom from this spring of Oriental lore.  The following selections from his sayings well exhibit the spirit of his system of philosophy and morality.

 E.W.

THE SAYINGS OF MENCIUS

BOOK I

KING HWUY OF LEANG