Meng Ke or Mengzi (Master Meng), known in the West by the Latinized form Mencius, was born about a century after Confucius’s death and was a student of Confucius’s grandson Zisi before becoming an influential Ru thinker in his own right. The Mencius, generally believed to have been compiled by his disciples, records his teachings, dialogues with the rulers of various states, and debates with philosophical rivals.

Mencius was known for engaging in fiery polemics against two other philosophical schools, founded by Yang Zhu and Mo Di (Mozi). Yang Zhu rejected Confucius’s emphasis on selfless public service, arguing that a human being’s highest responsibility was to himself and not to others. Mo Di, on the other extreme, criticized Confucius’s emphasis on family ties as undermining a human being’s responsibility to care for all other human beings impartially. Mencius condemned Yang Zhu for “denying his ruler” and Mo Di for “denying his father,” claiming that such attitudes made them and their followers no different from animals. Another target of Mencius’s criticism was the Agrarianist school whose members advocated an egalitarian society devoted solely to farming, an ideal associated with the legendary ancient sage Shennong. Like Confucius, Mencius believed it was unbecoming for the elite to take up farming, since their true calling was government and scholarship, and that egalitarianism was only a recipe for anarchy.

Mencius famously argued that human beings are born with an innately good and unselfish nature. Noble men and sages are able to preserve this good nature, while in ordinary people it is corrupted by bad societal influences until they are little different from animals. Nonetheless, because the “sprouts” of goodness remain embedded in all human beings, “anyone can become a Yao or Shun” with enough effort and guidance.

Unlike the difference between human beings and animals, Mencius was relatively indifferent to expounding on the difference between Chinese and barbarians. In the process of attacking the Agrarianist Xu Xing, he did imply that Chinese ways were superior to barbarian ways and that it was possible for barbarians to become like the Chinese (and vice versa). In another passage, Mencius claimed that Shun and King Wen, two of Confucius’s revered sage-kings, were Yi “barbarians” by virtue of their lands of birth. This may be a case of Mencius’s rhetorical penchant for hyperbole, but it eventually gained significance as the only classical passage appearing to acknowledge explicitly that barbarians had a capacity for sagehood.

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3A.4    There was a certain Xu Xing who, claiming to preach the doctrines of Shennong, went from the state of Chu to Teng. Going in person to Lord Wen’s gates, he said: “I, a man from afar, have heard that you, My Lord, practice humane government. May I make my home here and become your subject?” Lord Wen gave him a place to stay. He had several tens of disciples, all of whom wore coarse clothing and made sandals and mats for a living.

Chen Liang’s disciple Chen Xiang and his younger brother Xin carried their ploughs on their backs and went from Song to Teng. They said to Lord Wen: “We have heard that you, My Lord, practice the sages’ way of government. That means you, too, are a sage. We wish to become a sage’s subjects.”

Chen Xiang met Xu Xing and was delighted. He abandoned his former studies and studied Xu’s teachings instead….

[Mencius said to Chen Xiang:] “I have heard of using Xia ways to change barbarians (Yi), but never of [Xia ways] being changed by barbarians. Chen Liang was a native of Chu. Delighted by the teachings of the Duke of Zhou and Confucius, he went north and studied them in the Central States. Among scholars in the north, none could surpass him; one could call him a man of excellent quality. You and your brothers followed him for several tens of years, but when your teacher died, you immediately turned away from his teachings.

In the past, when Confucius died, after the three years of mourning had elapsed, his disciples packed their belongings and prepared to go home. They went in to take their leave of Zigong, and facing one another, they all wailed till they lost their voices before heading home. But Zigong turned back and built a house at Confucius’s gravesite, where he lived alone for three more years before going home. On another occasion, Zixia, Zizhang, and Ziyou, thinking that You Ruo resembled the sage [Confucius], wanted to serve him as they had served Confucius. They tried to force Zengzi to do the same, but he said: ‘This cannot be done. [Our Master’s character] was incomparably splendid, like a rock washed in the waters of the Yangzi and Han rivers and bleached in the autumn sun.’

Now here is a southern barbarian (Man) whose dialect sounds like the screeching of a shrike.¹ He does not follow the Way of the former kings. Yet you turn away from your master’s teachings and learn from him—how different you are from Zengzi! I have heard of birds flying out of dark valleys to perch on tall trees, but never of them flying down from tall trees to dwell in dark valleys. In the Eulogies of Lu, it says: ‘He smote the Rong and Di; he punished Jing and Shu.’ The Duke of Zhou smote [the barbarians], yet you have become their disciple.² That is surely not a good change!”

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4B.1    Mencius said: “Shun was born in Zhuping, moved to Fuxia, and died in Mingtiao. He was a man of the eastern Yi.³ King Wen was born in Zhou, near Mount Qi, and died in Biying. He was a man of the western Yi.⁴ Their homelands were more than a thousand li apart, and their lifetimes were more than a thousand years apart. But when they achieved their aspirations and put their principles into practice in the Central States, it was like uniting the two halves of a tally. Both the earlier and the later sages all followed the same principles.”

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4B.19  Mencius said: “Only a small [moral] difference sets human beings apart from animals. The common people lose that difference, whereas the noble man preserves it. Shun clearly understood all things and clearly perceived the nature of human relations. He walked (xing 行) on the path of humaneness and moral duty and did not merely act out (xing) humaneness and moral duty.”

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6B.10  Bai Gui said, “I want to take only a twentieth (5%) of the produce as tax. What do you think of it?” Mencius said, “Your way would be that of the Mo.⁵ In a country of ten thousand families, would it do to have only one potter?”  Bai Gui replied, “No. There would not be enough vessels for everyone to use.”

Mencius went on, “Among the Mo, most kinds of grain are not grown; they only produce millet. There are no fortified cities, no palaces, no ancestral temples, no ceremonies of sacrifice; there are no lords exchanging gifts and holding entertainments; there is no system of officials with their various subordinates. On these accounts a tax of one-twentieth of the produce is sufficient there. But now it is the Central Lands that we live in. How could we do away with human relationships [of hierarchy] and have no noble men (junzi)? With few potters a state cannot subsist; how much less can it subsist without noble men? If we wish to make taxation lighter than the rate under Yao and Shun (10%), we would just be left with big Mo [states] and small Mo [states]. And if we wish to make it heavier than the rate under Yao and Shun, we would be left with big tyrants and small tyrants.”⁶

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1. Mencius repeats the stereotype of Chu as a Man barbarian state, on which see source 1.1, note 2. ↩︎
2. Here, Mencius quotes the ode “Bigong” (see source 1.1) but misinterprets the subject as the Duke of Zhou rather than a Lord of Lu in the seventh century BCE. ↩︎
3. Zhuping and Fuxia are believed to have been in Shandong, on the eastern end of the North China Plain. In late Shang and early Zhou times, this region was inhabited by peoples collectively labeled as Yi, but apart from the Mencius, no other classical text associates Shun with these peoples. Mingtiao is believed to have been in Shanxi, although Sima Qian in the Shiji claims that Shun died during a trip to south China, thus contradicting Mencius. ↩︎
4. The Zhou heartland, which included both Mount Qi and Biying, was in the Wei River valley and bordered on the peoples known to the Zhou as Rong. Mencius’s description of King Wen as a “man of the western Yi” may reflect an emerging Warring States-era practice of using Yi as a generic or synecdochic label for all foreign peoples. But since the Zhou ruling house identified itself as Xia, not Yi, it is also possible that Yi in this cryptic passage connotes geographical marginality, rather than ethnic otherness. This did not prevent later writers from using the passage, or variations on it, to argue that barbarians could become sage-kings too.  ↩︎
5. On the Mo, see source 1.1, note 8. ↩︎
6. Literally big Jie and small Jie, Jie being the mythical last king of the Xia dynasty whose tyrannical ways caused his dynasty’s fall. ↩︎