Part 9 (1/2)

51The Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties.

52The settled, civilized Chinese as opposed to nomadic, uncivilized ”barbarians.”

53In addition to occurring in all three versions of ”Heaven's Will,” this line is also found in chapter 4 (not in this volume).

54The word translated as ”guiding standard” is zheng , which often means ”what is correct” and is related to the word zheng , which means ”to rule.” Mozi here is playing on these related senses.

55Notice that in what follows, Mozi appeals to the ”three gauges” discussed in ”A Condemnation of Fatalism.” See Mozi, chapter 35, pp. 11011.

56Mozi wants to distinguish mere hearsay and vague claims about spiritual beings from firm and clear testimony of their existence. In the examples he cites as evidence, the testimony is first hand, detailed, and corroborated by multiple witnesses.

57A king who ruled during the tenth generation of the Zhou dynasty. His reign dates are 827782 B.C.E.

58Ruler of the state of Qin from 659 to 621 B.C.E.

59In very early Chinese texts, spirits savored the mingde , ”s.h.i.+ning virtue,” of pious wors.h.i.+ppers in the same visceral way they were thought to enjoy the smells and flavors of the sacrifice, and the pageantry and music of the ceremony. True virtue would elicit spontaneous feelings of approval and joy while character or behavior that was e , ”vile,” would give rise to disapproval and disgust. Such ideas can be seen in the later tradition. For example, in chapter 6 of the Daxue, ”Great Learning,” a cultivated person is said to be attracted to the good ”as if seeing something beautiful” and repelled by the bad ”as if smelling something malodorous.”

60A span of nineteen years marked a specific astronomical and calendrical period called a zhang . Unaware of the precession of the equinoxes, ancient Chinese astronomers believed that every nineteen years the winter solstice was the first day of the first month of the year and that on that day the sun would appear at exactly the same place in the zodiac. Hence nineteen years were thought to define a significant period of time, something akin to a generation. Compare the story of the butcher in Zhuangzi, chapter 3, pp. 22425, whose knife remained keen for a period of nineteen years.

61Ruler of the state of Yan. His reign dates are 504493 B.C.E.

62The name of a specific sacrificial site in the state of Yan. This adds an ironic cast to the story, for it was commonly held that a state is maintained through the spiritual power of its state sacrifices. The following lines, which are clearly a later note that became incorporated into the text, describe the locations of the state sacrifices of other contemporary states and the fact that many people witnessed these events (and hence the spiritual sighting noted in Mozi's story), ”The state of Yan performed its great sacrifice at Zu, while the state of Qi offered its sacrifice at Sheji, Song at Sanglin, and Chu at Yunmeng. Large numbers of men and women would gather to observe these rituals.”

63Bao is the personal name of the king whose posthumous name was Lord Wen. He ruled the state of Song from 610 to 589 B.C.E. He was also known as Duke Wen.

64Ruler of the state of Qi. His reign dates are 553548 B.C.E.

65The text is slightly garbled at this point. But the sense is something like ”the sage-kings of the three dynasties (i.e., Yu, Tang, Wen, and Wu) plus Yao and Shun.”

66The interior sacrifices were to the Yin royal ancestors and hence needed to be carried out by their direct descendants. Mozi's point is that if there were no ghosts and spirits who received these sacrifices and were aware of who was sacrificing to them, there would have been no point in dividing up these religious duties.

67Mozi's point here is that the conscious effort to properly align cities to harmonize with spiritual forces also reflects a belief in the existence of ghosts and spirits. For the seminal study of this aspect of Chinese culture, see Paul Wheatley, The Pivot of the Four Corners: A Preliminary Enquiry into the Origins and Character of the Ancient Chinese City (Chicago, IL: Aldine Publis.h.i.+ng Company, 1971).

68The quotation is from the ode ”King Wen” in the Elegies section of the Odes (Mao # 235). For a complete translation, see Legge, The She King, op. cit., pp. 42731.

69The quoted pa.s.sage is similar in content to parts of the ”Instructions of Yi” section of the History. Cf. Legge, The Shoo King, pp. 19394.

70In the present version of the History there is a pa.s.sage that shares some of the language and general thrust of the text Mozi quotes. This pa.s.sage is called the ”Declaration at Gan” with Gan being the place named in the Mozi pa.s.sage. For the present version, see Legge, The Shoo King, pp. 15255.

71A state ruled by relatives who shared the same surname as the Xia royal line. It was located in present-day Shanxi province.

72These are the basic phases that the natural and human realms are supposed to pa.s.s through in orderly succession. They are wood, fire, earth, metal, and water. While a given phase is in ”ascendance,” the activities and phenomena a.s.sociated with that phase are thought to guide the major course of events.

73The realms of Heaven, earth, and human beings.

74This line also occurs at the very beginning of the chapter.

75Cf. ”Honoring the Worthy.” See Mozi, chapter 8, pp. 6165.

76That is, those who share the father's surname and are in line to continue his family's ancestral sacrifices.

77Mozi shows no evidence of doubting the existence of ghosts and spirits, but the more sociological explanation for ritual sacrifice he offers here antic.i.p.ates Xunzi's rich and wholly secular defense of ritual. Cf. Xunzi's ”Discourse on Ritual.” See Xunzi, chapter 19, pp. 27485.

78Mozi criticizes the elaborate musical performances that were sponsored by many states in early China. These events included complex and expensive orchestras, elaborate dancing, and often were accompanied by lavish feasts. He argues that these waste vast resources of time, material, and effort without producing any tangible results. He is not directly criticizing music per se. On the other hand, he shows no sense that music serves any useful purpose in life. For a meticulous and incisive study of the production, performance, ritual, and beliefs regarding ancient Chinese chime bells, see Lothar von Falkenhausen, Suspended Music: Chime Bells in the Culture of Bronze Age China (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993).

79Ruler of the state of Qi. His reign dates are 404379 B.C.E.

80A ch.o.r.eographed performance with musical accompaniment. For a description, see Waley, The Book of Songs, op. cit., pp. 33840.

81There is no such section in the present History but in the chapter called ”Instructions of Yin,” there is a pa.s.sage that shares much of the language and general thrust of Mozi's quotation. See Legge, The Shoo King, p. 196.

82The text of the last line is garbled and the translation is tentative.

83”He” refers to the tyrant Jie. The point of the pa.s.sage is that Jie's personal debauchery testifies to his low character, which makes him offensive to Heaven and unfit to rule. Thus it justifies Tang's attack on him.

84An unknown text.

85Qi is the son of Yu, founder of the Xia dynasty. He succeeded his father to the throne. The point of the pa.s.sage is to ill.u.s.trate his bad moral character that makes him offensive to Heaven and unfit to rule.

86These same lines occur as the opening of ”Honoring the Worthy.” See Mozi, chapter 8, p. 61.

87This describes the practice of determining how far from true east and west the sun would rise and set. It consisted of aligning a set of gnomons (see the following note) with the rising and setting sun and using these to triangulate true east and west. It would be impossible to carry out this procedure on the surface of a spinning potter's wheel just as it would be impossible to use such a wheel as a sundial. For a description and discussion of this procedure and other uses of such gnomon, see A. C. Graham, Later Mohist Logic, Ethics and Science (Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1978), pp. 37071, and Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China, vol. 3 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1959), pp. 284302.

88The word I have translated as ”gauge” (biao ) is a gnomon used to ”gauge” the direction and movement of the sun's shadow. For an ill.u.s.tration, see the discussion in Needham or the web page for this volume.

CHAPTER THREE.

MENGZI (MENCIUS).

Introduction.

Mengzi was a Chinese Confucian philosopher who lived in the fourth century B.C.E. He was born after Kongzi died, so he never studied under Kongzi, or even met him. However, Mengzi tried to teach, practice, and defend the Way of Kongzi as he understood it. Although he is not nearly as well known in the West as Kongzi, Mengzi has long been regarded in China (and throughout East Asia) as second only to Kongzi himself in importance as a Confucian thinker.

The collection of Mengzi's sayings, dialogues, and debates with others is known simply as the Mengzi (or, following the Jesuit Latinization of his name, the Mencius). It is divided into seven ”books,” each of which is subdivided into two parts (called the ”A” and ”B” parts), which are then further divided into ”chapters.” So, for example, Mengzi 1B3 is book 1, second part, chapter 3.

Mengzi saw the main intellectual opponents of the Way of Kongzi as being the teachings of Yang Zhu and Mozi (3B9, 7A26). Mozi, as we saw in Chapter 2, advocated a kind of universalistic consequentialism. There are few, if any, texts that have survived to the present day that we can confidently identify as presenting the teachings of Yang Zhu, so we do not know exactly what his philosophy was. However, it seems clear that Yang Zhu emphasized following one's xing , ”nature” (see Important Terms), and claimed that the teachings of both Mohism and Confucianism ask us to act contrary to our natures by making what Yang Zhu saw as excessive sacrifices for others. (See the Supplemental Text on Yangism [”Robber Zhi”], pp. 36975.) On this basis, Mengzi accused Yang Zhu (perhaps unfairly) of being a sort of extreme egoist.

Mengzi agrees with Yang Zhu that humans have a nature, which they should follow. Indeed, he criticizes a rival philosopher, Gaozi, for suggesting that ethical cultivation must involve violating one's nature (Mengzi 6A1). However, Mengzi argues against Yang Zhu that there are incipient virtuous inclinations in one's nature (Mengzi 6A6). He frequently describes these inclinations using a metaphor of ”sprouts,” and compares ethical cultivation to tending these sprouts (Mengzi 2A6, 2A2, 6A78). Mengzi presents various kinds of evidence for the existence of ethical ”sprouts” in humans, including the ”giveaway” actions of adults who spontaneously manifest these inclinations (such as King Xuan, whose sympathy for an ox being led to slaughter shows his nascent compa.s.sion [Mengzi 1A7]), and ”thought experiments” (such as asking us what our intuitions are about how a normal human would react to the sight of a child about to fall into a well [Mengzi 2A6], or to the sight of the corpses of loved ones rotting by the roadside [Mengzi 3A5]).

It is important to understand that, although the presence of the sprouts guarantees the goodness of human nature, this does not entail that most humans are actually good. Mengzi stresses that a bad environment (and failure to cultivate oneself) can almost destroy one's original nature (Mengzi 6A8). Furthermore, our compa.s.sion for others and disdain to do what is wrong are innate, but only incipient. Thus the task of moral cultivation is to ”extend” or ”fill out” the reactions from the paradigmatic cases where we already have them to the relevantly similar cases where we do not yet have them, but ought to (Mengzi 7A15, 7A17, 7B31).

Mengzi thinks that most people will be unable to develop their nature without having their basic needs for things such as food met (Mengzi 7A27). Indeed, Mengzi provides specific advice about proper farm management (Mengzi 3A3), showing his concern with the practicalities of governing. Once their fundamental needs are met, basic-but universal- ethical education is crucial (Mengzi 1A7, 3A4). However, Mengzi recognizes that, while everyone has the capacity to become a sage, not everyone will realize that ability.