The Dignities of God and Man
The honours that come from God and those that come from men need to be put in the right order.
An unidentified elderly official of the Ming Dynasty.
By an anonymous artist, 16th century. Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
An unidentified elderly official of the Ming Dynasty, sixteenth century. Confucius developed his teachings against the background of a decay in public life, and Mencius recognised their importance even if others did not. He understood that the ills of State and society could not be cured by more regulation, for after all, corrupt officials would be writing it, but by those same officials taking on the responsibility for personal reformation. To this, the wisdom of Confucius was the key. See also Samuel Smiles on ‘Better Habits, Not Greater Rights’, and An Unpopular Popular Reform.
Introduction
Mencius (?371-?289) or ‘Master Meng’ spent his career advising Chinese regional governments on public policy during a low-point in the Zhou Dynasty. Regional barons squabbled, taxed cruelly and chopped off heads, and all was flattery, corruption and ambition. Mencius saw no hope for the State in institutional reforms: each man must undertake his own personal reformation.
Translated by Herbert A. Giles. Mencius is pronounced ‘MEN-shee-us’.
THERE are dignities of God, and there are dignities of man. Charity of heart, duty towards one’s neighbour, loyalty, and truth these are the dignities of God. To be a duke, a minister of State, or a high official these are the dignities of man.
The men of old cultivated the dignities of God, and the dignities of man followed. The men of to-day cultivate the dignities of God in order to secure the dignities of man; and when they have obtained the dignities of man, they cast aside all further thought of the dignities of God. In this they greatly err, and the probability is that they will lose their dignities of man as well.
Charity of heart is the noblest gift of God; it is a house, so to speak, in which a man may live in peace. No one can prevent us from possessing this gift; if we have it not, that is due to our own folly.
Charity of heart subdues uncharitableness just as water subdues fire. But people nowadays employ charity of heart much in the same way as if they were to try to put out a blazing cartload of firewood with a single cupful of water; and then when they fail to put out the flames, they turn round and blame the water.*
Translated by Herbert A. Giles. Mencius is pronounced ‘MEN-shee-us’.
From ‘Gems of Chinese Literature: Prose’, translated by Herbert Allen Giles (1845-1935). See also ‘The Four Books: Confucian Analects, the Great Learning, the Doctrine of the Mean, and the Works of Mencius’, translated by James Legge (1815-1897).
* See 1 Corinthians 13. The translator, Herbert Giles, chose expressions designed to heighten the undeniable similarities with St Paul’s letter. For the Chinese text of Mencius’s reflections, and a more literal English translation, see ‘The Four Books: Confucian Analects, the Great Learning, the Doctrine of the Mean, and the Works of Mencius’, translated by James Legge (1815-1897), starting on p. 886.
