d loved the lovable. They showed due respect
to their departed ones, and thus discharged their duty to the living and
the dead.

THE WORKS OF MENCIUS

_INTRODUCTORY_

Mencius is the Latinised form of "Mengtse," which means "the philosopher
Meng," Meng (or Meng-sun) being the name of one of the three great
Houses of Lu, whose usurpations gave so much offence to Confucius. His
personal name was Ko, though this does not occur in his own works. He
was born in B.C. 372, and died in B.C. 289 at the age of 83, in the
twenty-sixth year of the Emperor Nan, with whom ended the long
sovereignty of Kau (Chow) dynasty. He was thus a contemporary of Plato
(whose last twenty-three years synchronised with his first
twenty-three), Aristotle, Zeno, Epicurus, and Demosthenes, and he is
well worthy of being ranked with these illustrious men.

Mencius was reared by his widowed mother, whose virtue and wisdom are
still proverbial in China. The first forty years of his life are
virtually a blank to us, so that we know very little of his early
education. He is said, however, to have studied under Khung Chi, the
grandson of Confucius.

In the hundred and six years between the death of Confucius (B.C. 478)
and the birth of Mencius (B.C. 372), the political and moral state of
China had altered greatly for the worse. The smaller feudal states had
been swallowed up by larger ones, the princes were constantly at war
with one another, and there was but little loyalty to the occupant of
the imperial throne; moreover, the moral standard of things had lowered
very much. At about the age of forty-five Mencius became Minister under
Prince Hsuan, of the Chi state. But as his master refused to carry out
the reforms he urged, he resigned his post and travelled through many
lands, advising rulers and ministers with whom he came in contact. In
the year B.C. 319 he resumed his former position in the state of Chi,
resigning once more eight years later. He now gave himself up to a life
of study and teaching, preparing the works presently to be noticed. His
main purpose was to expound and enforce the teaching of Confucius. But
his own doctrine stands on a lower level than that of the master, for he
views man's well-being rather from the point of view of political
economy. He was justly named by Chao Chi "The Second Holy One or
Prophet"--the name by which China still knows him.

The treatise called "The Works of Mencius" is a compilation of the
conversa