China and the West

[Mengzi]. Mencius, or the economist [ID D29115].
Book One : King Hwuy of Leans or King
Benevolent of Woodbridge
Chapter I
1. Mencius saw King Benevolent of Woodbridge.
2. The King said: Your Honor has not found a thousand le too long a journey, but you have come. May we take it that you have something that will profit my kingdom.
3. Mencius replied, with due politeness in the tone of his voice: What forces your Majesty to use that word 'profit'? I have my humanity and my sense of equity (honsety) and that's all.
4. If your majesty says: How can I make a profit for my state, the great officers will say: "Where's the rake-off for my family?" and each of the minor officers and people will say: "What's there in it for me?" From top to bottom everyone will try to snatch profits from everyone else and the country will be brought to the edge of the precipice. In a ten thousand war-car state, the murderer of the prince will be the head of a hundred chariot family; a thousand out of ten thousand, a hundred out of a thousand, is not very much but the effect won't be long delayed; if you put honesty behind profits and profits before (anything else), no one will be satisfied until he has swiped everything.
5. There never has been a man fully human who neglected his immediate relatives; there never has been a perfectly honest man who failed in his duty to his sovereign.
6. If your Majesty would turn the conversation to Humanity (discussing the full meaning of humanity) and equity, what need would there be to drag in the question of Profits?
Chapter II
1. Mencius saw King Benevolent of Woodbridge. The King took his stand by the bank of a pool contemplating the fat geese and sleek deer. He said: Do men of wisdom take delight in this sort of thing?
2. Mencius replied deferentially, saying: As they are (by definition) men of wisdom (and character) it follows that they take such delight. Those who are not good and wise, even if they have such possession get no pleasure from them.
3. It is said in the Odes :
He made the measurements
And began the Tower of Augury.
He made the measurements and the plan
And the people went at it.
They didn't miss a whole day's work on the job
Until the tower was finished.
He began it not urging anyone to exert himself
And the whole multitude of the people
Came as if they had been children of his family.
The King stood in his Park of Augury.
The plump sleek does rested about him;
White birds were there in their brightness.
The King stood by the Pool of Augury
With lots of fish there leaping within it.
Moving their wing-like feet,
(Shi King, III, 1, 8)
King Wan used the people's strength to build the pagoda and to make the pool, and the people took delight in doing it; they called the tower the Tower of Good Hope, and the pool the Pool of Good Augury; they enjoyed his sleek deer, his fishes and turtles. The men of old took the people into their pleasures, the whole people, and therefore they (the sovereigns) could enjoy them.
4. The T'ang Manifesto says :
Sun, if you would only die
We will all come die with you.
The people wanted him to die to the point of being ready to die themselves to get rid of him. (This re¬fers to the tyrant Kee.) Even if such a man possessed pagodas and birds and animals, how could he have pleasure in them alone by himself,
Chapter III
1. King Benevolent of Woodbridge said: I am pretty small when it comes to running the state, but I do use what heart and mind I possess. When they have bad crops inside the river, I move some of the people to the East Shore, and have grain brought to the people (who stay) on the inside. When the crops are bad on the East shore, I carry on with the same system. When I look over at what is done in the governments of neighboring states, I don't find anybody using his heart like poor me, and yet the folks in the neighboring states don't get any fewer, and the people of your humble servant don't get any more numerous. How's that?
2. Mencius replied: Seems like your Majesty is fond of warfare. Let me draw a military simile. The drums sound, and the sharp blades are crossed, and some men throw away their armor, trail their weapons and run—some a hundred paces and stop, some fifty paces and stop. Is there any way for those who run fifty paces to make fun of those that run a hundred? (The King) said: No go! Clearly they did not run a hundred paces, but they 'also ran'. (Mencius) said: If it is like that, you your Majesty, know that; you needn't expect your population to multiply more than that in the neighboring states.
(Economy of Abundance)
3. If the seasonable work on the farms be not in-terrupted there will be more grain than the people can eat; if the small-meshed nets are not set in the ponds and lakes, there will be more fish and turtles than can be eaten; if you don't hack at the mountain forests with your axes, there will be more wood (timber and firewood) than you can use. When you can't exhaust the grain, fish and terrapin by eating them, when there is more wood than you can use, people will be able to feed the living and bury their dead without resentments; and when people can feed the living and bury the dead without feelings of resentment, you have the beginning of the royal process (of government).
4. On a five-mow (five hectaire, say 2 1/2 acre) home¬stead, let them plant mulberry trees. People of fifty can then wear silk (that is, warm clothing). In pig, dog and hog raising, don't miss the breeding seasons. Then people of seventy can eat meat. A farm of a hundred mow, if you don't interrupt the seasons will support a family of quite a few mouths, so that they won't feel the pinch of hunger. Have proper school education, with emphasis on the filial and fraternal observances, and you won't have gray-head-ed men on the roads toting heavy loads on their backs and heads. With people of seventy wearing silk and eating meat, and the black-haired people (the Chinese) not suffering hunger or cold, there is no case of a ruler (of a state) failing to rise to imperial dignity.
(I am accepting Legge's note for the meaning o) this 'Wang'—'low 3rd tone', according to Legge. It might mean, I should think, no case of a man not reigning, and not being deprived of his kingdom. The bearing of Mencius' philosophy does not seem to me to require the strong-er statement.)
5. Your big dogs and fat swine eat men's food, and you don't know how to impose restrictions. People die from famine along the roadside and you don't know how to issue provisions. They die, and you say: “not my fault, bad season.” What's the difference between this and stabbing a man and say¬ing, "It wasn't me, it was the sword". If your Majesty will desist from blaming the inclemency of the year's weather, all the people of China will gather round you.
Chapter IV
1. King Hwuy of Leans said: Your humble servant (poor me) would like to learn all this quietly.
2. Mencius replied courteously, saying: KILL A MAN WITH A CLUB OH WITH A SWORD - IS THERE ANY DIFFERENCE? (The King said: There is no difference.
3. Do it with a sword or a system of government— is there any difference? (The King) said: There is no difference at all.
4. (Mencius) said: In your Kitchen is fat meat; in your stables are fat horses. Your people have the look of hunger; in the waste places, men lie dead from famines. This is marshalling beasts to eat men (or leaving beasts and devouring men).
5. Wild beasts eat one another, and men (who have arrived at the level of having religious rites) despise them (for it—hate them for doing it). But being father and mother of the people and following a mode of government regimenting the beasts and de-vouring men (might even mean training horses), that is a bad basis for being father and mother of the people.
6. Chung-ne (Confucius) said: The man who initiated the use of wooden dummies (in funeral rites) had (probably) no posterity.
7. (There seems to be various ways of taking this ; might even mean that it looked as if this humane substitution of the dummy for sacrificial victims hadn't yet inculcated kindliness. Legge takes is from commentators in a more complicated way.)
8. He made them (the dummies) and used them in place of men. How about a man who causes his people to hunger and die ?