SELECTION FROM MENCIUS.

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FROM THE CHINESE CLASSICS.

ENCIUS, or Mang-tsze, was born in the principality of Tsow, China, about 371 B. C. He lived to the age of eighty-four, His father died when he was quite young, and little is known about him; but his mother is famous in China, and is held up to the present time as having been all that a mother should be. Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Epicurus, should be. Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Epicurus, Demosthenes, and other great men of the West, were his contemporaries; and when we place Mencius among them, he can look them in the face he does not need to hide a diminished head. He was, and still is, held

in high esteem by the people of China. The rulers frequently sent for him to listen to his words of advice.

In the kingdom of ten thousand chariots the murderer of his sovereign shall be the chief of a family of a thousand chariots; in a kingdom of a thousand chariots the murderer of his prince shall be the chief of a family of a hundred chariots. To have a thousand in ten thousand and a hundred in a thousand cannot be said not to be a large allotment; but if righteousness be put last and profit be put first, they will not be satisfied without snatching all. There never has been a man trained to benevolence who neglected his parents. There never has been a man trained to righteousness who made his sovereign an after-consideration. Let Your

Majesty also say, 'Benevolence and righteousness, and these shall be the only themes.' Why must you use that word 'profit '?"

Translation of JAMES LEGGE, D. D.

KING HWUY OF LEANG.

Mencius went to see King Hwuy of Leang. The king said,

"Venerable sir, since you have not counted. it far to come here-a distance of a thousand

le-may I presume that you are likewise provided with counsels to profit my kingdom?" Mencius replied,

"Why must Your Majesty use that word 'profit'? What I am likewise' provided with are counsels to benevolence and righteousness, and these are my only topics. If Your Majesty say, 'What is to be done to profit my kingdom?' the great officers will say, 'What is to be done to profit our families?' and the inferior officers and the common people will say, 'What is to be done to profit our persons?' Superiors and inferiors will try to snatch this profit the one from the other, and the kingdom will be endangered.

LL our senses are to be brought to a conformity. By nature we are patient if our mind cease to corrupt them, which is daily to be drawn into an account. This did Sextius, who, when the day was spent and he retired himself to rest, was wont to examine his mind after this manner: What infirmity in thee hast thou healed this day? What vice hast thou resisted? In what part art thou bettered? Anger will cease and become more moderate if she knows that every day she must appear before a judge. What, therefore, is more laudable than this custom, to examine our daily actions? What sleep followeth after this scrutiny! how quiet, pleasing and free is it when the mind is either praised or admonished, and, being a watchman and secret censor of himself, examineth his defects! I use this I use this power and daily plead before myself when the candle is taken from me; and my wife holdeth her tongue, being privy to my custom. I examine the whole day that is past and ruminate upon actions and words. I hide nothing from myself, I let slip nothing. For why should I fear any of mine errors, whenas I may say, See thou do this no more; for this time I pardon thee. In that dispute thou spakest more rashly;

see that hereafter thou contend not with such as are ignorant; they will never learn that never learned. Thou hast more freely admonished such a one than thou oughtest, and therefore thou hast not amended him, but offended him. In regard of the rest, see not only whether it were true which thou spakest, but whether he to whom it was spoken can endure to hear truth.

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A good man rejoiceth when he is admonished; a wicked man cannot brook a reprover. At a banquet some men's bitter jests and intemperate words have touched thee to the quick; remember to avoid the vulgar company: after wine men's words are too lavish, and they that are most sober in their discourses are scarce modThou sawest thy friends displeased with the porter of a councillor's chamber or some rich man because he would not suffer him to enter, and thou thyself, being angry for this cause, growest in choler with the scullion. Wilt thou therefore be angry with a chained dog, who when he hath barked much will be satisfied with a piece of bread? Get farther off him and laugh. He that keepeth his master's door and seeth the threshold besieged by a troop of soliciters thinketh himself no small bug, and he that is the client thinketh himself happy in his own opinion, and believeth that so hard an access into the chamber is an evident testimony that the master of the same is a

tune.

man of great quality and a favorite of forBut he remembereth not himself that the entry of a prison is as difficult likewise. Presume with thyself that thou art to endure much. If a man be cold in winter, if he vomit at sea, if he be shaken in a coach, shall he marvel hereat? The mind is strong and may endure all that whereunto he is prepared. If thou hast been seated in a place scarce answerable to thine honor, thou hast been angry with him that stood next thee, or with him that invited thee, or with him that was preferred before thee. Fool as thou art, what matter is it in what place thou art set at the table? A cushion cannot make thee more or less honest. Thou wert displeased to see such a one, because he spake evil of thy behavior. By this reckoning, then, Ennius, in whose poetry thou art no ways delighted, should hate thee, and Hortensius should denounce war against thee, and Cicero, if thou shouldest mock his verses, should be at odds with thee. When thou suest for an office, dost thou not peaceably entertain those that give their voices to the election, although they nominate not thyself?

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Some man hath disgraced thee; what more than Diogenes the Stoic was, who, discoursing one day very effectually upon the subject anger, was scornfully spat upon by a froward young man? This injury entertained he both mildly and wisely. "Truly," saith he, "I am not angry, yet doubt I whether I ought to be angry." But our friend Cato demeaned himself better, whom, as as he pleaded a cause, Lentulus, that factious and seditious fellow in the time of our forefathers, similarly insulted. For in wiping his face he said no other thing but this:

"Truly, Lentulus, I will now maintain it against all men that they are deceived. who say thou hast no mouth."

Now, my Novatus, we are already instructed how to govern our minds, either to feel not wrath or be superiors over it. Let us now see how we may temper other men's ire; for not only desire we to be healthful ourselves, but to heal others. We dare not attempt to moderate and pacify the first anger by persuasion, for she is deaf and mad; we will give her some time: remedies are best in the declination of fevers. Neither will we attempt her when she is inflamed and in fury, for fear lest in striving to quench we enkindle the same. The like will we do in respect of other passions: repose healeth the beginning of sicknesses. How much, sayest thou, doth thy remedy profit if it pacify Anger when of herself she beginneth to be pleased? First, it is the cause that it ceaseth the sooner; then will it keep her lest she fall again. It shall remove all instruments of revenge; it shall feign displeasure to the end that, as a helper and companion in her sorrow, it may have more authority to counsel her; it shall coin delays, and while she seeketh greater punishments defer the present. It shall by all means give rest and remission to fury; if she be more vehement, it shall induce either shame or fear in her, against which she shall not be able to resist; if she be weak, it shall invent discourses either grateful or new, and wind her away with a desire of knowledge. It is reported of a physician, when he had a king's daughter in cure and could not perform the same without the means of a lancet, that whilst he gently handled her pap that was greatly swollen he conveyed his

lancet into a sponge, and so opened it. The maiden had repined should he have ministered the remedy openly, and she, because she suspected it not, suffered the pain.

To check him that is angry and to oppose thyself against him is to cast oil on the fire. Thou shalt attempt him divers ways and after a friendly manner, except, haply, it be so great a person that thou mayest diminish his wrath as Augustus Cæsar did when he supped with Vedius Pollio. One of the servants had broken a crystal glass, whom Vedius commanded to be carried away and to be punished by no ordinary death; for he commanded him to be thrown amongst his lampreys, which were kept in a great fishpond. The boy escaped out of their hands and fled to Cæsar's feet, desiring nothing else but that he might die otherwise and not be made meat for fishes. Cæsar was moved with the novelty of the cruelty, and commanded him to be carried away, yet gave orders that all the crystal vessels should be broken in his presence, and that the fishpond should be filled up. So thought Cæsar good to chastise his friend, and well did he use his power. Commandest thou me to be dragged from the banquet and to be tortured by new kinds of punishment? If thy cup be broken, shall men's bowels be rent in pieces? Wilt thou please thyself so much as to command any man to death where Cæsar is present?

Let us give repose unto our minds, which we shall do if we dilate continually upon the precepts of wisdom and the acts of virtue, and likewise whilst our thoughts desire nothing but that which is honest. Let us satisfy our conscience; let us do nothing for vainglory's sake; let thy fortune be evil, so thine

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actions be good. But, sayest thou, the world admireth those that attempt mighty matters, and audacious men are reported honorable, and peaceable are esteemed sluggards. may be, upon the first sight, but as soon as a well-governed life showeth that it proceedeth not from the weakness, but the moderation, of the mind, the people regard and reverence it. So, then, this cruel and bloody passion is not profitable in any sort, but contrariwise all evils, fire and blood, feed her; she treadeth all modesty under foot, embrueth her hands with infinite murthers; she it is that teareth children in sunder and scattereth their limbs here and there. She hath left no place void of heinous villanies, neither respecting glory nor fearing infamy, incurable when of wrath she is hardened and converted into hatred.

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Let us abstain wholly from this vice; let us purge our mind and pull up those passions that are rooted in it, whose holdfast, be it never so little, will spring again wheresoever it is fastened; and let us not only moderate our anger, but wholly root it out and drive it from us. We may, if so be we will endeavor; neither will anything profit us more than the thought of mortality. Let every unto himself as if it were unto another, What helpeth it us, as if we were born to live ever, to proclaim our hatred and misspend so short a life? What profiteth it us to transfer those days which we might spend in honest pleasure in plotting another man's misery and torment? These things of so short continuance should not be hazarded, neither have we any leisure to lose time. Why rush we forward to fight? why beget we quarrels against ourselves? why, being forgetful of our weakness, embrace we