Directory_and_Chronicle_1841 — Page 337

1811.

Biographical Notice of Mencius.

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concise than that of the prince of letters, is equally uoble, more em- bellished, and more elegant. The form of dialogue which he has retained in his philosophic conversations with the great personages of his time, admits of more variety than we can expect to find in the apothegms and the maxims of Confucius. Their philosophy also differs equally in character. Confucius is always grave and even austere; he elevates the good, of whom he draws an ideal portrait, and speaks of the bad only with cold condemnation. Mencius, with the same love of virtue, seems to feel for vice contempt, rather than horror; which he attacks with the force of reason, and of ridicule. His style of argument is like the irony of Socrates. He contests nothing directly with his adversaries; but while he grants their premises, he seeks to draw from them consequences the most absurd, which cover his opponents with confusion.

with confusion. He does not spare the great, nor the princes of his time, who often pretended to consult him only that they might have an opportunity of boasting of themselves, and of ob- taining the praises which they conceived to be their due. Nothing could be more cutting than the answers he made them on these oc- casions; nothing in short more opposed to that character for servility and baseness which a too common prejudice attributes to eastern' nations, and especially to the Chinese. Mencius resembled Aris- tippus in nothing; but rather Diogenes, though with more dignity and decency. At times we are tempted to condemn a vivacity which almost amounts to harshness; but we forgive it, when we find it in- spired only by a zeal for the public good.

The king of Wei, one of those princes whose dissensions and continual wars desolated China at this time, detailed complacently to Mencius the pains he took to make his people happy, and expressed his astonishment that his little kingdom was not more flourishing nor more populous than those of his neighbors. Prince,' said the philo- sopher, 'you love war; permit me to draw a comparison from thence: two armies are in presence; the charge is sounded, the battle begins, one of the parties is conquered; half its soldiers have fled an hundred paces, the other half has stopped at fifty. Will the last have any right to mock at those who have fled further than themselves?'

'No,' said the king, 'they have equally taken flight, and the same disgrace must attend them both.'

'Prince,' says Mencius quickly, 'cease then to boast of your efforts as greater than your neighbors. You have all deserved the same reproach, and not one has a right to take credit to himself over another.' Pursuing then his bitter interrogations, he asked, 'Is

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