Quotation
Last reviewed:
“No man is devoid of a heart sensitive to the suffering of others.”
Mencius · Confucianism · Ancient · 4th century BCE
What does it mean?
The usual reading is that compassion is not a refinement added by education: anyone suddenly seeing a child about to fall into a well would be moved, before thoughts of praise or payment. A competing reading takes the line as a claim that people are kind in practice, which Mencius does not need, because he immediately says the sprout can be starved. It opens 2A.6, the passage on the four beginnings, of which this heart is the beginning of humaneness. The well is a thought experiment about what is already there.
Did Mencius really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. D. C. Lau's Penguin opening of 2A.6. The child-and-the-well story comes next and is the argument for this sentence, not a separate proverb.
Where it comes from
Mencius 2A.6, in D. C. Lau's translation
Approximate date: 4th century BCE.
How to use it
Someone on a bus in Birmingham who puts a hand out when a toddler stumbles has not usually calculated a reward. Mencius would call that movement a sprout, not a completed character. Ignoring it afterwards, until the reaction becomes rare, is the failure he worries about. The sentence is not a compliment you can rest in. It is a starting point you can lose.
A mindset reading
Do not explain away the flinch as nothing, and do not promote it into proof that you are good. The habit is to treat the immediate refusal of harm as evidence of a capacity, then ask what would cultivate or bury it. Cynicism that says the flinch is always secret self-interest is, on his view, a theory brought in too late.
Understand the philosophy
Mencius is answering the claim, associated with other masters, that nature has no built-in direction toward humaneness. The key term is the heart that cannot bear others' suffering, the sprout of ren. The four beginnings are that heart, shame, deference, and a sense of right and wrong. 2A.6 is the text. King Xuan's earlier pity for an ox is the political version of the same idea.
- ethics
- virtue
FAQ
What does it mean?
The usual reading is that compassion is not a refinement added by education: anyone suddenly seeing a child about to fall into a well would be moved, before thoughts of praise or payment. A competing reading takes the line as a claim that people are kind in practice, which Mencius does not need, because he immediately says the sprout can be starved. It opens 2A.6, the passage on the four beginnings, of which this heart is the beginning of humaneness. The well is a thought experiment about what is already there.
Did Mencius really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. D. C. Lau's Penguin opening of 2A.6. The child-and-the-well story comes next and is the argument for this sentence, not a separate proverb.
Which work is it in?
Mencius 2A.6, in D. C. Lau's translation Approximate date: 4th century BCE.