Quotation
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“Suppose a man were, all of a sudden, to see a young child on the verge of falling into a well. He would certainly be moved to compassion, not because he wanted to get in the good graces of the parents, nor because he wished to win the praise of his fellow villagers or friends, nor yet because he disliked the cry of the child.”
Mencius · Confucianism · Ancient · 4th century BCE
What does it mean?
The mainstream reading is that the sudden alarm you would feel is evidence of a heart that responds before calculation: not for the parents, not for reputation, and not because the cry is unpleasant. A competing reading thinks Mencius has proved that everyone will save the child. He has not. He says you would be moved, and he uses that movement as the sprout of benevolence, which still has to be nurtured or it fails, as the Ox Mountain trees fail. The passage is Mencius 2A.6, the same chapter as the four sprouts. Compassion here is the starting point of ren, not the whole of ethics. The 'not because' clauses are doing the work posters drop.
Did Mencius really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. D. C. Lau's English of the illustration that follows the sentence, already in this library, that no one is devoid of a heart sensitive to the suffering of others. The example is an argument, not a story about a particular child.
Where it comes from
Mencius 2A.6, in D. C. Lau's translation
Approximate date: 4th century BCE.
How to use it
A commuter at Birmingham New Street who flinches when a toddler leans too far over the platform edge has the movement Mencius is pointing at, before any thought of being thanked. The sentence does not make that flinch a moral life. It says the flinch is not nothing, and it is not a performance. What you do with the sprout, including whether you keep walking, is the rest of his argument. Policy still has to be argued. The example is about the heart's first move.
A mindset reading
Do not explain every decent impulse as vanity or advantage until you have tried the sudden case, where there is no time to pose. The habit is also not to treat the impulse as a finished virtue. He thinks the heart can be starved. Feeling the jolt and congratulating yourself is not the extension he asks for, from family to strangers and from one child to a polity.
Understand the philosophy
Mencius is arguing against the claim that human nature has no built-in lean toward goodness. The key terms are the heart of compassion and the sprouts. 2A.6 lists four: compassion, shame, deference, and a sense of right and wrong. The child and the well is the illustration of the first. It is meant to be immediate. If you only feel it when someone is watching, he thinks you have described a different motive, and he has already ruled those motives out.
- ethics
- virtue
- mind
FAQ
What does it mean?
The mainstream reading is that the sudden alarm you would feel is evidence of a heart that responds before calculation: not for the parents, not for reputation, and not because the cry is unpleasant. A competing reading thinks Mencius has proved that everyone will save the child. He has not. He says you would be moved, and he uses that movement as the sprout of benevolence, which still has to be nurtured or it fails, as the Ox Mountain trees fail. The passage is Mencius 2A.6, the same chapter as the four sprouts. Compassion here is the starting point of ren, not the whole of ethics. The 'not because' clauses are doing the work posters drop.
Did Mencius really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. D. C. Lau's English of the illustration that follows the sentence, already in this library, that no one is devoid of a heart sensitive to the suffering of others. The example is an argument, not a story about a particular child.
Which work is it in?
Mencius 2A.6, in D. C. Lau's translation Approximate date: 4th century BCE.