Good Confucianism book (pdf) - Department of Physics

Mencius 91ficult to decide about how much is learned and how much may be naturalin a sense of shame. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy argues that during the evolutionof human beings we adapted by developing ways to share food and involveourselves in the care of children who are not our own. This was new anddifferent. It was based, she argues, on the development of powers of engagementand sympathy with others. This is why even before the developmentof language, we know that babies recognize, interpret, and imitate expressionsof people around them. In modern humans it has been shown that thepleasure centers of the brain are stimulated when we help others. 8Whether Mencius is right or wrong on the particulars, his argument isthat, when we are born, we naturally contain within us certain tendenciesthat, if nourished by proper adult role models and by education, can leadus to moral behavior.Mencius ’ definition of human nature is different from the commonunderstanding of human nature. Most thinkers of Mencius ’ time sawhuman nature as made up of emotions and desires. 9 Mencius never arguesagainst this, but says that our human natures also include natural tendenciestoward goodness.The second approach Mencius takes is to argue that we are all, basically,the same. The great sages of the past, and Confucius himself, were notfreaks of nature, but were human beings just like us. There is no differencebetween us and a sage, except that a sage has cultivated the sproutswithin. If sages are capable of cultivating their sprouts, so are we all. And,if sages are great moral examples, it is because they have the sprouts withinthem, and so do we all. Mencius uses the analogy of growing barley, acereal grain.When it comes to growing barley, the seeds are sown and covered in soil.The soil is the same and the time when the seeds are planted is also the same.They grow rapidly, and soon are all ripened. If there are differences from onebarley plant to another, these are because of the differences in the richness ofthe soil, the unevenness of the rain and differences in farming. So, things ofthe same kind are all similar. Why would we think that this did not apply tohuman beings alone? Sages and the rest of us are of the same kind. 10The analogy here is between the barley crop and human beings. Any differencesamong the barley are caused by external circumstances. In the sameway, human beings are the same, just like the barley seeds: any differencesamong us are due to circumstances. Mencius goes on to argue that we havesimilar tastes in recognizing food and music and, while we may prefer somethings over others, we all know what food is and we all know what soundsconstitute music. Why then, he says, should we think that our minds ’ tasteswould be that very different?