Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: / ‘ CHAPTER II. MENCIUS AND HIS OPINIONS. SECTION I. LIFE OF MENCIUS. 1. The materials for a Memoir of Mencius are very scanty. The birth and principal incidents of Confucius’ life are Paucity and duly chronicled in the various annotated editions uncertainty of f Yi rvi ‘ m ’- j o m l Tj materials. ot the Oh un is ow, and in bze-ma Is'een. It is not so in the case of Mencius. Ts'een’s account of him is contained in half a dozen columns which are without a single date. That in the
Cyclopaedia of Surnames
only covers half a page. Chaou K'e is more particular in regard to the early years of his subject, but he is equally indefinite. Our chief informants are K'ung Foo, and Lew Heang in his
Record of Note-worthy Women, but what we find in them has more the character of legend than history. It is not till we come to the pages of Mencius himself that we are treading on any certain ground. They give the principal incidents of his public life, extending over about twenty-four years. We learn from them that in the course of that time he was in such and such places, and gave expression to such and such opinions; but where he went first and where he went last, it is next to impossible to determine. I have carefully examined three attempts, made by competent scholars of the present dynasty, to construct a Harmony that shall reconcile the statements of the
Seven Books
with the current chronologies of the time, and do not see my way to adopt entirely the conclusions of any one of them.1 The value of the Books lies in the recordwhich they furnish of Mencius’ sentiments, and the lessons which these supply for the regulation of individual conduct and national policy. It is of little importance that we should be able to lay them down in the strict order …