Mencius's theory of the inherent goodness of human nature is based on the primitive society of genetic coding.

Lee Yu-sheng (September 15, 2021 – October 12, 2021)

The division of human society into genetically encoded natural primordial society and artificial secondary society reveals that, unlike all other civilizations in the world, Chinese civilization began as a primordial society-style superpower, only entering the secondary society stage during the Warring States period. Confucius, living in the late Spring and Autumn period, idealized the aesthetic social order of this primordial society-style superpower, emphasizing the aesthetic of “benevolence is humanity, and humanity is benevolence.” Faced with the artificial secondary society of the Warring States period, littered with corpses, Mencius, representing the Confucian scholars who remained faithful to the primordial society, emphasized the inherent goodness of human nature in this primordial society while developing this inherent goodness into a transcendent life quality of noble character. Even so, Mencius’s arguments that those who do not delight in killing will rule the world and that the benevolent are invincible only apply to primordial society-style superpowers. As for the concepts of the original society and the artificial secondary society based on genetic coding, as well as the natural human and the artificial human, please refer to the previous text ⓵.

I browsed many articles online discussing Mencius’s theory of the inherent goodness of human nature, ranging from encyclopedias to scholarly articles. The sheer volume of these articles is impressive. However, not only did no one mention the issue of the natural human beings in the original society versus the artificial humans in the secondary society, but they also lacked the most fundamental perspective on the nature of natural humans versus artificial humans. Consequently, some scholars, like Mou Zongsan and Roger Ames, interpreted Mencius’s theory of the inherent goodness of human nature from the perspective of Western and modern philosophy. However, they failed to examine Mencius’s words without stepping outside the context of the modern world of artificial humans and artificial societies.

From modern philosophers who study and contemplate through the night to the aesthetic essence of the Analects, which records Confucius’s lifelong sayings in just 15,000 characters, how can the vast difference between these two vastly different perspectives be bridged so that modern readers can understand the distinctions? The author deliberately departs from the style of modern academic papers and strives to restore the emotional resonance of aesthetic stories from the original social language of communication. Just as scientists face difficulties in communicating with three- or five-year-old children, only literary creation can provide a vivid portrayal, rather than the precise language of philosophers: Here, I use my personal experiences and observations to construct a coherent story, which may help modern readers glimpse the beginnings of the Confucian and Mencian ideals of benevolence and righteousness, and is also the way people in the original society communicated.

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Mencius said, “When people suddenly see a child about to fall into a well, they all feel a sense of unease and pity.” (Mencius: Gongsun Chou I) Here, Mencius refers to a child about to fall into a well, not an elderly person suffering from illness. Children are the hope for the continuation of humankind. In the 21st century, giant pandas have become the world’s most beloved animals because, among animals, they most resemble human children in appearance. When we suddenly see a three- or four-year-old child board a bus, people will instinctively turn their gaze and smiles towards the child. Undoubtedly, children are more beautiful and adorable than the elderly.

Today, pet ownership is becoming increasingly popular, and across cultures, the most common pets are various kinds of dogs, as they behave more like human children. I often take walks along the beach at Vancouver’s False Creek, a famous tourist attraction. Besides tourists from afar, many local residents like myself also come for walks. Consequently, many people bring their children for walks, and there are even elderly tourists without children who bring their dogs. Of course, there are also a few people who bring both children and dogs: in these cases, the children play with the dogs and forget about their parents, while only the dogs remember their owners and don’t stray, thus preventing the children from getting lost.

From this perspective, people keep dogs to rediscover the joy of raising children, while the dog is like a child who will never grow up. Once, I saw an elderly woman, nearly sixty years old, holding her beloved dog as if it were a child, with the dog facing forward alongside her. Passersby shook hands with the dog, grasping its front paws. The dog, at least in its eyes, showed welcome and pleasure, indicating that it understood human handshakes. This led to several rounds of applause and cheers from the surrounding crowd.

Regarding human sexuality, a renowned scholar and professor of clinical psychology once said in a lecture: the psychological behavior of teenage boys and girls during their first love is utterly insane, exhibiting typical symptoms of mental illness: they wish they could dedicate every cell of their being to their partner, who seems to be the only remaining beauty in the universe. A married couple, on the other hand, will have sex thousands of times in their lifetime, and only conceive three to five times.

Human first love and sexual intercourse should have their own intrinsic value, not merely for procreation; the human love for children should also have its own value, not just for the next generation: this is the beauty of primal society, the beauty of the natural biological world, and even the beauty of keeping a beloved dog. This is a beauty that transcends any practical value in secondary society; it is the beauty of nature, the beauty of the universe. I later wrote: This is the only remaining form of human love in the commercialized, self-destructive competitive world of modern times.

Five thousand years of human civilization is a history of escalating warfare, culminating in two world wars. Civilized humanity faced not tigers in the wilderness, but humans themselves, whose man-eating abilities were billions of times greater than those of tigers and wolves. Under the pressure of this self-destructive warfare, humanity abandoned its original Taoist ideal of social life, exchanging mental anguish with high rates of mental illness and suicide for the 21st-century modern life where knowledge and wealth double every twenty or thirty years.

Aside from humans, no other animal in the world behaves like this. When animals occasionally fight, they follow a fixed ritual. Haven’t you seen images of two stags or buffalo facing off at sunset? They confront each other, charging only simultaneously when both are ready, stopping when their antlers collide. Then they retreat, and the second round begins. After two or three such clashes, when onlookers can no longer discern the winner, one animal will concede. They embrace victory and defeat with magnanimity, without seeking revenge or resorting to sneak attacks. Their gentlemanly conduct rivals the beauty of the setting sun.

Wars in China’s Spring and Autumn Period followed a similar pattern. The two sides would line up in opposing ranks, like water buffalo facing each other, before the feudal lords, personally leading their troops, would beat drums to signal the start of the battle. Wars typically ended on the same day. Such wars resulted in very limited casualties; the purpose of war at that time was not killing, but rather a way to resolve disputes, much like the water buffalo fights.

When the buffaloes start bases, there’s a period when they lower their heads and thrust their horns forward, eager to pounce. But they know to restrain themselves at all times: don’t charge at the opponent when they’re not ready, as that would be advantageous to themselves but disadvantageous to the opponent, and absolutely unacceptable.

At least one similar war recorded in China’s Spring and Autumn Period occurred during this time, the famous story of Duke Xiang of Song: When the Chu army, stronger than Song, was still in disarray and not yet in formation, and lower-ranking officers suggested attacking prematurely, Duke Xiang resolutely stopped them. Like a water buffalo facing a fortress, Duke Xiang embraced victory and defeat with the same magnanimity, silently accepting the Song army’s defeat and his own fatal arrow wound.

The author once wrote an analysis stating: “If war is a means of resolving disputes, the social costs of resolving the same dispute rise dramatically, from no deaths to the deaths of ten, a hundred, or even ten thousand. Duke Xiang of Song’s glorious image of preferring defeat and death to disrupting the rules of war at the time was undoubtedly a remedy for the moralization and dehumanization of warfare. Because of Duke Xiang’s brilliant example in the Battle of Hongshui, war at that time became more humane and embodying humanitarian principles.” Historians have not studied the extent of the social impact of the Battle of Hongshui under Duke Xiang of Song. Two thousand years later, Chinese scholars have yet to produce concrete figures on how much the death rate in subsequent wars decreased due to the social influence of the Battle of Hongshui, and how many families were spared from destruction. The author firmly believes that such a figure is achievable, and is a scientifically acceptable figure that even an illiterate peasant would understand.

Just as buffalo base battles did not threaten the survival of buffaloes, the buffalo base battles of the Spring and Autumn Period in China did not threaten the original way of life of human society. At that time, the land was vast and the population sparse, and humans could migrate freely and choose among the many vassal states.

For this reason, the Analects records that when Fan Chi asked Confucius about farming, Confucius said unhappily, “If those in power love propriety, the people will not dare to be disrespectful; if those in power love righteousness, the people will not dare to disobey; if those in power love trustworthiness, the people will not dare to be unfaithful. If this is the case, then people from all directions will come carrying their children on their backs. What need is there for farming?” (The Analects, 13:4) This shows that farmers at that time generally had the right to migrate freely and choose their country. Only when most farmers had this ability could they come from all directions with their children after hearing that there was a good government.

This is the structure of a pre-Warring States period primitive society-style superpower. Millions of farmers lived like apes in their innate and inherited primitive society, while ruling figures like Confucius and other feudal lords and ministers lived in a quasi-primitive society similar to the primitive society. In the primitive society, human nature was fully revealed, without social pressure forcing human nature to change in any particular direction.

Canada requires everyone to complete twelve years of high school education, but because I graduated from the eight-year Peking Union Medical College and then pursued a doctoral degree at Cambridge University in the UK, I spent twenty-six years of my life in school classrooms. Those who have received one or two decades of education are merely products of contemporary cultural construction, at least a hundred thousand miles away from the natural state of being. It’s difficult for us to imagine what the natural people of early society were like; we only know that Taoism, which takes the ancient sages as its goal, required people to distance themselves from the world and spend their lives cultivating in temples deep in the mountains.

I grew up in a rural area of Hebei Province in the 1940s and 50s. Rural children often caught birds to feed, the most common being sparrows, which they would then put in cages. The children would, of course, put the sparrow’s favorite food and drink in the cage, and without exception, the sparrow would neither eat nor drink, until it died two or three days later. At first, the sparrow would hop and jump around in the cage for a few minutes, or perhaps struggle, but soon it would lie motionless in the cage, even in the same position and posture, until it died. They showed no struggle or discomfort before dying; they seemed to embody the Taoist concept of the unity of life and death, initiating their internal biological death process under adverse conditions.

If you raise newly hatched sparrows in a cage, they will eat and drink there because it’s more spacious than their burrows. Children in rural Hebei usually raise them to adulthood before releasing them back into the wild. In the 21st-century modern world, people send toddlers who have just learned to walk to nurseries and kindergartens, and then to primary and secondary schools. They not only raise them like sparrows in a caged classroom environment, but also instill in them a set of knowledge about the world and methods and skills for being a good person. The knowledge and corresponding linguistic way of thinking instilled over the past one or two decades is an invisible cage far more solid than a birdcage, from which they have no chance of escaping in their entire lives: we are animals that use language to remember and think.

As mentioned above, sparrows initiating their internal death process under adverse conditions is a natural phenomenon: in unfavorable circumstances, organisms initiate their death process and die silently. This aligns with the Taoist concept of the unity of life and death; they treat life and death according to the same natural laws. In fact, our body’s cells also automatically die when overcrowded to make room for other cells. Cancer cells lose this ability, continuing to grow and ultimately leading to death.

After retiring, I spent many years planting trees and flowers in the gardens around my house, and occasionally growing vegetables. I observed many times that branches of trees that didn’t receive much sunlight would wither and die on their own, and small plants growing in the shade of a large plant would also die on their own. I once planted apricot trees, but only later learned that apricots are cross-pollinated, so I planted a second apricot tree next to the first one two or three years later. The second apricot tree, growing in the shade of the first one, only flowered for two or three years, and then stagnated there, with no possibility of flowering again. I had no choice but to dig it up and plant flowers and grass instead. The first apricot tree, however, quickly grew into a huge tree. Because the wind could blow apricot blossoms from afar, it only produced a dozen or so apricots each year, all of which were at the very top of the tree: this is perhaps the norm for wild apricot trees in nature.

How do mammals, which are closely related to humans, live in nature? Because of the danger of animal extinction caused by human activities and global deforestation, Canada strictly restricts the hunting of animals. London, Canada, where I lived for over twenty years, is nicknamed the “Forest City” because of its unmanaged forests. These forests are lush and verdant: towering giants stand alongside years-old, decaying dead trees, and new saplings sprout from the branches of these dead trees. Add to that the entwined vines and wildflowers, and it feels like a primeval forest. I once came here with the city’s only walking tour group. The leader had to continuously draw symbols on the tree trunks with special colored pens to mark their way back if they got lost. We often had to climb over dead trees and push through vines to move forward, and of course, we also saw wild deer from time to time.

For wild deer, the wild grass in the forest floor is sufficient for their diet. From a modern human perspective, they live in a world where food is plentiful, and the deer population density is probably only one ten-thousandth of the human population density. This forest is three to five kilometers in circumference, and the edge of the forest has open grasslands, which, probably due to the thickness of the soil, are not suitable for tree growth. These deer usually roost in the forest and graze on the open grasslands. These open grasslands are also unmanaged, and the wild grass grows to more than a meter tall every year. After autumn, it withers and falls to the ground, forming a dry grass mat more than half a foot thick. The following spring, new grass shoots need to grow half a foot tall before they can emerge and receive sunlight.

This forest and meadow area is surrounded by human settlements. Canadian residents not only have lawns and gardens in front of and behind their houses, but there are also parks and meadows of varying sizes nearby. These meadows are managed by humans; typically, someone will drive a lawnmower across the park lawns about once a month. This keeps the grass in the parks within human settlements fresh and tender, so in late autumn and early spring, wild deer come to these parks to graze after dusk. The amount they consume is only a fraction of the park’s grass. Because passersby consciously avoid them, and as long as they are three to five meters away, the deer and humans coexist peacefully.

There are also wild deer in the meadow of the park near my home, and further away in the park is a small, wild woodland, about a hundred or two hundred meters in size. Wild deer come here to roost in early spring and late autumn, and forage in the nearby park meadow. I’ve observed this wild woodland many times around midday, and the deer usually lie quietly under one or two recently fallen trees. I’ve seen three most of the time, two less, but never more than one or three: this is probably a natural habit of the wild deer.

In short, wild deer consciously control the density of their herds, a density that is one ten-thousandth the density of the human population. Near my home, I often see wild rabbits and squirrels. They are smaller, so conflict with humans is even less likely, but their population density is also very low, and they are not always seen. In my garden, there is a cherry tree that bears a full load of fresh, delicious cherries every year. Every summer when they ripen, squirrels and birds of similar size come to peck at them. I haven’t seen any small birds like sparrows pecking at them. At most, I’ve observed only three to five birds feeding on the larger cherry tree. Even though there are many more squirrels and wild birds nearby, they seem to consciously avoid competing with their own kind for food. They eat gracefully and quietly, without any sign of wolfing down their food. I have observed the cherry pits they leave on the ground many times, and I don’t recall ever seeing a cherry left half-eaten. They don’t waste natural resources. Every year when I climb the tree to pick cherries, the vast majority of the cherries remain on the tree, with squirrels and wild birds eating only a small portion: they certainly don’t squander natural resources like modern humans do.

In ancient China, there was a saying that food was the most important thing for the people. In my hometown, farmers in the 1950s would still kneel and worship the grain in their granaries with the rites of worshipping gods. It was impossible for farmers who had lived this way to waste food or wolf it down. The birds and beasts I observed clearly felt the same way; they regarded their world and the abundant food as divine, if they even understood the concept of gods. In a world of food that humans perceive as extremely abundant, these birds and beasts began their death cycle to leave a plentiful world for their kind. The result is that the human world is filled with artificial beings, and we remain far removed from our original world—a beautiful world shared by animals—and have lost all understanding of it.

The birds and beasts I observed above are not gregarious animals. The cattle, horses, and sheep we are all familiar with are gregarious animals; they live in herds in nature, but their groups lack a corresponding organizational structure. Humans’ distant ancestors were apes, and ape groups had a corresponding organizational structure and therefore a fixed size, consistent with the size of the ape’s cerebral cortex. Extrapolating from the size of ape groups, early human societies likely consisted of around 150 people. This is the upper limit of the number of social members that the human cerebral cortex can readily remember: 150. The principle of interaction in this early social group was equality and reciprocity; group actions were predicated on collective consent, and there were no moral norms or behavioral rules like in modern society. This equality and reciprocity translates to benevolence and righteousness in Confucian terms and Mencius’s theory of the inherent goodness of human nature.

In ancient times, gibbons inhabited the banks of the Yangtze River. They often sang in unison, a phenomenon aptly described as a grand chorus, frequently depicted by ancient poets, as in the line, “The gibbons’ cries on both banks never cease, yet the light boat has already passed ten thousand mountains.” Anthropologists suggest that apes have a habit of grooming each other, and naked humans used conversation as a substitute for this grooming, a practice imbued with the benevolent spirit of Mencius. This conversation would naturally include gibbon-like choruses, as well as song and dance. In fact, early humans, with limited vocabulary and long pronunciation times for each word, resembled modern singing and recitation. Modern psychological research shows that prolonged speech enhances emotional responses; only modern scientific lectures on language fail to elicit emotional responses from students.

If the equality and reciprocity of early society were the Confucian theories of benevolence, righteousness, and the inherent goodness of human nature, then the conversations, songs, and dances of early human society were the beauty of Daoist emotional expression: the original expression of Zhuangzi’s “Free and Easy Wandering.”

Because both Confucianism and Taoism idealized a primitive society, rural Hebei in the 1950s still lived in a quasi-primitive society. Rural women, lacking access to education, had a habit of gathering and chatting after their husbands finished working in the fields. When I was in elementary school, I learned the word “frequently” in class and told them about it, but they knew nothing about it and had never heard of it before. How did this isolated, simple-speaking group guide their interactions? First, there was the beauty of Taoist emotional expression; their simple conversations were a pure and unadulterated journey through nature. They also possessed an ability to maintain a state of mental clarity that is difficult for modern people to attain; they could sit quietly for long periods. These neighboring women taught me to pay attention to the different accents of people from neighboring villages. Each village within a few miles had its own specific accent, and under their guidance, I could indeed distinguish the different accents of different villages. It was only after I went to middle school and came into contact with countless different villagers that I lost this ability to recognize the accents of different villages. This is a unique ability of rural women who live in isolation from the world, which also makes them lack the ability to accept the ideology of a secondary society unless they are forcibly and continuously indoctrinated like in Christianity.

These women, to provide food and clothing for their families, first had to prepare three meals a day. These neighboring women not only helped each other and shared what they had, but also constantly gave to one another. One of my important tasks in my childhood was helping my mother deliver various vegetables, rice, and grains to the surrounding women. My family was slightly better off than our neighbors, and we often encountered a situation where we gave back more grain than we borrowed. Sometimes the recipients felt we were giving too much and would try to return it. In addition, there were many beggars at that time, all of whom were unfamiliar farmers from neighboring villages; several beggars would often come in succession. Dealing with beggars is a woman’s duty; she never lets a beggar leave empty-handed. Their custom is to give each beggar a large mouthful of dry food, such as cooked flatbread. This prevents them from running out of food when many come to beg. Generally, a day’s worth of begging can feed a beggar for two or three days. The psychology and behavior of these local rural women can be described in one word: benevolence.

This also shows another side of traditional rural life: farmers still have the innate kindness of human beings. They will not let anyone starve to death, nor will they let any of their neighbors eat much worse than themselves, otherwise their hearts will be uneasy.

It is said that in ape and early hunter-gatherer societies, this process occurred where individual members left their own society to join another, allowing the new member time to become acquainted with their new community. This also happened to women in rural Hebei: they were married into neighboring villages by arrangement of their parents, who naturally chose families of similar means. From the moment they married into this new family, they prepared food and clothing for them, then bore and raised children. This has been the way of women in the area for generations: they spent their lives preparing food and clothing for their families, watching them wear the clothes they made and enjoy the meals they prepared. My mother-in-law was born in Zhejiang, came to Shanghai in her youth, and died there in her nineties. She had six children, and when she was nearly ninety years old, her children said in unison in front of her: “You are so old, we would like to express our filial piety here: If you have any things you want, any places you want to go or anything you want to do, please tell us: we will do everything we can to fulfill your wishes.”

My mother-in-law thought quietly for a while and then said, “I really want to prepare a meal myself, fill the table, and let you siblings eat around the table. I won’t eat; instead, I’ll sit beside you and watch you eat the food I’ve prepared.”

It is said that elderly women, detached from worldly society, when reflecting on their lives, consider the most beautiful and memorable years to be the childhood of their children. This maternal love is a combination of Confucius’s benevolence and Mencius’s compassion for the child falling into the well, not the result of long-term Taoist cultivation, but rather the result of the elderly forgetting worldly affairs and returning to the heart of a child: the original meaning of the Chinese proverb “old people are like children.” Mencius didn’t mention the old woman falling into the well, but my two aunts, both over eighty, met and talked, inevitably recalling their innocent childhood when they were sisters, inseparable, and they agreed to commit suicide to lessen the burden on their children and the world. Their hearts are merely at the beginning of benevolence and righteousness. Of course, not a single cell in their bodies understands what Confucius and Mencius meant by benevolence and righteousness, so there’s no need to mention the word “beginning”.

When I was in elementary school, I learned about the Earth’s material cycle in science class. Seawater evaporates to form clouds in the sky, which then leads to rain and snow on land, and the magnificent sight of rivers flowing eastward with their surging waves. The same principle applies to the biological world on Earth: all green plants, such as trees and flowers, absorb carbon dioxide from the air, combine it with water to produce organic matter, and release oxygen in the process of growth. Animals on Earth ingest this organic matter produced by plants, digest it, and release energy for their activities. This process is the opposite of that of plants: consuming oxygen and releasing carbon dioxide.

If we consider the vibrant flora and fauna of Earth’s surface as the beauty of nature, then the aforementioned carbon-oxygen-water cycle is its driving force. If we consider humanity, as a member of Earth’s animal kingdom, as part of this cycle, then it represents the beauty of Taoism. If we see humanity as one of the driving forces of Earth’s cycle, then it represents the Confucian ideal of benevolence and righteousness—a benevolence and righteousness directed not only towards humanity but also towards the natural world. Finally, it must be pointed out that this refers to pre-civilizational humanity. Twenty-first-century humanity is the destroyer of the beauty of Earth’s flora and fauna, the disruptor of Earth’s cycle, leading to increased carbon dioxide levels and climate change. At least from space, we see the disappearance of most green forests and the dazzling lights of human cities and towns on Earth’s surface at night.

One afternoon, I was strolling along the artificial stream and saw a flock of two or three thousand crows flying overhead against the blue sky and white clouds. They formed a long, indistinct flock, flying above me for about ten minutes. During this time, not a single crow fell behind, nor did any move ahead or lag behind, and none strayed from the flock to seek another route. I saw them turn left and right once or twice as a group, then slowly return. Their flight path was not a straight line, but a winding, zigzagging one.

It suddenly occurred to me: even after years of collective training and countless exercises, human soldiers and athletes can never achieve such perfect uniformity. So, what force enables them to fly in such a unified and orderly manner? It can only be the harmony between humans and nature (the crows): they carry the blue sky and white clouds on their backs, overlooking the azure sea, green mountains, and human cities, forming an infinitely beautiful picture of heaven and earth. Their flight is merely a part of this infinite natural beauty, which is why they blend seamlessly with their surroundings, and why each crow becomes a component of this infinite natural beauty.

Later, about a dozen crows flew up from the trees beside me and joined the flock of thousands of crows in the blue sky and white clouds, merging into the flock like rainwater flowing into the sea. The women of my hometown did the same. Back then, women had bound feet and could only move around near their homes. If they married into a neighboring village, they wouldn’t recognize a single face. They, too, blended in naturally, like rainwater flowing into the sea, instantly becoming one with the community. Modern people have long lost this ability.

Mencius’s theory of the inherent goodness of human nature is based on the natural beauty of harmony between humanity and nature in early human society. At that time, individuals were still part of the beauty of nature; they did not have the ability to become independent and free individuals in a secondary society, separate from this natural beauty, nor did they have the ability to destroy nature and increase atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. Only in the context of a superpower-like society like that of early humans could Mencius’s proposition that the benevolent ruler is invincible and can rule the world be realized.

Finally, returning to Mencius’s doctrine of benevolence and righteousness, our distant ancestors, apes, had the habit of grooming each other. Chimpanzees would trim the back fur of their companions that they couldn’t reach, removing lice and other parasites, then killing and eating them in front of their companions. This act of relieving the suffering of their companions is benevolence. Chimpanzees also have a habit of sharing food. If one chimpanzee has food, other chimpanzees will reach out and beg. If the chimpanzee with the food doesn’t like the other chimpanzee because they just fought, it will still give the food, but place it on the ground for the other to pick up, rather than handing it to them as usual. From the other chimpanzee’s perspective, this is more like it picking food in the wild, meaning the giver relinquishes the role of almsgiver. This is the essence of Confucian righteousness.

If chimpanzee benevolence is limited to food sharing, then the rural women of my hometown are capable of helping each other devise ideas when planning for the future. They often say to each other, “If you feel comfortable with something, that’s fine; if you don’t, do something to make it easier on your conscience!” This is what I often hear, and it’s the only life experience they can extract from their daily lives. It’s the original expression of the Confucian concept of benevolence and righteousness in the language of rural women in rural society, and it’s also a synthesis of the benevolence and righteousness of chimpanzees. Among the pre-Qin philosophers, this became the teachings of Confucius, Mencius, Laozi, and Zhuangzi. If tens of thousands of crows flying in unison across a blue sky and white clouds constitute a magnificent natural beauty, then compared to the war-torn regions of the early Middle Eastern civilizations, the unified natural and cultural beauty of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties, who entered the civilized era, flourished across vast blue skies and green lands, lasting for over a thousand years. The teachings of Confucius, Mencius, Laozi, and Zhuangzi are philosophical expressions of this primordial, super-powerful social aesthetic order.

Documents

⓵ Li Yousheng, “Looking at Confucius from a Different Angle”, Suzhou University Press, 2014.

② Fang Chaohui: “How to Understand the Theory of Innate Goodness”, (2018/05/31; http://www.aisixiang.com/data/110243.html).

③ Liu Xiaogan: “The Orientation and Approach of Chinese Philosophy—Taking the Study of Mencius’ Theory of the Goodness of Human Nature as an Example”, (http://www.aisixiang.com/data/120036.html)

(Source: Chinese Social Sciences Evaluation)

④ Li Jinglin, “Looking at Mencius’s Theory of the Goodness of Human Nature from the Three Chapters on Talent”, Journal of Beijing Normal University (Social Sciences Edition), No. 6, 2018 (http://www.aisixiang.com/data/116841.html).

⑤ You-Sheng Li: A Comparison of Confucius with Plato and Aristotle in Political Philosophy, (submitted to and accepted by THE X×VTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE OF PHILOSOPHY, 2016 in Ancient Olympia, Greece).

⑥ Li Yousheng, “An Everlasting Lamp Illuminating Chinese History: In Praise of Song Xiang’s Righteousness,” Community News, Ontario, Canada, January-February 2015.