MENG-TSEU, whose name has been Latinized into Mencius, the most eminent Chinese philosopher after Confucius, flourished during the first half of the fourth century B.C., and thus belonged to the same epoch with Socrates,
Menin. Plato, and Aristotle. He was born in Tseou, a town in the province of Chan-toung, where his tomb is still shown. He lost his father, Meng-Kho, a short time after his birth, and his early education was left entirely in the hands of his mother, a woman still held in high veneration by the Chinese for the singular care and enlightenment which she displayed in the training of her fatherless boy. Persuaded that a bad example exercised a pernicious influence over the mind of the lad, she repeatedly changed her place of abode to remove him from temptation. She had the good fortune ultimately to settle down in the vicinity of a public school, which at once had the effect of stimulating his desire for knowledge. He became the disciple of Tseu-sse, the worthy descendant and representative of Confucius, under whom he made rapid advancement in the knowledge of the doctrines of that illustrious philosopher. Meng-Tseu soon found himself at the head of a group of ardent disciples, with whom he wandered about, a sort of Chinese Peripatetic, visiting, as the custom was, the different states of the empire at once to learn and to teach. Living in an epoch and in a country in which politics formed an integral part of morals, Meng-Tseu, both from the peculiar turn of his mind, and from his principles, felt disinclined to separate them. Accordingly, in his work, the Meng, which bears his name, he preserves a strict union between those two sciences. His politics appear to have displayed more decision and boldness than those of his master Confucius, for whom he constantly professed the highest admiration. While Meng-Tseu never ceases to inculcate the duty of political obedience, he nevertheless opposes strongly the law of justice to the tyrannous will of power. If he was less solid, he had a keener faculty than Confucius, and he assailed his adversary, whether prince or otherwise, with the most ruthless Socratic pertinacity, pursuing him from premise to conclusion, until he had him entangled in a network of absurdities. In his method and spirit he closely resembles his great Greek contemporary, the terror of the sophists; and there is perhaps no oriental philosopher who presents greater attractions to a European reader. He considered philosophy the great regenerator of the human race; and his work is one of the four classics which form the basis of instruction in all the public and private schools of China. The most eminent of her philosophers have expounded and commented on him, and his works are in the hands of all those who wish to attain to a knowledge of those eternal truths which form the most solid basis of human society. He died about the year 314 B.C. at the age of eighty-four.
Of Meng-Tseu's work, which has been frequently translated into different European languages, there is a Latin version by Stanislaus Julien, entitled Meng-Tseu, vel Mencium inter Sinenses Philosophos ingenio, doctrina, &c., Confucio proximum edidit, &c., 8vo., Paris, 1824-1829. There is also a French version by G. Pauthier in the Livres Sacrés de l'Orient, Paris, 1840; and in the volume of the Bibliothèque Charpentier, entitled Confucius et Mencius, ou les Quatre Livres de Philosophie Morale et Politique de la Chine, Paris, 1841; and there is an English translation of the Four Books, executed by the Rev. Mr. Collic, and published at Malacca in 1828. (See Dictionnaire des Sciences Philosophiques.)