Mencius 孟子 · 孟軻 Meng Ke

🔊Later tradition filled the silence about his youth with stories of his mother. She is said to have moved house three times, away from a cemetery and then from a market, until she found a home beside a school, because the boy imitated whatever he saw. When he came home early from his lessons she cut through the cloth on her loom, to show him what it is to abandon work half done. The stories were written down some three centuries after his death and cannot be checked. They made her the model of a parent in East Asia, and they fit a philosopher who taught that character is a matter of what one is given to grow in.

後來的傳統，用他母親的故事填補了關於他少年時代的空白。據說她搬了三次家：先是離開墓地旁，再離開市場旁，直到在學校旁邊找到一個家，因為這個男孩看到什麼就學什麼。他有一次提早從學堂回來，她就把織布機上的布割斷，讓他看看半途而廢是怎麼回事。這些故事是在他死後大約三個世紀才被寫下來的，無從查證。它們使她成為東亞父母的典範；而它們也很適合這樣一位哲學家：他教導，品格取決於一個人被放在什麼樣的環境裡生長。

🔊His book opens with an audience. King Hui of Liang greets him: “Venerable sir, you have not counted a thousand miles too far to come. You must have something that will profit my state?” Mencius replies: “Why must Your Majesty speak of profit? There is humaneness and rightness, and that is all.” If the king asks how to profit his state, his ministers will ask how to profit their houses and the people how to profit themselves, and the state will be torn apart. The exchange sets the tone for everything that follows. He lectured rulers as a tutor lectures a slow pupil. He told one that he did not love his people, another that he was leading beasts to devour men.

他的書以一場晉見開頭。梁惠王迎接他：「叟！不遠千里而來，亦將有以利吾國乎？」孟子回答：「王！何必曰利？亦有仁義而已矣。」如果國君問怎麼利我的國，大夫就會問怎麼利我的家，百姓就會問怎麼利我自己，國家就會被撕裂。這段交談為後面的一切定了調。他訓誡國君，就像家庭教師訓誡一個遲鈍的學生。他告訴一位國君，他並不愛他的人民；告訴另一位，他是在率領野獸吃人。

🔊His political claims were the boldest of the age. “The people are the most important. The altars of soil and grain come next. The ruler is the least.” A king asked him whether it was true that the founder of the Zhou had killed his sovereign, the tyrant Zhou of Shang, and whether a subject may do such a thing. Mencius answered that one who outrages humaneness and rightness is a mere fellow. “I have heard of the punishment of the fellow Zhou. I have not heard of the killing of a ruler.” Eighteen centuries later the first Ming emperor, reading such passages, had Mencius’s tablet removed from the Confucian temple and ordered an edition with eighty-five sections cut out.

他的政治主張是那個時代最大膽的。「民為貴，社稷次之，君為輕。」有位國君問他：周的開國者殺了自己的君主（商的暴君紂），這是真的嗎？臣子可以做這種事嗎？孟子回答：賊仁賊義的人，只是個「一夫」。「聞誅一夫紂矣，未聞弒君也。」十八個世紀之後，明朝的開國皇帝讀到這類段落，下令把孟子的牌位從孔廟撤掉，並且命人編了一個刪去八十五章的本子。

🔊He spent some twenty years at the courts, honored and unheeded, and resigned his post in Qi when the king ignored his advice about a war. A disciple told him that outsiders all called him fond of arguing. “How should I be fond of arguing?” he said. “I have no choice.” The teachings of Yang Zhu, who would not pluck out one hair to benefit the world, and of Mozi, who would love all equally, filled the land, and if no one refuted them the way of Confucius would not be seen. He went home to Zou, and with his student Wan Zhang and others set in order the Odes and Documents and composed the seven books that bear his name.

他在各國的朝廷上度過了大約二十年，受尊敬而不被採納；齊王不理會他對一場戰爭的建議，他就辭去了在齊國的職位。有弟子告訴他，外面的人都說他好辯。他說：「予豈好辯哉？予不得已也。」楊朱（不肯拔一根毛來利天下）與墨翟（主張兼愛）的學說充斥天下；如果沒有人駁斥它們，孔子之道就無法彰顯。他回到了鄒，與學生萬章等人整理《詩》《書》，並且寫成了以他為名的七篇。

🔊For a thousand years the book was one Confucian text among many, and Xunzi was at least as much read. Its rise came in the Song dynasty, when Zhu Xi placed it among the Four Books that every candidate for office had to master. From then until 1905 it was memorized by every educated person in China, and Mencius was known as the Second Sage.

有一千年之久，這本書只是眾多儒家文獻當中的一種；荀子被閱讀的程度至少不亞於他。它的地位上升是在宋代；朱熹把它列入《四書》，成為每一位求取功名的人必須精通的書。從那時起直到 1905 年，中國每一個受過教育的人都背過它，而孟子被稱為「亞聖」。