4. Hsün-tze, Realist

The evil nature of man—The necessity of law

There were many weaknesses in Mencius’ philosophy, and his contemporaries exposed them with a fierce delight. Was it true that men were by nature good, and were led to evil only by wicked institutions?—or was human nature itself responsible for the ills of society? Here was an early formulation of a conflict that has raged for some eons between reformers and conservatives. Does education diminish crime, increase virtue, and lead men into Utopia? Are philosophers fit to govern states, or do their theories worse confound the confusion which they seek to cure?

The ablest and most hardheaded of Mencius’ critics was a public official who seems to have died at the age of seventy about the year 235 B.C. As Mencius had believed human nature to be good in all men, so Hsün-tze believed it to be bad in all men; even Shun and Yao were savages at birth.¹⁸⁴ Hsün, in the fragment that remains of him, writes like another Hobbes:

The nature of man is evil; the good which it shows is factitious.* There belongs to it, even at his birth, the love of gain; and as actions are in accordance with this, contentions and robberies grow up, and self-denial and yielding to others are not to be found (by nature); there belong to it envy and dislike, and as actions are in accordance with these, violence and injuries spring up, and self-devotedness and faith are not to be found; there belong to it the desires of the ears and the eyes, leading to the love of sounds and beauty, and as the actions are in accordance with these, lewdness and disorder spring up, and righteousness and propriety, with their various orderly displays, are not to be found. It thus appears that to follow man’s nature and yield obedience to its feelings will assuredly conduct to contentions and robberies, to the violation of the duties belonging to every one’s lot, and the confounding of all distinctions, till the issue will be a state of savagery; and that there must be the influence of teachers and laws, and the guidance of propriety and righteousness, from which will spring self-denial, yielding to others, and an observance of the well-ordered regulations of conduct, till the issue will be a state of good government. . . . The sage kings of antiquity, understanding that the nature of man was thus evil, . . . set up the principles of righteousness and propriety, and framed laws and regulations to straighten and ornament the feelings of that nature and correct them, . . . so that they might all go forth in the way of moral government and in agreement with reason.¹⁸⁵

Hsün-tze concluded, like Turgeniev, that nature is not a temple but a workshop; she provides the raw material, but intelligence must do the rest. By proper training, he thought, these naturally evil men might be transformed even into saints, if that should be desirable.¹⁸⁶ Being also a poet, he put Francis Bacon into doggerel:

You glorify Nature and meditate on her;

Why not domesticate her and regulate her?

You obey Nature and sing her praise;

Why not control her course and use it?

You look upon the seasons with reverence, and await them;

Why not respond to them by seasonly activities?

You depend on things and marvel at them;

Why not unfold your own ability and transform them?¹⁸⁷