MENCIUS, who is generally ranked as the greatest of the disciples of Confucius, is in a most important respect greater than his master. Confucius saw that civilization would develop of itself, if men would merely refrain from oppression, each making his own feelings the test of what he ought not to do to others. Mencius went beyond this to search for the efficient cause through which civilization develops when oppression ceases. He found it in the spirit of mutual helpfulness made operative through love. His definitions, as we have them in Doctor Legge’s translation, represent intellect on its highest plane. Plato himself did not reach a higher. Indeed, no higher system of ethics is conceivable by the human intellect than that which would necessarily develop from a genuine attempt to put in practice the principles of the chapters on “Universal Love” by Mencius; but as he says with remarkable insight it is “the most difficult thing in the world” because “the scholars and superior men do not understand the advantageousness of the law, and to conduct their reasonings upon that.” Mencius, whose real name was Meng or Mang (“Meng-tse” the Master Meng) was born, according to some authorities, in 372 B.C., while others place his birth in the year 385. He was an ardent admirer and deep student of Confucius, like whom he went from court to court as a political and ethical reformer, hoping to find a ruler who would attempt to base government on right principles. Like Confucius he failed, but after his death his countrymen erected statues and temples to him and they still honor his spirit as that of one of their tutelary demigods. “The great man,” he said, “is he who does not lose his child heart,”—paralleling in this the Christian Gospels in a most striking way, as he does in making love “the fulfilling of the law” of civilization.