Threads: Across the Books
Good, Bad, or Leaning Toward Good?
Is a newborn baby a good person or a bad one?
Original
Analects 17.2子曰：「性相近也，習相遠也。」Mencius 6A2人性之善也，猶水之就下也。人無有不善，水無有不下。Xunzi, Nature Is Bad人之性惡，其善者偽也。……故枸木必將待檃栝烝矯然後直。The Mean, ch. 1, 20天命之謂性，率性之謂道，修道之謂教。……誠之者，擇善而固執之者也。In plain words
Confucius said, “By nature people are close to one another; by practice they grow far apart.”
Human nature's goodness is like water's flowing downhill. There is no person who is not good, as there is no water that does not flow down.
Human nature is bad; its goodness is the work of human effort. … So warped wood must wait for the straightening frame, steam and pressure before it is straight.
What Heaven confers is called nature; following nature is called the Way; cultivating the Way is called teaching. … To make oneself sincere is to choose the good and hold fast to it.
Key words
- 性xìngMencius: the direction shown when the heart stirs at another's pain. Xunzi: instinct, food when hungry, warmth when cold.
- 偽wěiXunzi's term: human making, artifice; not hypocrisy.
- 擇善固執zé shàn gù zhíThe Mean: choose the good, then hold on; the human way has to be walked.
Reading it step by step
Three pages have taken us from “why be good?” to Heaven and fate. Heaven says nothing, yet gives people a direction; fate can't be changed, but a mission has to be found. So what in us is able to recognise a mission? That brings us to human nature, one of China's longest arguments.
First: Confucius said only one sentence. “By nature people are close; by practice they grow far apart.” He didn't say nature was good or bad, only that we start out near one another and our habits pull us apart. He said “close,” not “the same.” Human nature is less like a seal already carved and more like a set of capacities and directions, waiting to see which way they grow.
Second: Mencius and Xunzi seem to collide head-on, but they aren't talking about the same nature. Mencius: human nature's goodness is like water flowing downhill. Xunzi: human nature is bad, and goodness is 伪, human making, the way warped wood is steamed and pressed straight. Xunzi's nature is instinct: food when hungry, warmth when cold, grabbing when there's gain. Follow it and you get strife. On this he is right: no one can call a newborn a good person.
Mencius' nature is the jolt in the heart when someone else is suffering. The usual reading is that Mencius taught “nature is good,” and later Song scholars sharpened it into “originally good”: we are born good and only need to recover it. One way to read him, though, is that he meant leaning toward good. Water flowing down is a tendency, not an arrival. The heart has a pull toward the good, and it shows itself when we are sincere.
Xunzi
Analects
Mencius · the Mean · one reading
Song scholars · a common later reading
From bad to good: one word, 性, four answers
Third: the Doctrine of the Mean builds a bridge for this reading. “What Heaven confers is called nature; following nature is called the Way.” But the Mean also says that the human way is to “choose the good and hold fast to it.” If nature were already good, why choose? If it were bad, why follow it? Put the two lines side by side and the reading that fits best is this: nature has a direction toward good, but the good is made real only by choosing it and holding on, day after day. Here our first theme closes its circle: Heaven gives the direction, fate is the road you walk, and nature is what lets you walk it.
Today it might look like this. Two children fight over a toy. Xunzi would say: that's why we teach rules. Mencius would say: watch the winner when the other child starts crying, and see whether a flicker of unease crosses his face. Watch for both. Rules are the frame that straightens the wood; that flicker is water already running downhill.
We are not born good. We are born leaning toward it.
Theme I: Heaven gives the direction, fate the road, nature the strength to walk it.
We are not born good. We are born leaning toward it.
Today's question
Recall the last time something didn't sit right with you. Where was that unease trying to push you?
Quick check
The Mean says “following nature is the Way” and also that the human way is “choose the good and hold fast.” Read together, which fits best?
If already good, why choose? If bad, why follow? So nature has a direction, and the good must be chosen and kept.
I · Heaven and Us — Why be good, what Heaven is, fate and human nature
Notes from the Margin
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