“When they (the sprouts of virtue) are rejoiced in, they will grow. Once they begin growing, how can they be stopped? As they cannot be stopped, unconsciously one’s feet begin to dance and one’s hands begin to move.” Mencius, who flourished during the Chinese Warring States period about 2,300 years ago, could well be called the pioneer of Positive Psychology. He lays unprecedented emphasis on human nature and the role of the mind in the quest for happiness. The Book of Mencius provides us with full-length debates on the topic, in which he tries to convince the jaded and skeptical kings of neighboring states that deep within us lie what he calls the “sprouts of virtue.” He uses a wide range of colorful stories and “thought experiments” to illustrate this. Among the most celebrated of these is the story of the “child by the well”, where he argues that the most callous human would feel alarm and pity seeing a child teetering over a precipice, and the tale of “King Hui and the ox” in which the king cannot bear the plaintive cries of an ox being taken to sacrifice. According to Mencius, if people nourish these “sprouts” of identification and sympathy, and extend such feelings to broader social and political relationships, they are filled with a growing sense of irrepressible and intoxicating joy (“the feet begin to dance and the hands begin to move”). This linkage between virtue and happiness provides a thought-provoking contrast with the categorical imperative of Kant, who insisted that we try do good only for its own sake, without consideration for personal benefit, spiritual or otherwise. According to Mencius, the more joy we find in the process, the more motivated we are, and the more we grow as a result. “If we do not experience satisfaction they (the sprouts) will shrivel up.” Mencius was convinced that the mind played a mediating role between the “lesser self” (the physiological self) and the “greater self” (the moral self) and that getting the priorities right between these two would lead to sagehood and personal fulfillment.
Recommended reading:
Ethics in the Confucian Tradition: The Thought of Mengzi and Wang Yangming