General Preface

Of the seven books of the Mengzi, none discusses heart-mind and human nature more incisively than the Gaozi chapters. And within the Gaozi upper chapter, none penetrates more deeply into these matters than the passage on "The Trees of Ox Mountain." This passage employs the mountain's timber as its metaphor, axes and hatchets as its image, cattle and sheep as its analogy, the night air as its evidence, and the hours of daylight as its test. Layer upon layer, link by link, it exhaustively illuminates the principles of the original heart-mind, innate moral knowledge, the sprouts of goodness, their loss and dissipation, their shackling and destruction, and their nurture and preservation. It may rightly be called the master outline of Mengzi's learning of heart-mind and human nature, and the very core of his theory of innate goodness.

Yet from antiquity to the present, though many have read this chapter, few have truly entered its inner sanctum. Why is this so$1 Because the matters it addresses cannot be encompassed by the two words "innate goodness" alone. Within it lie embedded several of the most fundamental questions of pre-Qin philosophy: What, in the end, is human nature$2 What is the relationship between heart-mind and nature$3 Whence comes the root of goodness$4 What gives rise to evil$5 How should the work of self-cultivation be undertaken$6 How is the continuity between the Way of Heaven and the way of humanity possible$7 Each of these was a focal point of debate among the Hundred Schools of pre-Qin thought, and the very foundation upon which the sage-kings of high antiquity governed the realm.

This article proposes to proceed from the perspectives of pre-Qin and high antiquity, taking Mengzi's "Ox Mountain" chapter as its core text, and drawing extensively upon the Book of Documents, the Book of Songs, the Book of Changes, the Analects, the Zuo Commentary, the Discourses of the States, the Record of Rites, the Great Learning, the Doctrine of the Mean, the Xunzi, the Laozi, the Zhuangzi, the Guanzi, the Spring and Autumn Annals of Mr. Lu, and the commentary of the Han scholars Zhao Qi and Dong Zhongshu, among other pre-Qin and Han texts, in order to conduct a comprehensive, penetrating, and meticulous reading and inquiry. Throughout, the article strives to ask "why" at every turn and to seek answers from within the pre-Qin intellectual system itself; it strives to incorporate historical cases and the interpretations of earlier worthies so that the discussion does not lapse into empty abstraction.