CHAPTER XVI
1. Mencius said, "There is a nobility of Heaven,
We might suppose that the senses are so styled, as being conceived to be subject to the control of the ruling mind. We have below, however, the expression心之官, and 官 is to be taken in both cases, as="prerogative," "business." ChaouK＇e and his glossarist do not take 耳目之官 as the subject of 思 in 不思, but interpret thus: "The senses, if there be not the exercise of thought by the mind, are obscured by external things." But the view of Choo He, as in the translation, is preferable. It is very evident how 心 indicates our whole mental constitution. 物交物,—the first 物 is the external objects, what is heard and seen; the second denotes the senses themselves, which are only things.引之而已,—而已= "as a matter of course." 得之,—之=事物之理, "the mind apprehends the true nature of the objects of sense," and of course can guard againsttheir deluding influence. 其大者,—"his what is great," the nobler part of his constitution, i.e., the mind.—Kung-too might have gone on to inquire,—"All are equally men. Some stand fast in the nobler part of their constitution, and some allow its supremacy to be snatched away by the inferior part. How is this?"and Mencius would have tried to carry the difficulty a stop farther back, and after all have left it where it originally was. His saying that the nature of man is good may be reconciled with the doctrines of evangelical Christianity, but his views of human nature as a whole are open to the three objections stated in the note to the 21st ch. Of the Chung Yung.