Part 06 · 10 passages
This part page carries the argument map and stable citation routes; full source text, pinyin, and close bilingual reading live on the passage pages.
Teng Wen Gong II focuses on labor, teaching, and the proper limits of social roles.
Book-level hubs
孟子 3B.1
Because once a larger result is allowed to justify the first distortion, the boundary is gone. Today one bends a foot, tomorrow a fathom, so long as it looks advantageous.
This passage serves searches around bending principle for strategy, the relation of ends and means, and why Mencius refuses profit as the standard of adjustment.
孟子 3B.2
Because making others afraid proves influence, not inner steadiness. Mencius measures greatness by whether a person remains aligned with the way under wealth, deprivation, and pressure.
This is one of the most quoted passages in Mencius and serves strong search intent around the great person, integrity, and the famous triad of wealth, poverty, and force.
孟子 3B.3
Because for Mencius office is not an optional extra. It is one of the ordinary places in which the Way must be carried into public life. Losing that place is like a farmer losing the conditions of his work.
This passage serves searches around office, vocation, and why Mencius sees public responsibility as part of a cultivated life.
孟子 3B.4
Because a functioning order does not require everyone to produce the same immediate goods. It requires differentiated work that exchanges functions and fills what others lack. If the scholar's work truly serves the common order, his support is not theft but a justified place in that exchange.
This passage serves searches around scholars and work, division of labor, and Mencius on social legitimacy. It strengthens the site's account of political and educational labor.
孟子 3B.5
Because true kingly rule is not expansion for its own sake. It acts to vindicate the harmed and answer for the voiceless. That changes how political force is interpreted by the wider world.
This passage joins small states, moral legitimacy, and international order in one argument, making it a strong support page for the site's political thought cluster.
孟子 3B.6
Because formation depends not only on what one has heard once, but on what one is continually surrounded by. When the whole environment trains in the opposite direction, a single teacher's effort is likely to be neutralized.
This passage serves searches around environment, formation, organizational culture, and Mencius on why good teaching fails inside a bad surrounding order.
Why does Mencius refuse the idea of bending a little now in order to straighten much later?
Source opening: Chen Dai said to Mencius, 'In not going to wait upon any of the princes, you seem to me to be standing on a small point.
Why does Mencius deny that sheer geopolitical intimidation makes someone a great person?
Source opening: Jing Chun said to Mencius, 'Are not Gong Sun Yan and Zhang Yi really great men?
Why does Mencius say that superior persons of old took office, and that losing office is a cause for grief?
Source opening: Zhou Xiao asked Mencius, saying, 'Did superior men of old time take office?
Why does Mencius reject the charge that the scholar simply eats without working?
Source opening: Peng Geng asked Mencius, saying, 'Is it not an extravagant procedure to go from one prince to another and live upon them, followed by several tens of carriages, and attended by sev…
Why does Mencius think a small state practicing kingly rule is not simply doomed before larger enemies?
Source opening: Wan Zhang asked Mencius, saying, 'Sung is a small State.
Why does Mencius say that if one man from Qi teaches while many men of Chu drown him out, no amount of beating will make the student speak Qi?
Source opening: Mencius said to Dai Bu Sheng, 'I see that you are desiring your king to be virtuous, and will plainly tell you how he may be made so.
Why does Mencius think the superior man should not hurry to see princes?
Source opening: Gong Sun Chou asked Mencius, saying, 'What is the point of righteousness involved in your not going to see the princes?
Why does Mencius answer fiscal gradualism with the story of stealing a neighbor's chickens?
Source opening: Dai Ying Zhi said to Mencius, 'I am not able at present and immediately to do with the levying of a tithe only, and abolishing the duties charged at the passes and in the markets.
Why does Mencius insist that he is not fond of disputing?
Source opening: The disciple Gong Du said to Mencius, 'Master, the people beyond our school all speak of you as being fond of disputing.
Why does Mencius think Chen Zhong's self-denying purity cannot really stand?
Source opening: Kuang Zhang said to Mencius, 'Is not Chen Zhong a man of true self-denying purity?