Part 10 · 9 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.
Wan Zhang II leans toward questions of recognizing worth, learning, and whether names match realities.
Book-level hubs
孟子 5B.1
Because sainthood is not one temperament. One guards boundaries through purity, one bears the world through responsibility, and one remains himself amid impurity through harmony.
This passage serves searches around Bo Yi, Yi Yin, Liu Xia Hui, moral style, and exemplary figures in Mencius.
孟子 5B.2
Because stable order needs more than moral slogans. It also needs legible ratios: how much land, how much support, and whether lower officials can live without being forced to plough all must be publicly structured.
This passage serves searches around Zhou ranks, salaries, and political order in Mencius, while filling out the site's institutional dimension.
孟子 5B.3
Because once friendship relies on those supports, it slides toward dependence, use, and decoration. Friendship worthy of the name lets virtue, not leverage, command respect.
This passage serves searches around friendship, equality, virtue, and relational ethics in Mencius.
孟子 5B.4
Because courtesy says something about the manner of exchange, not about the moral cleanliness of the thing exchanged. If the goods come from injustice, form cannot purify them.
This passage serves searches around gifts, propriety, justice, and the ethics of receiving benefits in Mencius.
孟子 5B.5
Because ideally office is for carrying the way, not merely for obtaining food. Yet Mencius also acknowledges real material pressure. He allows that entry may be occasioned by poverty, while insisting that poverty must not be allowed to sell away the way.
This passage serves searches around office, poverty, and Mencius on motive. It helps explain how principle and reality meet without simple denial of either.
孟子 5B.6
Because to place oneself under a prince is to tie one's standing beneath his private patronage and lose independence. Temporary relief, by contrast, still belongs to the legitimate care due to the people. Mencius is guarding the difference between receiving proper provision and becoming someone's dependent retainer.
This passage serves searches around independence, patronage, and Mencius on support. It is important for understanding how he balances dignity with material reality.
Why does Mencius praise Bo Yi, Yi Yin, and Liu Xia Hui despite their sharply different styles?
Source opening: Mencius said, 'Bo Yi would not allow his eyes to look on a bad sight, nor his ears to listen to a bad sound.
Why does Mencius spend time detailing Zhou ranks, territories, and emoluments?
Source opening: Bei Gong Qi asked Mencius, saying, 'What was the arrangement of dignities and emoluments determined by the House of Zhou?
Why does Mencius say friendship must not lean on age, rank, or family position?
Source opening: Wan Chang asked Mencius, saying, 'I venture to ask the principles of friendship.
Why does Mencius say that receiving a gift requires asking whether it was obtained justly?
Source opening: Wan Zhang asked Mencius, saying, 'I venture to ask what feeling of the mind is expressed in the presents of friendship?
Why does Mencius say that office is not for poverty, though there are times when it is entered because of poverty?
Source opening: Mencius said, 'Office is not sought on account of poverty, yet there are times when one seeks office on that account.
Why does Mencius say that the scholar does not place himself under the support of a prince, yet may still receive grain from the ruler?
Source opening: Wan Zhang said, 'What is the reason that a scholar does not accept a stated support from a prince?
Why does Mencius say that when commoners are summoned to labor they may go, but when summoned merely to see the prince they should not go?
Source opening: Wan Zhang said, 'I venture to ask what principle of righteousness is involved in a scholar's not going to see the princes?
Why does Mencius say that to befriend the ancients we must also discuss the age in which they lived?
Source opening: Mencius said to Wan Zhang, 'The scholar whose virtue is most distinguished in a village shall make friends of all the virtuous scholars in the village.
Why does Mencius say that a kin minister, when the ruler has a great fault and refuses repeated remonstrance, may even replace him?
Source opening: The king Xuan of Qi asked about the office of high ministers.