I would not fall into the mistake of undervaluing Mencius.  He was a very great man; and the work he did for China was enormous, and indispensable.  You may call him something between the St. Paul and the Constantine of Confucianism.  Unlike Constantine, he was not a sovereign, to establish the system; but he hobnobbed with sovereigns, and never allowed them to think him their inferior; and it was he who made of Confucianism a system that could be established.  Unlike St. Paul, he did not develop the inner side of his Master’s teachings; but he so popularized them as to ensure their triumph.  He took the ideas of Confucius, such of them as lay within his own statesmanlike and practical scope of vision, restated and formulated them, and made of them what became the Chinese Constitution.  A brave and honest thinker, essentially a man of action in thought, he never consciously deteriorated or took away from Confucius’ doctrine.  It is more as if some great President or Prime Minister, at some future time, should suddenly perceive that H.P.  Blavatsky had brought that which would save his nation; and proceed to apply that saving thing, as best he might, in the field of practical politics and reform—­or rather to restate it in such a way that (according to his view) it might be applied.

He put the constituents parts of society in order of importance as follows:  the People; the Gods; the Sovereign:  and this has been a cardinal principle in Chinese polity.  He saw clearly that the Chow dynasty could never be revived; and arrived at the conclusion that a dynasty was only sacred while it retained the “mandate of heaven.”  Chow had lost that; and therefore it was within the rights of Heaven, as you may say, to place its mandate elsewhere;—­and within the rights of the subject—­as the logic of events so clearly proved Chow had lost the mandate—­to rebel.  Confucius had hoped to revivify Chow—­had begun with that hope, at any rate:  Mencius hoped to raise up some efficient sovereign who should overturn Chow.  The Right of Rebellion, thus taught by him, is another fundamental Chinese principle.  It works this way:  if there was discontent, there was misrule; and it was the fault of the ruler.  If the latter was a local magistrate, or a governor, prefect, or viceroy, you had but to make a demonstration, normally speaking, before his yamen:  this was technically a ‘rebellion’ within Mencius’ meaning; and the offending authority must report it to Pekin, which then commonly replaced him with another. (It would get to Pekin’s ears anyway; so you had better—­and ususally did—­report it yourself.) If the offender was the Son of Heaven, with all his dynasty involved—­ why, then one had to rebel in good earnest; and it was to be supposed that if Heaven had really given one a mandate, one would win.  The effect was that, although nominally absolute, very few emperors have dared or cared to fly quite in the face of Confucius, or Mencius, of their religio-political system, of the Board of Censors whose business it was to criticize the Throne, and of a vast opinion.