The indispensable qualification in the ruler is goodness. “The love of what is good,” declares Mencius, “is more than a sufficient qualification for the government of the empire.”[156] The ruler should be a father to his people, kind and benevolent, should instruct them, should follow the laws of the ancient kings, should be a model for his subjects, should leave a good example to future ages. Much is said by the Master respecting the influence of the example set by the ruler: “When the ruler as a father, a son, a brother, is a model, then the people imitate him.”[157] The relation between superior and inferior is like that between the wind and the grass: “The grass must bend when the wind blows across it.”[158] “Never has there been a case of the sovereign loving benevolence and the people not loving righteousness.”[159] “If good men were to govern a country in succession for a hundred years, they would be able to transform the violently bad and dispense with capital punishment.”[160] But there has never been such a succession of good rulers in China. Respecting the influences and circumstances which have brought about a great discrepancy between the ideal and practice we shall have something to say in the last division of this chapter. [Sidenote: Disesteem of the heroic or martial virtues] The Chinese ideal of goodness and nobility allows no place among its virtues to the qualities of the warrior, which have in general been given such a prominent place in the moral ideals of almost all other peoples throughout all periods of history. Soldiers hold a very low place in the social scale; they are looked upon as a “pariah class,” and their life is regarded as degrading. The Emperor of China, “alone among the great secular rulers of the world, never wears a sword.”[161] This spirit of opposition to militarism is embodied in the teachings of the great moralist Mencius. “The warlike Western world has scarcely known a more vigorous and sweeping protest against warfare and everything connected with it and every principle upon which it is based.”[162] To gain territory by the slaughter of men Mencius declared to be contrary to the principles of benevolence and righteousness.[163] He speaks as follows of the military profession: “There are men who say, I am skillful at marshaling troops. I am skillful in conducting a battle. They are great criminals.”[164] In _Spring and Autumn_, a chronicle of early Chinese history, he declares, “There are no righteous wars,” though he admits that one might be better than another.[165] Confucius also, though he did not lay the stress upon the inherent wickedness of war that was placed upon it by Mencius, maintained that the same rules of morality apply in the relations of nations as in those of individuals, and taught that differences between nations should be settled by arbitration and by considerations of equity and justice, not by brute force. [Sidenote: Principles and inner disposition]