It is often affirmed that the teachings of Chinese moralists are defective in that they consist in moral precepts rather than in moral principles, that they lay stress upon the observance of minute rules of conduct rather than upon the inner disposition. There is, however, in the body of ethical teachings of the sages no lack of insistence upon principles of conduct and upon states and dispositions of mind and heart. All must be right within the heart, says Confucius, for “what truly is within will be manifested without.”[166] “Let the prince be benevolent,” says Mencius, “and all his acts will be benevolent; let the prince be righteous and all his acts will be righteous.”[167] Have no depraved thoughts, sums up the contents of the three hundred pieces in the Book of Poetry. “In the ceremony of mourning,” says Confucius again, “it is better that there be deep sorrow than a minute attention to observances.”[168] And it is the same teaching as to what constitutes true morality which we find in such sayings as these: “The doctrine of our Master is to be true to the principles of our nature.”[169] “Man is born for uprightness,”[170] and he should love virtue as he loves beauty,[171] for its own sake. In reciprocity Confucius found that same comprehensive rule of conduct which is rightly regarded as one of the noblest principles of Christian morality. Being asked if there was one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one’s life, the Master said: “Is not reciprocity such a word? What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.”[172] And surely nothing could be farther from mere preceptorial teaching than these words of Mencius: “Let a man not do what his own sense of righteousness tells him not to do;... To act thus is all he has to do.”[173] And in the following utterances the sages of China speak with an accent strangely like that of the Great Prophet of Israel: “The great man is he who does not lose his child heart.”[174] Again, “I like life; I also like righteousness. If I cannot keep the two together, I will let life go and choose righteousness.”[175] Still again: “With coarse rice to eat, with water to drink, and my bended arm for a pillow--I have still joy in the midst of these things.”[176] In the following Mencius shows that he understood the moral use of dark things: “When Heaven is about to confer a great office on any man, it first exercises his mind with suffering and his sinews and bones with toil. It exposes his body to hunger and subjects him to extreme poverty. It confounds his undertakings. By all these methods it stimulates his mind, hardens his nature, and supplies his incompetencies.”[177] And again: “Life springs from sorrow and calamity, and death from ease and pleasure.”[178] “Men who are possessed of intelligent virtue and prudence in affairs will generally be found to have been in sickness and trouble.”[179]