Mencius. Book VI: Kâo Tsze. Part I. Chapter XI.
Legge's summary: How men having lost the proper qualities of their nature should seek to recover them.
1. Mencius said, 'Benevolence is man's mind, and righteousness is man's path.
2. 'How lamentable is it to neglect the path and not pursue it, to lose this mind and not know to seek it again!
3. 'When men's fowls and dogs are lost, they know to seek for them again, but they lose their mind, and do not know to seek for it.
4. 'The great end of learning is nothing else but to seek for the lost mind.'
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Translated by
James Legge, published in 1861 and revised for publication in 1895. Prepared as etext by Stephen R. McIntyre. Noded by
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