Historian Huang Renyu said in the Biography of Confucius and Mencius: "Mencius prefaced the Book of Songs and stated the meaning of Zhong Ni." Today, Feng Youlan compares Confucius to Socrates and Mencius to Plato. Yes, Mencius is indeed Plato of China, because he also has his own "Utopia": the rulers serve the people in time, manage the people's property, and the people have ample food and clothing, live and work in peace and contentment, have a good education, have a good old age, have a good young age and are happy. As far as our country is concerned, his great thought is realized in two stages:

The first stage: the beginning of kingly way. Mencius believed that the rational development of production and making the people "live and die without regret" was the beginning of implementing benevolent policies and the initial measure of "increasing the number of people". "Don't go against the farming season, the valley can't win food. If you don't count, neither fish nor turtle can be eaten. Axes and pounds enter the mountains in time, and wood and firewood cannot be used. " A set of arrangements, put forward three measures to develop production and the effect after taking these measures. The sentence pattern of "invincible" ... also "gives people an inexhaustible feeling, which greatly increases the persuasiveness and appeal of the article. Then, I summed up the previous parallelism sentence with "five grains of fish and turtles can't eat, and mywood can't eat", and put forward a new conclusion on the premise of this conclusion: "Wang is also the beginning."

The second stage: the achievement of Wang Dao. "... fifty people can wear clothes and silk ... seventy people can eat meat ... how many people in a family can live without hunger. In this paper, three measures to develop production and the effects of these measures are put forward by using parallelism. Compared with the three measures in the first stage, these three measures obviously go a step further and have stronger subjective initiative. "Fifty people" or "seventy people", why do these "white people" have nothing to worry about? Why "don't wear it on the road"? Therefore, on the basis of raising the people, Mencius advocated teaching the people: "I would like to take teaching as the order and apply it in the sense of filial piety." Educate the people and teach them. "If you are not king, you have nothing."

This is the "two-stage" theory that Mencius conceived for us to build an ideal society: the beginning of kingly way and the achievement of kingly way. This is a beautiful hope buried deep in Mencius' heart. Liang Huiwang was about seventy years old when he met him. He had traveled to many countries before, and had many contacts with Huiwang after arriving in Daliang, so this was the most mature period of his thoughts. But the question is, in the record of Mencius, why did Mencius put forward his "two-stage" theory very completely before Liang?

Cao Jiao once asked Mencius, "Can everyone think that Yao and Shun are different?" Mencius said, "Of course." In other words, he believes that "everyone can think of Yao and Shun". In this case, the princes at that time naturally had the possibility of becoming "Yao and Shun". As can be seen from the dialogue in this article, it is possible for Liang, because although Liang said that "I am for my country and I am for my ears" is somewhat exaggerated, although Mencius believed that Liang belonged to "pot calling the kettle black", after all, Liang did a good deed of "migrating to Jiangdong and moving millet to Hanoi". After all, Liang said that "there is no such thing as observing the politics of neighboring countries"

Mencius' "Raiders"

When comparing Confucius and Mencius, Huang Renyu said: "Confucius described in The Analects of Confucius has a relaxed and happy feeling, not as nervous as Mencius." Yes, Mencius gives people a sense of tension, especially when he debates. Looking at Mencius, we are often attracted by the brilliant "Raiders" of debater Mencius. Let's talk about it in combination with "I am in the country".

Introduction 1: Playing hard to get. When Liang was caught in the confusion of "there are not many people in neighboring countries, and there are not many people in our country", although it was a good opportunity for Mencius to publicize his political views, he did not immediately tell the truth about his strategy of governing the country. He guessed that the other party was a monarch, with aloof psychology and considerable self-esteem, and planned to make a small foreshadowing before direct reasoning. He used the metaphor of "pot calling the kettle black" who fled in the war to motivate the other side, making the other side say "Go straight" unconsciously, attracting the other side to take the bait, and explaining to the other side that there is no qualitative difference between the governance method of "immigrating Xiaomi" and the careless governance of neighboring countries. This strategy of playing hard to get eliminated Liang's psychological obstacles and opened the curtain for the following wonderful speech.

Raiders 2: Take metaphor. Mencius was good at reasoning with metaphors, and his words seemed leisurely. For example, Mencius used "pot calling the kettle black" as a metaphor for Liang's so-called "loyalty to the country", which was not much better than neighboring countries. For another example, Mencius insinuated Liang with the metaphor of "stabbing people to death, saying' it's not me, it's a soldier'", and reached the conclusion that "the king is innocent, and the people in the world are more important than themselves", pointing out the correct attitude that the rulers should adopt when implementing "kingly way" and answering Liang's question that "the people are in dire straits". This kind of reasoning is not only vivid and literary, but also enhances the persuasiveness of the point of view.

Raiders 3: Do your best. Mencius was good at cultivating "noble spirit", despised princes and adults, had nothing to hide, and dared to speak openly. This character is often manifested in making every effort to be reasonable and being self-extravagant at critical times. To express in words is to use neat parallelism sentences. For example, in the last paragraph of the article, Mencius used four sets of parallelism sentences in succession when he talked about the principle of "increasing the number of people". The syllables were sonorous, full of momentum, intense feelings and impetuous.