Date of Award

4-1965

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Political Science

Abstract

Chinese civilization has strongly influenced Asia since its establishment roughly about .four thousand years ago. The influences have penetrated tho Asiatic countries through the ages and all the traces could be found in history. There is a saying that East is East and West is West. In the so-called East or oriental civilization, the Chinese part of contribution occupies its backbone.

Western civilization usually could be defined with the combination or three parts namely 'democracy', 'sciences' and 'Christianity'. The first two parts can be further traced to the pre-Platonic period in Greece; ·while tho third part was, of course, the Hebrew's great contribution.

Political scientists in China today still argue the question do we or do 'We not have the so-called Western democracy in the teachings of our ancient great sages? Peoples in the West hemisphere still puzzle about why it makes so big a difference between the East and West? The value or this paper, if there is any, may serve the purpose to answer a part of the above-mentioned two questions.

The material for this paper is chiefly bssed upon the Seven Books of Mencius which was translated by Mr. James Legge in Shanghai, 1930. Other Chinese materials which were used in this paper have been translated by the writer; and those materials as the names of the authors, titles of the books have been fully quoted in the text. Moreover, the English translation and their original Chinese terms have been alphabetically arranged in tho appendix II. In the footnotes, the 'Writings of Mencius are referred to as Books.

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