but by actually working to make the state of Qi the best place in China to live. If it is the best place for scholars, scholars will come. If it is the best place for farmers, farmers will come to farm. If it is the best place for people to care for their families, they will go to it in order to care for their families.
Book I.B (Liang Hui Wang II)
The work continues with the promising King Xuan. Mengzi hears that King Xuan deeply enjoys music, and takes this as a sign that good can be done in Qi. But when he talks to King Xuan about it, the king, embarrassed, is forced to admit that he doesn't actually like the kind of traditional music people like Mencius are always talking about -- he likes the new, popular tunes. But Mencius says that this doesn't make much difference: a king who enjoys music is a king who can understand that his delights must be shared with others, because music is a communal thing: the delight of it is not something that is kept to oneself. And that is the key to good kingship: when the king's furthering of himself is at the same time a furthering of the people.
The point is raised again in I.B.2, when King Xuan and Mencius discuss why the people think his private park is too big when other kings have had private parks that people did not think too big -- perhaps even thought too small to be worthy of their king. And Mencius insists that it is because all the rules concerning are rules to keep people out of it, and they are so harsh that the people could hardly avoid seeing it as anything other than an immense trap in the middle of their kingdom.
I.B.10 and I.B.11 are concerned with the war between Qi and Yan, in which Qi is victorious; we learn later in the book that Mencius had only intended to stay a very short time in Qi, but found himself stuck when the war broke out. The rest of the sections are, according to Lau, the likely itinerary of Mencius when he left after the hostilities: that is, he stopped briefly in the states of Zou and Teng on his way to Lu.
to be continued