Four sprouts

Twenty-three centuries ago a Chinese philosopher named Mencius, the most important follower of Confucius, made an argument about human nature that's still the most hopeful one I know. He said people are born good, and he proved it with a story.

Imagine, he said, anyone at all seeing a small child about to fall into a well. Before thought, before calculation, before any idea of reward or reputation, they'd feel alarm and reach for the child. That reaching is compassion, and it's in everyone. He called it a sprout. There are four: compassion, which grows into benevolence; shame, which grows into righteousness; courtesy, which grows into propriety; and the sense of right and wrong, which grows into wisdom. Everyone has all four. The difference between people isn't the seeds. It's the cultivation.

That's the key, and it's about what you believe you're working with. If you think you're fundamentally selfish and have to force yourself to be good, every kind act is a struggle against your nature. If Mencius is right, every kind act is your nature finally getting water. Same act. Completely different experience of it.

He was also honest about how sprouts die. Neglect. A field left alone grows nothing but weeds, and a person who never tends the four will find them withered, not because they were never there but because nothing was done. His picture of cultivation was a farmer: you can't pull on the plants to make them grow, and you can't leave them either. You water, and you wait.

Ninety-five days in, you've been watering. Mencius would say the sprouts were always there.