The Master said, "There are only the wise of the highest class, and the stupid of the lowest class, who cannot be changed."

2. THE DIFFERENCES IN THE CHARACTERS OF MEN ARE CHIEFLY OWING TO HABIT. 性, it is contended, is here not the moral constitution of man, absolutely considered, but his complex, actual nature, with its elements of the material, the animal, and the intellectual, by association with which, the perfectly good moral nature is continually being led astray. The moral nature is the same in all, and though the material organism and disposition do differ in different individuals, they are, at first, more nearly alike than they subsequently become. In the 注疏, we read:—'The nature is the constitution received by man at birth, and is then still. While it has not been acted on by external things, men are all like one another; they are 近. After it has been acted on by external things, then practice forms, as it were, a second nature. He who practises what is good, becomes the superior man, and he who practises what is not good, becomes the mean man:—men become 相远.'—No doubt, it is true that many—perhaps most—of the differences among men are owing to habit.

3. ONLY TWO CLASSES WHOM PRACTICE CANNOT CHANGE. This is a sequel to the last chapter with which it is incorporated in Ho An's edition. The case of the 下愚 would seem to be inconsistent with the doctrine of the prefect goodness of the moral nature of all men. Modern commentators, to get over the difficulty, say that they are the 自暴者and 自弃者 of Mencius, IV. Pt. I. x.