Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 16.djvu/16

Rh M E N M E N which we are acquainted ; if we ought not to except the first steps of the Grecian philosophers towards a theory of morals.&quot; Mencius was senior to Zeno, the one of those philosophers to whom Butler has most affinity, and it does not appear that he had left anything for either of them to discover. When he proceeded from his ideal of human nature to account for the phenomena of conduct so different from what they ought to be according to that ideal, he was necessarily less successful. They puzzled him and they made him indignant and angry. There is nothing good,&quot; he said, &quot;that a man cannot do ; he only does not do it.&quot; But why does he not doit? Against the stubborn fact Mencius beats his wings and shatters his weapons, all in vain. He mentions a few ancient worthies who, he conceived, had always been, or who had become, perfectly virtuous. Above them all he extols Confucius, taking no notice of that sage s confession that he had not attained to conformity to his own rule of doing to others as he would have them do to him. No such acknowledgment about himself ever came from Mencius. Therein he was inferior to his predecessor : he had a subtler faculty of thought, and a much more vivid imagination ; but he did not know himself nor his special subject of human nature so well. Our limits will not allow us to go into a detail of his views on other special subjects. A few passages illustrative of his style and general teachings will complete all that can be said of him here. His thoughts, indeed, were seldom condensed like those of &quot; the master&quot; into aphorisms, and should be read in their connexion ; but we have from him many words of wisdom that have been as goads to millions for more than two thousand years. For in stance : &quot;Though a man may be wicked, yet, if he adjust his thoughts, fast, and bathe, he may sacrifice to God. &quot; &quot; When Heaven is about to confer a great office on any man, it first exercises his mind with suffering, and his sinews and bones with toil. It exposes his body to hunger, subjects him to extreme poverty, and confounds his undertakings. In all these ways it stimulates his mind, strengthens his nature, and supplies his in- competencies. &quot; The great man is he who does not lose Ins child-heart. &quot; The sense of shame is to a man of great importance. When one is ashamed of having been without shame, he will afterwards not have occasion for shame.&quot; &quot;To nourish the heart there is nothing better than to keep the desires few. Here is a man whose desires are few ; in some things he may not be able to keep his heart, but they will be few. Here is a man whose desires are many ; in some things he may be able to keep his heart, but they will be few.&quot; &quot; Benevolence is the distinguishing characteristic of man. As embodied in his conduct, it may be called the path of duty.&quot; &quot;There is an ordination for everything ; and a man should receive submissively what may be correctly ascribed thereto. He who has the correct idea of what Heaven s ordination is will not stand beneath a tottering wall. Death sustained in the discharge of one s duties may be correctly ascribed to Heaven. Death under handcuffs and fetters cannot be correctly so ascribed.&quot; &quot;When one by force subdues men, they do not submit to him in heart. When he subdues them by virtue, in their hearts core they are pleased, and sincerely submit.&quot; Two translations of the works of Mencius are within the reach of European readers : that by the late Stanislaus Julien, in Latin, Paris, 1824-29 ; and that forming the second volume of Legge s Chinese Classics, Hong Kong, 1862. The latter has been published at London (1875) without the Chinese text. See also E. Faber, The Mind of Mencius, or Political Economy founded on Moral Philosophy, translated from the German by A. B. Hutchinson (London, 1882). (J. LE.) MENDELSSOHN, FELIX (1 809-1 847). Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, one of the greatest com posers of this century, was the grandson of Moses Men delssohn noticed below, and was born in Hamburg on February 3, 1809. In consequence of the troubles caused by the French occupation of Hamburg, Abraham Mendelssohn, his father, migrated in 1811 to Berlin, where his grandmother, Fromet, then in the twenty-fifth year of her widowhood, received the whole family into her house, No. 7 Neue Promenade. Here the little Felix and his sister Fanny received their first instruction in music from their mother, under whose care they progressed so rapidly that the altogether exceptional character of their talent soon became unmistakably apparent. Their next teacher was Madame Bigot, who, during the temporary residence of the family in Paris in 1816, gave them some valuable instruc tion. On their return to Berlin they took lessons in thoroughbass and composition from Zelter, in pianoforte- playing from Ludwig Berger, and in violin-playing from Henning, the care of their general education being en trusted to the father of the novelist Paul Heyse. Felix first played in public on the 24th of October 1818, taking the pianoforte part in a trio by Woelfl. On April 11, 1819, he entered the Berlin Singakademie as an alto, and in the following year began to compose with extraordinary rapidity. His earliest dated work is a cantata, In riihrend feierlichen Tonen, completed on January 13, 1820. During, that year alone he produced nearly sixty movements, including songs, pianoforte sonatas, a trio for pianoforte, violin, and violoncello, a sonata for violin and pianoforte, pieces for the organ, and even a little dramatic piece in three scenes. In 1821 he wrote five symphonies for stringed instruments, each in three move ments ; motetts for four voices ; an opera, in one act, called Soldatenliebschaj t ; another, called Die beiden Piida- gogen ; part of a third, called Die ivandernde Comodianten ; and an immense quantity of other music of different kinds, some of which, thought worthy of publication by the editors of his posthumous works, now stands before the world in evidence of the precocity of his genius. The original autograph copies of these early productions are now preserved in the Berlin Library, where they form part of a collection which fills forty-four large volumes, all written with infinite neatness, and for the most part carefully dated a sufficient proof that the methodical habits which distinguished his later life were formed in early childhood. In 1821 Mendelssohn paid his first visit to Goethe, with whom he spent sixteen days at Weimar, in company with Zelter. From this year also dates his first acquaintance with Weber, who was then in Berlin superintending the production of Der Freischiitz; and from the summer of 1822 his introduction, at Cassel, to another of the greatest of his contemporaries, Ludwig Spohr. During this year his pen was even more prolific than before, producing, among other works, an opera, in three acts, entitled Die beiden Nefen, oder Der Onkel aus Boston, and a pianoforte concerto, which he played in public at a concert given by Frau Anna Milder. It had long been a custom with the Mendelssohn family to give musical performances on alternate Sunday mornings in their dining-room, with a small orchestra, which Felix always conducted, even when he was not tall enough to be seen without standing upon a stool. For each of these occasions he produced some new work, playing the piano forte pieces himself, or entrusting them to Fanny, while his sister Rebecka sang, and his brother Paul played the violoncello. In this way Die beiden Neffen was first privately performed, on the fifteenth anniversary of his birthday, February 3, 1824. Between the 3d and the 31st of March, in this year, he composed his fine symphony in C minor, now known as Op. 10, and soon afterwards the quartett in B minor, Op. 3, and the (posthumous) piano forte sestett, Op. 110. In this year also began his lifelong friendship with Moscheles, who, when asked to receive him as a pupil, said, &quot; If he wishes to take a hint from me, as to anything new to him, he can easily do so ; but he stands in no need of lessons.&quot; In 1825 Abraham Mendelssohn took Felix to Paris, where among other musicians then resident in the French capital he met the two most popular dramatic composers of the age, Rossini and Meyerbeer, and lived on terms of intimacy with Hummel, Kalkbrenner, Rode, Baillot, Herz, and many other artists of European celebrity. On this occasion, also, he made his first acquaintance with Cherubini, who, though he rarely praised any one, expressed a very high opinion of his talent, and recommended him to write a Kyrie, for five voices, with full orchestral accompaniments, which he himself described as &quot; exceeding