Mozi on war and the rulers of the world
September 16th, 2006To kill one man is to be guilty of a capital crime, to kill ten men is to increase the guilt ten-fold, to kill a hundred men is to increase it a hundred-fold. This the rulers of the earth all recognize and yet when it comes to the greatest crime–waging war on another state–they praise it!
It is clear they do not know it is wrong, for they record such deeds to be handed down to posterity; if they knew they were wrong, why should they wish to record them and have them handed down to posterity?
If a man on seeing a little black were to say it is black, but on seeing a lot of black were to say it is white, it would be clear that such a man could not distinguish black and white. Or if he were to taste a few bitter things and call them bitter, but on tasting a lot were to pronounce them sweet, clearly he would be incapable of distinguishing between sweetness and bitterness. So those who recognize a small crime as such, but do not recognize the wickedness of the greatest crime of all–the waging of war on another state–but actually praise it–cannot distinguish right and wrong. So as to right or wrong, the rulers of the world are in confusion.
–Mozi (c. 470 BCE–c. 390 BCE)
The quotation appears, with some words apparently lost in printing, as the epigraph in Mark Kulansky’s Nonviolence: Twenty-Five Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea. For an alternate translation online, see The Ethical and Political Works of Motse, Book V, Chapter XVII.
