 Mencius is perhaps best–known for his claim that “[human] nature is good” (xìng shàn). As A.C. Graham (1967) demonstrated in a classic essay, Mencius and his contemporaries regarded the nature of X as the characteristics that X will develop if given a healthy environment for the kind of thing X is. A characteristic, C, can be part of the nature of X even if there exists an X such that X does not have C. For example, language use is part of the nature of a human being, but there are cases of humans who, due to neurological damage or simply failure to be exposed to language prior to the onset of adolescence, fail to develop a capacity for language use. It is even possible for C to be part of the nature of X if most instances of X do not have C. For example, it is the nature of an orange tree to bear fruit, but the majority of orange seeds do not even germinate, much less grow to maturity. Consequently, an important aspect of Mencius’s claim that human nature is good is that humans have a tendency to become good if raised in an environment that is healthy for them. This thesis runs the danger of becoming viciously circular: we might characterize goodness as the result of growing up in a healthy environment, and a healthy environment as one that results in humans being  good.[11]  However, Mencius’s claims about human nature, virtues, ethical cultivation, and political philosophy are nodes in a complex web of beliefs that appeals to our intuitions (e.g., it is normal for humans to show compassion for the suffering of others) as well as empirical claims (e.g., humans are less likely to manifest compassion when subject to physical deprivation). Mencius’s views might be mistaken, but they cannot be casually dismissed as naively circular; rather, they must be evaluated as a complex and subtle account of ethics and philosophical psychology.