TENTATIVE STUDY FOR THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MENCIUS AND WANG AN-SHI'S YIJIE

Wang An-shi appreciated Mencius so much in his early work Yijie and one can find many of his ideas came from Mencius . Especially, his arguments about Convenience, Time, Talentand Soul are direct inheritence and development of Mencius's thoughts. Indeed, Wang An-shi's these arguments in Yijie act in accordance with his political proposal for reforms and function as a theoretical foundation for his later reforms. In the study of The Book of Change , Wang An-shi' s employment of Mencius's ideas to interpret The Book of Change is a new development, which has actually exerted an influence on such later scholars as Cheng Yi who applied and illustrated the theory of Li-Xue (the Learning of the Principle) in his interpretation of The Book of Change.