• Called on rulers to return to early Zhou principles
• Saw rituals and sacrifices as needed to respect the dead
• Argued basic human quality is capacity to empathize with others
• Noted that people learn most from watching and emulating
• Believed that virtue was powerful and contagious
• Never rose very high in any government and died in 479 BCE
• Mengzhi, known to West as Mencius, expanded on his idealism