Human Nature: The Mixture Of Good And Evil

For thousands of years, human nature was always discussed by a lot of philosophers. It can be defined as the characteristics that humans tend to have naturally, including the methods of thinking, feeling and acting. The philosophers had different views on moral aspect of human nature, for example, Mencius thought that human nature is good but Xunzi believed that human nature is evil. In other points of view, YangHsiung believed that human nature is a mixture of good and evil. As human nature is influenced by our surroundings and good and bad behavior have existed on human originally, human nature is both good and bad. This essay will argue that human nature is the mixture of good and evil by providing evidences and examples to explain the presence of good and bad action on human naturally and the effects of environment on human nature.

First, good and evil behavior are existed at the same time on human originally. Mencius had mentioned that the feeling of respect and reverence, right and wrong and dislike and shame are originally with us. This means there are both superior and inferior parts of nature with people naturally as the feeling of respect and reverence and the feeling of right and wrong are considered as good concepts while the feeling of dislike and shame is considered as a bad concept in nowadays. Moreover, as babies are humans with the minimum cultural influence, therefore the behavior of babies can be used to examine the original nature of human. For