we mentioned just now that the book Mo-tse was a collection of works from the Mohist School and was of 53 chapters, in which 6 chapters bacame independent books respectively. They are Jing volume one, Jingshuo volume one Jing volume two, Jingshuo volume two,Daqu and Xiaoqu. These six chapters make up Mohist Cannon. Then why do we pick these six chapters specially among works from the Mohist School and discuss them? That`s why we need to talk about Mohist Cannon because it has its unique value for research. Among all the works from the Mohist School or even among all the literature works created during the pre-Qin period , Mohist Cannon was a masterpiece with great importance and unique value for research. But why? First we need to know Mohist Cannon, or these six chapters were not writen by Mo-tse, were not writen by Mo-tse himself It was writtenin the late period of the Mohist School, in the late of Warring States Period. From its finishing time we can see that Mo-tse is a conclusive book. It is conclusive. As for the Mohist theory, that is the book Mo-tse, because the book was finished in the late period of its time so it is a summing up of thoughts of the Mohist On the other hand, it was finished in the late Contention of A Hundred Schools of Thought Warring state period. so it is also a conclusion about the Contention of A Hundred Schools of Thought in pre-Qin Period. So Mohist Cannon is conclusive it is conclusive This is one of the reasons why it is important The other reason is Mohist Cannon has something in common with the modern science. From the six chapters in Mohist Cannon we can see that the Jing volume one and Jing volume two respectively explained some concepts and propositions in logistics and science. Then Jingshuo volume one is the explaination of Jing volume one, Jingshuo volume two is the explaination of Jing volume two, the writing style of these four chapters are very similar to what belongs to a western philosopher named Wittgenstein. the Jing volume one and Jing volume two are listed with numbers in front of each items then there is explaination in the Jingshuo volume one to each item in Jing volume one and there is explaination in the Jingshuo volume two to each item in Jing volume two. These are the first four chapters the last two chapters were named. As for Daqu and Xiaoqu, these two chapters are made up of paragraphs, not like the first four chapters which made up of items. Daqu is about the logistics and ethics in Mohist Cannon and Xiaoqu is an outline of the logistics in Mohist Cannon. This is a rough structure of the six chapters in Mohist Cannon But the reason why Mohist Cannon is not easy to read is because its language is very concise very concise and explicit This is one reason And the other reason appears to be the Mohism or we can say Mohist Cannon was not known to people for a long time in the history. We can imagine that it was written over 2,000 years ago, and was attached great importance at that time, and there were some people worked on it as well as tried to explain it, but later, because of being of no use in the eyes of the governor, nobody paid attention to it ever Now, according to the record the first person who annotated Mohist Cannon was Lu Sheng in the Jin Dynasty. He was the author of Mo Bian Zhu But it is a pity that Mo Bian Zhu was lost, with only a 300-words preface left Why did the preface of Mo Bian Zhu survived? The reason why it survived is that it was quoted by the book of Jin·biographies, that`s why it was reserved. After the Warring States period, the earliest record of Mohist Cannon`s annotation was made by Lu Sheng, unfortunately it was lost, too. Then until Qing Dynasty, there appeared people who started to study Mohist Cannon so within over 1,000 years there was no one trying to explain Mohist Cannon and no one ever thought highly of it. So there were many charecters lost which required additions or modifications when explaining it. And in the meantime made it difficult for us to read Mohist Cannon. This is a general condition of Mohist Cannon In a word, we can see from our class today that Mohist Cannon is a conclusive masterpiece which concluded some arguments in the whole Contention of A Hundred Schools of Thought period. This is the first point, and the second point is that it is not easy for us to understand. The third point is that it shared in common with modern science it can be regarded as a mini encyclopedia. Well, that`s all for today.
