This final Universal Love chapter refutes critics, contrasting biased partiality with impartial universal love. It uses hypothetical rulers, ancient sage records and reciprocal virtue to prove universal love practical, the only path to social peace.
This second chapter on exalting worthies reinforces meritocracy as core governance. Mozi puts forward three empowerment essentials, cites sage kings’ promotion of humble talents and tyrants’ nepotism failures, and takes Heaven’s impartiality as his theoretical basis.
In the chaotic final years of the Eastern Han dynasty, military discipline and public perception were as vital as battlefield prowess. One of the most enduring episodes illustrating this principle is “Cao Cao cuts his hair to substitute for his head”—a dramatic scene from Chapter 17 of Romance of the Three Kingdoms.