The Mencius.
Where the Analects gives fragments, this argues — for innate goodness, for the four sprouts, and for the proposition that a ruler who ruins the people is no longer a ruler and killing him is not regicide. The first Ming emperor had that passage struck from the official edition, which is the best evidence of how the book reads.
The Mencius differs from the Analects in kind: it contains extended dialogues in which a position is developed, an objection raised and answered, and an analogy pressed — the exchanges with Gaozi about whether nature is like willow wood or like swirling water are sustained philosophical argument. Its content is politically sharper than anything in the Analects. Mencius tells King Xuan that a ruler who ruins the people is a mere fellow, and that killing such a one is not regicide; he says the people are the most important element in a state, the altars of soil and grain next, and the ruler the lightest. Zhu Xi elevated it into the Four Books. The Hongwu emperor, founder of the Ming, took sufficient exception that he had Mencius's tablet temporarily removed from the Confucian temple and commissioned an expurgated edition, the Mengzi jiewen, with some eighty-five passages cut, for use in the examinations. That an emperor felt the need to censor it is the most economical description of the book.
The people are the most important element in a state; the altars of the land and grain come next; the ruler is the lightest.
Mencius 7B14 (rendered)The Ming founder had Mencius temporarily removed from the temple and commissioned an expurgated edition.
The same ground, other faiths
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