3 pieces from Mozi — each retold in modern English and traced to its source.
Steal a peach and the whole town condemns you. Steal an ox and it is worse. Kill one man and you hang for it. So why, Mozi asks, when a ruler invades a whole country and kills thousands, does everyone call it not a crime but glory? A relentless argument that war is simply the largest theft of all.
A sage can double a state's wealth, Mozi says, and he never takes a foot of his neighbour's land to do it. The whole gain comes from one ruthless test, applied to clothes, to houses, to armies, to funerals, even to music: does this thing add use, or only cost?
A physician cannot cure a sickness without first knowing where it starts. Mozi looks at a world of war, theft, and broken families and finds one cause under all of it: people draw a line between their own and everyone else's. His remedy is plain, and it is the idea his enemies could never forgive.