Regarding Basic Human Characteristics
and Other Things1
(December 17, 1943)
I
The history of things is infinite, and the relationship between things is infinite.
Their attributes, therefore, are infinite. The usual “complete exposition” of a thing
is, in fact, merely a limited exposition of certain parts and certain fragments.
II
People are basically distinguished by their social nature. People are animals that
make tools, people are animals engaged in social production, and people are
animals engaged in class struggle (during certain historical periods). Briefly,
people are social animals and are not characterized by the presence or absence of
thinking. All animals are characterized by consciousness, and higher animals
have feelings, memory, and even the ability to reason. Although people have a
high level of consciousness, it is not their most basic characteristic.
III
The difference between primitive human beings and monkeys rests solely on the

ability to make tools. Only when humans acquired the ability to make stone
weapons and wooden sticks to use for production did they distinguish themselves
from monkeys and all other animals. It was not because humans had superior
thinking that distinguished them from monkeys. This is the watershed dividing
the materialistic view of history and the idealistic view of history.
IV
Human thinking originated and is developing historically. It was not perfect at
the outset, and it can never be perfect.
V
Humans are a high-level form of material development, but not the ultimate
form. They will continue to develop in the future, and they are not the spirit of
all things. Humans are primarily social animals. The bourgeoisie invariably
stresses human rationality (consciousness); we should not do so.
VI
At the very beginning, humans could not differentiate themselves from the
external world. It was a unified view of the universe. Only as humans became
capable of making more advanced tools and, therefore, had more advanced
production could they gradually distinguish themselves from the natural world
and establish a view of the universe in which they were both opposed to and
united with the natural world. This view of the universe is a historical one, and
the substance of future views of the unity of opposites will also be different from
now.

VII
The special characteristic, feature, or trait of humanity is its social nature—
humans are social animals. Natural traits, animal traits, and other features are not
humanity’s distinguishing characteristics. There is no doubt or question that
humans are animals and not plants or minerals. The question has become one of
what kind of animals humans are, and this is a question that, until Marx, nobody
could correctly answer for tens of thousands of years, not even Ludwig
Feuerbach of the capitalist class. That is, humans have only one basic
characteristic—their social nature. We should not say that they have two basic
characteristics, one being their animal nature and the other being their social
nature. Such a statement is not good because it constitutes dualism, which
actually is idealism.
VIII
Ever since the day when humans separated themselves from monkeys,
everything, including their physique, their intelligence, and their instinct, has
been social. It is not right to consider everything before birth as innate and
everything after birth as acquired. If there is anything innate, then monkeys are
innate and the entire history of humans has been acquired.
Take physique as an example. The contemporary human brain, hands, and
facial features have been transformed over hundreds of thousands of years of
labor, and they have acquired social traits. Human intelligence and instinct are
also completely different from those of animals.
Human facial features, the entire body, intelligence, and capabilities are all
inherited. People often call these things innate so to differentiate them from
social influences after birth, but everything that a person has inherited is social
and is the result of hundreds of thousands of years of social production. We will
lapse into idealism if we are not clear about this point.

IX
Our view of right and wrong holds that the concepts of right, wrong, good, and
evil originated and are developed historically, that historically developed relative
truths and absolute truths are united, and that the different truths of the different
classes vary. Our view of good and evil holds that morality is a reflection of what
people require in their economic and other social lives and that different classes
have different views of morality. To divide human nature into two aspects,
natural and social, and to hold that natural characteristics are without good or
evil is to open a back door to idealism.
X
When exploitative classes still represent the masses, they can express certain
truths, such as Confucius, Socrates, and the capitalist class. Such a view is only a
historical view.
Wang Yangming2 has some truth.
Confucius and Mencius have a portion of truth. To negate all of them is an
ahistorical view.
Notes
Our source for this document is Mao Zedong wenji, Vol. 3, pp. 81–85, where it is reproduced from Mao
Zedong’s handwritten manuscript.
1. This is the main part of Mao Zedong’s comments on a letter written by Liu Shaoqi on June 28, 1943, in
reply to Xu Fanting’s letter regarding issues of human nature, right and wrong, good and bad, and so forth.
Xu Fanting (1893–1947) was a senior general in the Eighth Route Army serving in the Shanxi-Suiyuan
military area. He was also a noted and published poet.
2. Wang Yangming (1472–1529), noted for his philosophical idealism, was a famous Neo-Confucian
philosopher of the Ming dynasty.