Practically since humans began roaming the Earth, there has been an ongoing debate over whether humans are inherently good or evil. In this article, I will first summarize and analyze three arguments made by philosophers well before our time. In the first discussion, Mencius asserts that humans are fundamentally good. In the discussions that follow, Xunzi and Plato assert that humans are inherently evil. I will conclude this article by asserting that the opinions expressed by Xunzi are the strongest of those examined in this article. Mencius argues that humans are fundamentally good by establishing that each person has within themselves a feeling of sympathy and compassion for others. . Mencius directly states that “no man is devoid of a heart sensitive to the suffering of others” (“Introducing Philosophy,” page 462). He then gives the hypothetical example of a man seeing a child about to fall into a well. Mencius argues that this man “would certainly be moved by compassion” (“Introducing Philosophy,” page 463) and save the child. In this split-second decision, the man saved the child out of sympathy, without thinking of the positive praise from his parents, villagers or friends, or because he did not like the sound of the screams of the child. The man's actions were neither malicious nor selfish, but rather motivated by a sense of concern and consideration ingrained in the human race. Mencius then maintains that each human has four “germs”: benevolence, duty, observance of rites and wisdom. He argues that anyone lacking one of these germs is not human. A person who denies these seeds within himself only cripples his own potential. These seeds can be found in a person's occupation...... middle of paper ...... humans deviate from their original nature of evil to be good. While walking through a department store, it is not uncommon to see young children running away from their parents or making a scene, behavior that is not found among older people. In my personal experience, it's much rarer to see a group of 50-year-olds fighting over a television on "Black Friday" than a group of teenagers. As demonstrated here, people are born evil but learn good manners as they grow up and can realize goodness. In this article, I examined Mencius's argument that humans are fundamentally good and Xunzi's and Plato's arguments that humans are fundamentally evil. Of the arguments discussed in this article, I found the one presented by Mencius to be the strongest. But even if I discovered that humans are inherently evil, the debate will surely rage for centuries..