Abstract: “Inner sageness”and“outer kingship”deduce a general logic of the Confucian political theory and practice: the former being the latter’s presupposition and the latter the former’s logic consequence.Compared with the views of human nature of Kant and the Western Christians，the Confucian view of human nature is both lofty and optimistic.The Confucian view，however，lacks the insight into and the vigilance against the dark side of human nature；it advocates the cultivation of the inner sageness and rarely keeps watching the outer institutional powers. This leads to the prevalence of rule of man and rule of virtue conceptions in China’s traditional political practice and the dystocia of the spirit of modern democracy and rule of law. Because of the causal logic connection of the“inner sageness”and the“outer kingship”，the Neo-Confucianist theory of“new outer kingship”deducted from“old inner sageness”is debatable.

Key words: the confucian theory of human nature, inner sageness, outer kingship, human nature, modernity