This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Mozi rejected the idea, which he associated with fatalistic strands of contemporary thought, that a fixed decree from Heaven determines whether a state prospers or a person succeeds regardless of effort, arguing that belief in unavoidable fate undermines exactly the diligence in work, government, and moral effort that actually produces good outcomes; if failure and success were predetermined regardless of what anyone did, he reasoned, there would be no point in trying to rule well or work hard at all, so fatalism was, on his account, a doctrine that made itself practically ruinous wherever it was believed.
To settle disputes like this one rather than leave them as unresolved assertion against assertion, Mozi proposed three standards, later called the three gauges, for testing any doctrine before accepting it: whether it accords with the recorded deeds of the ancient sage kings, whether it is confirmed by the direct evidence of ordinary people's eyes and ears, and whether, when applied in actual government, it produces benefit for the state and its people. A doctrine failing all three, fatalism among them, he treated as refuted regardless of how eloquently it was argued.
The method mattered as much as any single conclusion it reached: judging philosophical claims by ancient precedent, common observation, and practical benefit gave Mohism a methodology as distinctive as its ethics, one later absorbed and sharpened by the logical work of his followers.