在晚清流亡日本时期，梁启超在多数时间内对于中国国民是否具备立宪国家国民所应具备的智识和道德能力，都抱有怀疑。梁对“人民程度” 问题的看法，先后经历了亡日前期、中期和后期三个阶段的发展。在后一个阶段，即从光绪三十三年至辛亥革命爆发，梁一方面积极主张迅速召开国会实现君主立宪，一方面则对“人民程度” 问题，拥有了一种更为现代、复杂和辩证的认识，尤其是对各种宪法制度本身对“人民程度” 问题能予以一定程度的消解或规避的认识。梁启超对“人民程度”问题的思索历程，体现出儒家传统中高度精英主义的思想倾向，以及该传统之一元论和唯智论的思维方式，在遭遇政治现代性时，所呈现出的复杂命运。

 During his exile in Japan in the late Qing period，Liang Qichao was frequently skeptical of the Chinese people’s intellectual and moral capacities with respect to constructing a constitutional state. Liang’s views on the issue of“the quality of the people”had gone through a developmental process containing three stages:the earlier，the middle，and the later stages of his exile. In the aforementioned last stage，namely，from 1907 to 1911，Liang，on the one hand，advocated the opening of the national parliament as soon as possible，in order to achieve the goal of constitutional monarchy，and，on the other hand，developed a more modern，complex，and dialectical thought with respect to the issue of“the quality of the people.”In particular，he realized that various constitutional institutions themselves could，to some extent，resolve or circumvent the problem of“the quality of the people.”The intellectual history of Liang’s consideration on the issue of“the quality of the people”revealed the complicated fate of highly elitist thinking and the monistic and intellectualistic mode in the Confucian tradition at the time of the encounter between this tradition and political modernity.