Chuang Tzŭ (Giles)/Chapter 25

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WHEN Tsê Yang visited the Ch'u State, I Chieh

An official of Ch'u.

spoke of him to the prince; but the latter refused an audience.

Upon I Chieh's return, Tsê Yang went to see Wang Kuo,

A local Sage.

and asked him to obtain an interview with the prince.

"I am not so fitted for that," replied Wang Kuo, "as Kung Yüeh Hsiu."

A hermit.

"What sort of a man is he?" enquired. Tsê Yang.

"In winter," said Wang Kuo, "he catches turtles on the river. In summer, he reposes in some mountain copse. If any passers-by ask of him, he ​tells them, "This is my home." Where I Chieh could not succeed, still less should I. I am not equal even to him.

"He is a man without virtue, but possessed of knowledge. Were it not for an air of arrogance, he would be very popular with his superiors. But help without virtue is a hindrance. Shivering people borrowing clothes in the coming spring! Hot people thinking of last winter's icy blast!

"The prince of Ch'u is dignified and severe. In punishing, he is merciless as a tiger. Only a very practised or a very perfect man could influence him.

"The true Sage, when in obscurity, causes those around him to forget their poverty. When in power, he causes princes to forget ranks and emoluments, and to become as though of low estate. He rejoices exceedingly in all creation. He exults to see Tao diffused among his fellow-men, while suffering no loss himself.

Tao is a constant quantity. It can be shared, but cannot be divided.

"Thus, although silent, he can instil peace; and by his mere presence cause men to be to each other as father and son. From his very return to passivity comes this active influence for good. So widely does he differ in heart from ordinary men. Wherefore I said, 'Wait for Kung Yüeh Hsiu.'

"The true Sage is free from all embarrassments. All things are to him as One. Yet he knows not that this is so. It is simply nature, In the midst ​of action he remains the same. He makes God his guide, and men make him theirs. He grieves that wisdom carries one but a short distance, and at times comes altogether to a deadlock.

"To a beauty, mankind is the mirror in which she sees herself. If no one tells her she is beautiful, she does not know that she is so. But whether she knows it or whether she does not know it, whether she hears it or whether she does not hear it, her joy will never cease, neither will mankind ever cease to take pleasure therein. It is nature.

"The love of a Sage for his fellows likewise finds expression among mankind. Were he not told so, he would not know that he loved his fellows. But whether he knows it or whether he does not know it, whether he hears it or whether he does not hear it, his love for his fellows is without end, and mankind cease not to repose therein.

"The old country, the old home, gladden a wanderer's eyes. Nay, though nine-tenths of it be a howling wilderness, still his eye will be glad. How much more to see sight and hear hearing, from a lofty dais suspended in their very midst!"

The joy of the wanderer is as that of the mind returning to a consciousness only of itself.

Jen Hsiang Shih reached the centre and attained.

The centre at which all Infinities converge. See p. 18. This individual was a legendary ruler of old.

He recognised no beginning, no end, no quantity, no time. Daily modified together with his ​environment, as part of One he knew no modification. Why not rest in this?

To strive to follow God and not to succeed is to display an activity fatal to itself. How can success ever be thus achieved?

The true Sage ignores God. He ignores man. He ignores a beginning. He ignores matter. He moves in harmony with his generation and suffers not. He takes things as they come and is not overwhelmed. How are we to become like him?

T'ang appointed his Equerry, Mên Yin Têng Hêng, to be his tutor, listening to his counsels but not being restricted by them. He got Tao for himself and a reputation for his tutor. But the reputation was a violation of principle, and landed him in the domain of alternatives.

Instead of One. No ingenuity of commentator has here succeeded in making sense.

As a tutor, Confucius pushed care and anxiety to an extreme limit.

Yung Ch'êng Shih

Lao Tzŭ's tutor.

said, "Take away days, and there would be no years. No inside, no outside."

Prince Hui of Wei had made a treaty with prince Wei of Ch'i, which the latter broke.

Thereupon prince Hui was wroth, and was about to send a man to assassinate him. But the Captain-General heard of this, and cried out in shame, ​"Sire, you are ruler over a mighty State, yet you would seek the vengeance of a common man. Give me two hundred thousand warriors, and I will do the work for you. I will take his people prisoners, and carry off their oxen and horses. I will make the heat of the prince's mind break out on his back. Then I will seize his country, and he will flee. Then you can wring his neck as you please."

When Chi Tzŭ heard this, he cried out in shame and said, "If you are building a ten-perch wall, and when the wall is near completion, destroy it, you inflict great hardship on the workmen.

Alluding to the corvée system of public works. The speaker was an official of Wei.

Now for seven years the troops have not been called out. That is, as it were, your Highness' foundation work. Listen not to the Captain-General. He is a mischievous fellow."

When Hua Tzŭ

Also an official of Wei.

heard this, he was very indignant and said, "He who argued in favour of punishing the Ch'i State was a mischievous fellow. And he who argued against punishing the Ch'i State was a mischievous fellow. And he who says that either of the above is a mischievous fellow, is a mischievous fellow himself."

"Where then shall I find what to do?" enquired the prince.

​"In Tao alone," said Hua Tzŭ.

When Hui Tzŭ heard this, he introduced Tai Chin Jen to the prince.

A Sage of the Liang State. For Hui Tzŭ, see p. 8.

"There is a creature called a snail," said Tai Chin Jen. "Does your Highness know what I mean? "

"I do," replied the prince.

"There is a kingdom on its left horn," continued Tai Chin Jen, "ruled over by Aggression, and another on its right horn, ruled over by Violence. These two rulers are constantly fighting for territory. In such cases, corpses lie about by thousands, and one party will pursue the other for fifteen days before returning."

"Whew!" cried the prince. "Surely you are joking."

"Sire," replied Tai Chin Jen, "I beg you to regard it as fact. Does your Highness recognise any limit to space? "

"None," said the prince, "It is boundless."

"When, therefore," continued Tai Chin Jen, "the mind descends from the contemplation of boundless space to the contemplation of a kingdom with fixed boundaries, that kingdom must seem to be of dimensions infinitesimally small?"

"Of course," replied the prince.

"Well then," said Tai Chin Jen, "in a kingdom with fixed boundaries

Meaning the then empire of the Chous. ​there is the Wei State. In the Wei State there is the city of Liang. In the city of Liang there is a prince. In what does that prince differ from Violence?"

In his pettiness.

"There is no difference," said the prince.

Thereupon Tai Chin Jen took his leave, and the prince remained in a state of mental perturbation, as though he had lost something.

When Tai Chin Jen had gone, Hui Tzŭ presented himself, and the prince said, "Our friend is truly a great man. Sages are not his equal."

"If you blow through a tube," replied Hui Tzŭ, "the result will be a note. If you blow through the hole in a sword-hilt, the result will be simply whssh. Yao and Shun have been belauded by mankind; yet compared with Tai Chin Jen they are but whssh."

When Confucius went to Ch'u, he stopped at a restaurant on Mount I. The servant to a man and his wife who lived next door, got up on top of the house.

"Whatever is he doing up there?" asked Tzŭ Lu.

"He is a Sage," replied Confucius," under the garb of a menial. He buries himself among the people.

So as to get into closer relation with them.

He effaces himself at the wayside. Fame, he has ​none; but his perseverance is inexhaustible. Though his mouth speaks, his heart speaks not. He has turned his back upon mankind, not caring to abide amongst them. He has drowned himself on dry land. I think 'tis I Liao of Shih-nan."

See p. 325.

Tzŭ Lu asked to be allowed to go and call him; but Confucius stopped him, saying, "No. He knows that I know what he is. He knows that I have come to Ch'u to recommend him to the prince. And he looks on me as a toady. Under the circumstances, as he would scorn to hear the words of a toady, how much more would he scorn to see him in the flesh! How could you keep him?"

Tzŭ Lu went to see, but the house was empty.

The border-warden of Ch'ang-wu said to Tzŭ Lao,

Ch'in Lao, or Ch'in Chang, a disciple of Confucius.

"A prince in his administrative details must not lack thoroughness; in his executive details he must not be inefficient. Formerly, in my ploughing I lacked thoroughness, and the results also lacked thoroughness. In my weeding I was inefficient, and the results were also inefficient. By and by, I changed my system. I ploughed deep, and weeded carefully, the result being an excellent harvest, more than I could get through in a year."

Chuang Tzŭ, upon hearing this, observed, "The ​men of to-day in their self-regulation and their self-organisation are mostly as the Border-warden has described. They put their Godhead out of sight. They abandon their natural dispositions. They get rid of all feeling. They part with their souls, carried away by the fashion of the hour.

"Those who lack thoroughness in regard to their natural dispositions suffer an evil tribe to take the place thereof.

The physical senses.

These grow up rank as reeds and rushes, at first of apparent value to the body, but afterwards to destroy the natural disposition. Then they break out, at random, like sores and ulcers carrying off pent-up humours."

Poh Chü was studying under Lao Tzŭ. "Let us go," said he, "and wander over the world."

One commentator says Poh Chü was a "criminal," probably from his sympathetic remarks in the context.

"No," replied Lao Tzŭ, "the world is just as you see it here."

But as he again urged it, Lao Tzŭ said, "Where would you go to begin with?"

"I would begin," answered Poh Chü, "by going to the Ch'i State. There I would view the dead bodies of their malefactors. I would push them to make them rise. I would take off my robes and cover them. I would cry to God and bemoan their ​lot, as follows:—'O sirs, O sirs, there was trouble upon earth, and you were the first to fall into it!'

"I would say, 'Perhaps you were robbers, or perhaps murderers?' .... Honour and disgrace were set up, and evil followed. Wealth was accumulated, and contentions began. Now the evil which has been set up and the contentions which have accumulated, endlessly weary man's body and give him no rest. What escape is there from this?

This might almost have come from The Curse of Capital (Aveling) or from one of Mr. Hyndman's discourses.

"The rulers of old set off all success to the credit of their people, attributing all failure to themselves. All that was right went to the credit of their people, all that was wrong they attributed to themselves. Therefore, if any matter fell short of achievement, they turned and blamed themselves.

"Not so the rulers of to-day. They conceal a thing and blame those who cannot see it. They impose dangerous tasks and punish those who dare not undertake them. They inflict heavy burdens and chastise those who cannot bear them. They ordain long marches and slay those who cannot make them.

"And the people, feeling that their powers are inadequate, have recourse to fraud. For when there is so much fraud about,

In the rulers.

​how can the people be otherwise than fraudulent? If their strength is insufficient, they will have recourse to fraud. If their knowledge is insufficient, they will have recourse to deceit. If their means are insufficient, they will steal. And for such robbery and theft, who is really responsible?"

When Chu Poh Yü

See p. 49.

reached his sixtieth year, he changed his opinions. What he had previously regarded as right, he now came to regard as wrong. But who shall say whether the right of to-day may not be as wrong as the wrong of the previous fifty-nine years?

See p. 365.

Things are produced around us, but no one knows the whence. They issue forth, but no one sees the portal. Men one and all value that part of knowledge which is known. They do not know how to avail themselves of the unknown in order to reach knowledge. Is not this misguided?

Men value the phenomena of which the senses make them conscious, but not the phenomena of the senses themselves.

Alas! alas! the impossibility of escaping from this state results in what is known as elective affinity.

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Adaptation to the suitable; being as one is because more adapted to that than to something to which one is not adapted. See ch. ii, where this idea is first broached.

Confucius asked the historiographers Ta T'ao, Poh Chang Ch'ien, and Hsi Wei, saying, "Duke Ling was fond of wine and given up to pleasure, and neglected the administration of his State. He spent his time in hunting, and did not cultivate the goodwill of the other feudal princes. How was it he came to be called Ling?"

The name Ling means "knowing," which may be taken in two senses.

"For those very reasons," replied Ta T'ao.

"The Duke," said Poh Chang Ch'ien, "had three wives. He was having a bath together with them when Shih Ch'iu, summoned by his Highness, entered the apartment. Thereupon the Duke covered himself and the ladies. So outrageously did he behave on the one hand, and yet so respectful was he towards a virtuous man. Hence he was called Ling."

"When the Duke died," said Hsi Wei, "divination showed that it would be inauspicious to bury him in the old family burying-ground, but auspicious to bury him at Sha-ch'iu. And upon digging a grave there, several fathoms deep, a stone coffin was found, which, being cleaned, yielded the following inscription:—Posterity cannot be trusted. Duke Ling will seize this for his tomb.

"As a matter of fact, Duke Ling had been ​named Ling long before. What should these two persons know about it?"

As evidenced by the inscription, the Duke had been so named long before, in the Book of Fate.

Shao Chih asked T'ai Kung Tiao, saying, "What is meant by society?"

The first name signifies Small Knowledge. Of the second personage there is no record.

"Society," replied T'ai Kung Tiao, "is an agreement of a certain number of families and individuals to abide by certain customs. Discordant elements unite to form a harmonious whole. Take away this unity and each has a separate individuality.

"Point at any one of the many parts of a horse, and that is not a horse, although there is the horse before you. It is the combination of all which makes the horse.

"Similarly, a mountain is high because of its individual particles. A river is large because of its individual drops. And he is a just man who regards all parts from the point of view of the whole.

"Thus, in regard to the views of others, he holds his own opinion, but not obstinately. In regard to his own views, while conscious of their truth, he does not despise the opinions of others.

"The four seasons have different characteristics. ​but God shows no preference for either, and therefore we have the year complete.

With results which could not be otherwise achieved.

The functions of the various classes of officials differ; but the sovereign shows no partiality, and therefore the empire is governed. There are the civil and the military; but the truly great man shows no preference for either, and therefore their efficacy is complete. All things are under the operation of varying laws; but Tao shows no partiality and therefore it cannot be identified.

As the given part of anything.

Not being able to be identified, it consequently does nothing. And by doing nothing all things can be done.

"Seasons have their beginnings and their ends. Generations change and change. Good and evil fortune alternate, bringing sorrow here, happiness there.

Nunc mihi, nunc alio, benigna.

He who obstinately views things from his own standpoint only, may be right in one case and wrong in another. Just as in a great jungle all kinds of shrubs are found together; or as on a mountain you see trees and stones indiscriminately mixed,—so is what we call society."

"Would it not do then," asked Shao Chih, "if we were to call this Tao?"

"It would not," replied T'ai Kung Tiao. "All ​creation is made up of more than ten thousand things. We speak of creation as the Ten Thousand Things merely because it is a convenient term by which to express a large number. In point of outward shape the universe is vast. In point of influence the Positive and Negative principles are mighty. Yet Tao folds them all in its embrace. For convenience' sake the bond of society is called great. But how can that which is thus conditioned

By having a name.

be compared with Tao? There is as wide a difference between them as there is between a horse and a dog."

"Whence then," enquired Shao Chih, "comes the vitality of all things between the four points of the compass, between heaven above and earth beneath?"

"The Positive and Negative principles," answered T'ai Kung Tiao, "influence, act upon, and regulate each other. The four seasons alternate with, give birth to, and destroy one another. Hence, loves and hates, and courses rejected and courses adopted. Hence too, the intercourse of the sexes.

"States of peril and safety alternate. Good and evil fortune give birth to one another. Slowness and speed are mutually exclusive. Collection and dispersion are correlates. The actuality of these may be noted.

There is the name and the embodiment.

The essence of each can be verified. There is ​regular movement forward, modified by deflection into a curve. Exhaustion leads to renewal. The end introduces a new beginning. This is the law of material existences. The force of language, the reach of knowledge, cannot pass beyond the bounds of such material existences. The disciple of Tao refrains from prying into the states after or before. Human speculation stops short of this,"

"Chi Chên," said Shao Chih, "taught Chance; Chieh Tzŭ taught Predestination.

"Two Sages." Comm.

In the speculations of these two schools, on which side did right lie?"

"The cock crows," replied T'ai Kung Tiao, "and the dog barks. So much we know. But the wisest of us could not say why one crows and the other barks, nor guess why they crow or bark at all.

"Let me explain. The infinitely small is inappreciable; the infinitely great is immeasurable. Chance and Predestination must refer to the conditioned. Consequently, both are wrong.

"Predestination involves a real existence.

Of a God.

Chance implies an absolute absence of any principle. To have a name and the embodiment thereof,—this is to have a material existence. To have no name and no embodiment,—of this one can speak and think; but the more one speaks the farther off one gets.

​"The unborn creature cannot be kept from life.

So powerful is its "will to live."

The dead cannot be tracked. From birth to death is but a span; yet the secret cannot be known. Chance and Predestination are but à priori solutions.

"When I seek for a beginning, I find only time infinite. When I look forward to an end, I see only time infinite. Infinity of time past and to come implies no beginning and is in accordance with the laws of material existences. Predestination and Chance give us a beginning, but one which is compatible only with the existence of matter.

And not with the time before matter was.

"Tao cannot be existent. If it were existent, it could not be non-existent. The very name of Tao is only adopted for convenience' sake. Predestination and Chance are limited to material existences. How can they bear upon the infinite?

"Were language adequate, it would take but a day to fully set forth Tao. Not being adequate, it takes that time to explain material existences. Tao is something beyond material existences. It cannot be conveyed either by words or by silence. In that state which is neither speech nor silence, its transcendental nature may be apprehended."

"With this essay in China," says Lin Hsi Chung, "what need to fetch Buddhist books from the West?"