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and to make them go together in regular order. In front were the evils of the bit and ornamented breastbands, and behind were the terrors of the whip and switch. (When so treated), more than half of them died.
PT. II. SECT. II. THE WRITINGS OF KWANG-3ZE.
The (first) potter said, 'I know well how to deal with clay; and (men proceeded) to mould it into circles as exact as if made by the compass, and into squares as exact as if formed by the measuring square. The (first) carpenter said, 'I know well how to deal with wood; and (men proceeded) to make it bent as if by the application of the hook, and straight as if by the application of the plumb-line. But is it the nature of clay and wood to require the application of the compass and square, of the hook and line? And yet age after age men have praised Po-lâo, saying, 'He knew well how to manage horses,' and also the (first) potter and carpenter, saying, 'They knew well how to deal with clay and wood.' This is just the error committed by the governors of the world.
2. According to my idea, those who know well to govern mankind would not act so. The people had their regular and constant nature 1:-they wove and made themselves clothes; they tilled the ground and got food 2. This was their common faculty. They were all one in this, and did not form themselves into separate classes; so were they constituted and
left to their natural tendencies 3.
Therefore in the
1 Compare the same language in the previous Book, par. 3. 2 But the weaver's or agriculturist's art has no more title to be called primitive than the potter's or carpenter's.
9 A difficult expression; but the translation, probably, gives its
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