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THE TEXTS OF TÂOISM.
BK, XVI.
BOOK XVI.
PART II. Section IX. Shan Hsing, or ‘Correcting the Nature?!
1. Those who would correct their nature by means of the vulgar learning ?, seeking to restore it to its original condition, and those who would regulate 3 their desires, by the vulgar ways of thinking, seeking thereby to carry their intelligence to perfection, must be pronounced to be deluded and ignorant people. The ancients who regulated the Tâo nourished their faculty of knowledge by their placidity, and all through life abstained from employing that faculty in action ;-they must be pronounced to have (thus also) nourished their placidity by their knowledge 4.
When the faculty of knowledge and the placidity
See pp. 147, 148. 2 Vulgar' must mean 'common,' and 'the vulgar learning' is the teaching popular in the time of our author, and which he regarded as contrary to the principles of Taoism, of which he was an adherent. The Chinese critics say that "vulgar' here is used as the opposite of true.'
sy is generally explained by L 'to confuse,' but I cannot construe the sentence with that meaning of the term. In the Khang-hsî dictionary which I have followed, the character is defined by with special reference to this passage.
4 This sentence is the clue to the author's aim in the whole Book. The knowledge' is defined by the faculty of perception and apprehension.'
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