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PT. I. SECT. II. THE WRITINGS OF KWANG-3ZE.
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affirming?' 'How should I know it?' was the reply. 'Do you know what it is that you do not know?' asked the other again, and he got the same reply. He asked a third time,' Then are all creatures thus without knowledge?' and Wang Î answered as before, (adding however), 'Notwithstanding, I will try and explain my meaning. How do you know that when
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say "I know it," I really (am showing that) I do not know it, and that when I say "I do not know it," I really am showing that I do know it.' And let me ask you some questions :-'If a man sleep in a damp place, he will have a pain in his loins, and half his body will be as if it were dead; but will it be so with an eel? If he be living in a tree, he will be frightened and all in a tremble; but will it be so with a monkey? And does any one of the three know his right place? Men eat animals that have been fed on grain and grass; deer feed on the thickset grass; centipedes enjoy small snakes; owls and crows delight in mice; but does any one of the four know the right taste? The dog-headed monkey finds its mate in the female gibbon; the elk and the axis deer cohabit; and the eel enjoys itself with other fishes. Mâo 3hiang2 and Li Ki2 were accounted by men to be most beautiful, but when fishes saw them, they dived deep in the water from them; when birds, they flew from them aloft; and
1 Compare par. 1 of Book XXII.
2 Two famous beauties;- the former, a contemporary of Hsî Shih (par. 4, note 2), and like her also, of the state of Yüeh; the latter, the daughter of a barbarian chief among the Western Jung. She was captured by duke Hsien of 3in, in B. c. 672. He subsequently made her his wife,-to the great injury of his family and state.
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