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PT. II. SECT. V. THE WRITINGS OF KWANG-BZE.
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is, might seem to indicate stupidity or darkness, but it is what we call the 'mysterious quality' (existing at the beginning); it is the same as the Grand Submission (to the Natural Course).
9. The Master 1 asked Lâo Tan, saying, 'Some men regulate the Tâo (as by a law), which they have only to follow ;-(a thing, they say,) is admissible or it is inadmissible; it is so, or it is not so. (They are like) the sophists who say that they can distinguish what is hard and what is white as clearly as if the objects were houses suspended in the sky. Can such men be said to be sages ? ?' The reply was, "They are like the busy underlings of a court, who toil their bodies and distress their minds with their various artifices ;-dogs, (employed) to their sorrow to catch the yak, or monkeys 3 that are brought from their forests (for their tricksiness). Khiû, I tell you this ;—it is what you cannot hear, and what you cannot speak of:-Of those who have their heads and feet, and yet have neither minds nor ears, there are multitudes; while of those who have their bodies, and at the same time preserve that which has no bodily form or shape, there are really none. It is not in their movements or stoppages, their dying or living, their falling and rising again, that this is to be found. The regulation of the course lies in their dealing with the human element in them. When they have forgotten external things,
1 This Master' is without doubt Confucius.
? The meaning and point of Confucius's question are not clear. Did he mean to object to Lâo-zze that all his disquisitions about the Tâo as the one thing to be studied and followed were unnecessary?
s Compare in Bk. VII, par. 4.
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