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PT. II. SECT.VI.
THE WRITINGS OF KWANG-BZE.
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10. What the world thinks the most valuable exhibition of the Tâo is to be found in books. But books are only a collection of words. Words have what is valuable in them ;—what is valuable in words is the ideas they convey. But those ideas are a sequence of something else ;—and what that something else is cannot be conveyed by words. When the world, because of the value which it attaches to words, commits them to books, that for which it so values them may not deserve to be valued ;-because that which it values is not what is really valuable.
Thus it is that what we look at and can see is (only) the outward form and colour, and what we listen to and can hear is (only) names and sounds. Alas! that men of the world should think that form and colour, name and sound, should be sufficient to give them the real nature of the Tâo. The form and colour, the name and sound, are certainly not sufficient to convey its real nature; and so it is that the wise do not speak and those who do speak are not wise. How should the world know that real nature ?
Duke Hwan', seated above in his hall, was (once) reading a book, and the wheelwright Phien was making a wheel below it 2. Laying aside his hammer and chisel, Phien went up the steps, and said, 'I venture to ask your Grace what words you are reading ?' The duke said, “The words of the sages.' 'Are those sages alive ?' Phien con
No doubt, duke Hwan of Khî, the first of the five presiding chiefs of the Kâu dynasty.
2 See in Mencius I, i, vii, 4 a similar reference to the hall and the courtyard below it.
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