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PT. II. SECT. XII. THE WRITINGS OF KWANG-BZE.
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to the man. 'Is there any method in it?' The hunchback replied, “There is. For five or six months, I practised with two pellets, till they never fell down, and then I only failed with a small fraction of the cicadas (which I tried to catch). Having succeeded in the same way with three (pellets), I missed only one cicada in ten. Having succeeded with five, I caught the cicadas as if I were gathering them. My body is to me no more than the stump of a broken trunk, and my shoulder no more than the branch of a rotten tree. Great as heaven and earth are, and multitudinous as things are, I take no notice of them, but only of the wings of my cicadas; neither turning nor inclining to one side. I would not for them all exchange the wings of my cicadas ;-how should I not succeed in taking them ?' Confucius looked round, and said to his disciples,' " Where the will is not diverted from its object, the spirit is concentrated ;"—this might have been spoken of this hunchback gentleman.
4. Yen Yüan asked Kung-ni, saying, 'When I was crossing the gulf of Khang-shăn?, the ferryman handled the boat like a spirit. I asked him whether such management of a boat could be learned, and he replied, “ It may. Good swimmers can learn it quickly; but as for divers, without having seen a boat, they can manage it at once.” He did not
Bk. II (98). The dexterity of the hunchback in catching the cicadas will remind some readers of the account given by the butcher in Book III of his dexterity in cutting up his oxen.
1 The names of two small weights, used anciently for a fraction,' a small proportion.'
* This is another paragraph common both to our author and Lieh-ze, but in neither is there any intimation of the place.
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