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PT. III. SECT. II. THE WRITINGS OF KWANG-3ZE.
III
success as life and on failure as death; and (now) on success as death and on failure as life. The operation of medicines will illustrate this:-there are monk's-bane, the kieh-kăng, the tribulus fruit, and china-root; each of these has the time and case for which it is supremely suitable; and all such plants and their suitabilities cannot be mentioned particularly. Kâu-kien1 took his station on (the hill of) Kwâi-khi with 3,000 men with their buff-coats and shields:-(his minister) Kung knew how the ruined (Yüeh) might still be preserved, but the same man did not know the sad fate in store for himself1. Hence it is said, 'The eye of the owl has its proper fitness; the leg of the crane has its proper limit, and to cut off any of it would distress (the bird).' Hence (also) it is (further) said, 'When the wind passes over it, the volume of the river is diminished, and so it is when the sun passes over it. But let the wind and sun keep a watch together on the river, and it will not begin to feel that they are doing it any injury:-it relies on its springs and flows on.' Thus, water does its part to the ground with undeviating exactness; and so does the shadow to the substance; and one thing to another. Therefore there is danger from the power of vision in the eyes, of hearing in the ears, and of the inordinate thinking of the mind; yea, there is danger from the exercise of every power of which man's constitution is the depository.
1 See the account of the struggle between Kâu-kien of Yüeh and Fu-khâi of Wû in the eightieth and some following chapters of the 'History of the various States of the Eastern Kâu (Lieh Kwo Kîh).' We have sympathy with Kâu-kien, till his ingratitude to his two great ministers, one of whom was Wăn Kung (the Kung of the text), shows the baseness of his character.
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