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THE TEXTS OF TAOISM.
BK. XXX111.
harmony all under heaven. Their beneficent influence reached to all classes of the people. They understood all fundamental principles, and followed them out to their graduated issues; in all the. six directions went their penetration, and in the four quarters all things were open to them. Great and small, fine and coarse ;-all felt their presence and operation. Their intelligence, as seen in all their regulations, was handed down from age to age in their old laws, and much of it was still to be found in the Historians. What of it was in the Shih, the Shù, the Li, and the Yo, might be learned from the scholars of Zâul and La!, and the girdled members of the various courts. The Shih describes what should be the aim of the mind; the Shù, the course of events; the Li is intended to direct the conduct; the Yo, to set forth harmony; the Yi, to show the action of the Yin and Yang; and the Khun Khill, to display names and the duties belonging to them.
Some of the regulations (of these men of old), scattered all under heaven, and established in our Middle states, are (also) occasionally mentioned and described in the writings of the different schools.
There ensued great disorder in the world, and sages and worthies no longer shed their light on it. The Tâo and its characteristics ceased to be regarded as uniform. Many in different places got
1 These scholars were pre-eminently Confucius and Mencius. In this brief phrase is the one recognition, by our author, of the existence and work of Mencius, who was the scholar of Zâu.' But one is not prepared for the comparatively favourable judgment passed on those scholars, and on what we call the Confucian classics. The reading Zâu has not been challenged, and can only be understood of Mencius.
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