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PT. III. SECT. XI. THE WRITINGS OF KWANG-8ZE. 225
rest, they do not depart from their proper course, and all their life long they do not receive any praise. Hence (Shăn Tâo) said, 'Let me come to be like a creature without knowledge. Of what use are the (teachings of the) sages and worthies?' But a clod of earth never fails in the course (proper for it), and men of spirit and eminence laughed together at him, and said, 'The way of Shăn Tâo does not describe the conduct of living men; that it should be predicable only of the dead is strange indeed!'
It was just the same with Thien Phien. He learned under Phăng Măng, but it was as if he were not taught at all. The master of Phăng Măng said, 'The Tâoist professors of old came no farther than to say that nothing was absolutely right and nothing absolutely wrong.' His spirit was like the breath of an opposing wind; how can it be described in words? But he was always contrary to (the views of) other men, which he would not bring together to view, and he did not escape shaving the corners and bonds (of which I have spoken). What he called the Tâo was not the true Tâo, and what he called the right was really the wrong.
Phăng Măng, Thien Phien, and Shăn Tào did not in fact know the Tâo; but nevertheless they had heard in a general way about it.
5. To take the root (from which things spring) as the essential (part), and the things as its coarse (embodiment); to see deficiency in accumulation; and in the solitude of one's individuality to dwell with the spirit-like and intelligent;-such a course belonged to the Tâo of antiquity, and it was appre
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