"Those who dream of the banquet wake to lamentation and sorrow. Those who dream of lamentation and sorrow wake to join the hunt. While they dream, they do not know that they dream. Some will even interpret the very dream they are dreaming; and only when they awake do they know it was a dream. By and by comes the Great Awakening, and then we find out that this life is really a great dream. Fools think they are awake now, and flatter themselves they know if they are really princes or peasants. Confucius and you are both mere dreams; and I, who say you are dreams,—I am but a dream myself. "Take no heed," he adds, "of time, nor of right and wrong; but passing into the realm of the Infinite, find your final rest therein." An abstract Infinite, however, soon ceased to satisfy the natural cravings of the great body of Taoist followers. Chuang Tzŭ had already placed the source of human life beyond the limits of our visible universe; and in order to secure a return thither, it was only necessary to refine away the grossness of our material selves according to the doctrine of the Way. It thus came about that the One, in whose obliterating unity all seemingly opposed conditions were to be indistinguishably blended, began to be regarded as a fixed point of dazzling intellectual luminosity, in remote ether, around which circled for ever and ever, in the supremest glory of motion, the souls of those who had successfully passed through the ordeal of life, and who had left the slough of humanity behind them. Let me quote some lines from a great Taoist poet, Ssŭ-k'ung T'u, written to support this view. His poem consists of twenty-four stanzas, each twelve lines in length, and each dealing with some well-known phase of Taoist doctrine. "Expenditure of force leads to outward decay, Spiritual existence means inward fulness. Let us revert to Nothing and enter the Absolute, Hoarding up strength for Energy. Freighted with eternal principles, Athwart the mighty void, Where cloud-masses darken, And the wind blows ceaseless around, Beyond the range of conceptions, Let us gain the Centre, And there hold fast without violence, Fed from an inexhaustible supply." In this, the first, stanza we are warned against taxing, or even using, our physical powers, instead of aiming, as we should, at a purely spiritual existence, by virtue of which we shall ultimately be wafted away to the distant Centre in the Infinite. "Lo, the Immortal, borne by spirituality, His hand grasping a lotus-flower, Away to Time everlasting, Trackless through the regions of Space!" These four lines from stanza v give us a glimpse of the liberated mortal on his upward journey. The lotus-flower, which the poet has placed in his hand, is one of those loans from Buddhism to which I shall recur by and by.