saying, "The perfect man can walk through solid bodies without obstruction. He can pass through fire without being burnt. He can scale the highest heights without fear. How does he bring himself to this?" "It is because he is in a condition of absolute purity," replied Kuan Yin. "It is not cunning which enables him to dare such feats. Be seated, and I will tell you. "All that has form, sound, and colour, may be classed under the head _thing_. Man differs so much from the rest, and stands at the head of all things, simply because the latter are but what they appear and nothing more. But man can attain to formlessness and vanquish death. And with that which is in possession of the eternal, how can mere things compare? "Man may rest in the eternal fitness; he may abide in the everlasting; and roam from the beginning to the end of all creation. He may bring his nature to a condition of ONE; he may nourish his strength; he may harmonize his virtue, and so put himself into partnership with God. Then, when his divinity is thus assured, and his spirit closed in on all sides, how can anything find a passage within? He is beyond the reach of objective existences. "A drunken man who falls out of a cart, though he may suffer, does not die. His bones are the same as other people's; but he meets his accident in a different way. His spirit is in a condition of security. He is not conscious of riding in the cart; neither is he conscious of falling out of it. Ideas of life, death, fear, etc., cannot penetrate his breast; and so he does not suffer from contact with objective existences. And if such security is to be got from wine, how much more is it to be got from God. It is in God that the Sage seeks his refuge, and so he is free from harm. "An avenger does not snap in twain the murderous weapon; neither does the most spiteful man carry his resentment to a tile which may have hit him on the head. And by the extension of this principle, the empire would be at peace; no more confusion of war, no more punishment of death. "Do not develop your artificial intelligence, but develop that intelligence which is from God. From the latter, results virtue; from the former, cunning. And those who do not shrink from the natural, nor wallow in the artificial,--they are near to perfection." * * * * * When Confucius was on his way to the Ch'u State, he came to a forest where he saw a hunchback catching cicadas as though with his hand. It is still the delight of the Chinese _gamin_ to capture the noisy "scissor-grinder" with the aid of a long bamboo tipped with bird-lime. "How clever you are!" cried Confucius. "Have you any _way_ of doing this?" "Way," _i.e._ road, is the primary meaning of TAO. "I have a way," replied the hunchback. "In the fifth and sixth moons I practise balancing two balls one on top of the other. At the top of his pole.