"Why go so low down?" asked Tung Kuo Tzŭ. "It is in a tare," said Chuang Tzŭ. "Still lower," objected Tung Kuo Tzŭ. "It is in a potsherd," said Chuang Tzŭ. "Worse still!" cried Tung Kuo Tzŭ. "It is in ordure," said Chuang Tzŭ. And Tung Kuo Tzŭ made no reply. "Sir," continued Chuang Tzŭ, "your question does not touch the essential. When Huo, inspector of markets, asked the managing director about the fatness of pigs, the test was always made in parts least likely to be fat. Do not therefore insist in any particular direction; for there is nothing which escapes. Such is perfect TAO; and such also is ideal speech. _Whole_, _entire_, _all_, are three words which sound differently but mean the same. Their purport is ONE. "Try to reach with me the palace of Nowhere, and there, amidst the identity of all things, carry your discussions into the infinite. Try to practise with me inaction, wherein you may rest motionless, without care, and be happy. For thus my mind becomes an abstraction. It wanders not, and yet is not conscious of being at rest. It goes and comes and is not conscious of stoppages. Backwards and forwards without being conscious of any goal. Up and down the realms of Infinity, wherein even the greatest intellect would fail to find an end. "That which makes things the things they are, is not limited to such things. The limits of things are their own limits in so far as they are things. The limits of the limitless, the limitlessness of the limited,--these are called fulness and emptiness, renovation and decay. TAO causes fulness and emptiness, but it is not either. It causes renovation and decay, but it is not either. It causes beginning and end, but it is not either. It causes accumulation and dispersion, but it is not either." * * * * * O Ho Kan was studying with Shên Nung under Lao Lung Chi. No record of the first and last. Shên Nung was a legendary emperor who invented agriculture. See p. 196. Shên Nung used to remain shut up, with his head on the table, absorbed in day-dreams. On one occasion, O Ho Kan knocked at the door, and entering said, "Lao Lung is dead!" Thereupon Shên Nung, leaning on his staff, arose; and flinging down his staff with a bang, smiled and said, "O my Master, thou knewest me to be worthless and self-sufficient, and thou didst leave me and die. Now I, having no scope for my vain talk, I too will die." When Yen Kang Tiao "A man of TAO." _Comm._ heard this, he said, "Those who exemplify TAO are sought after by all the best men in the empire. Now if one who has not attained to more TAO than the ten-thousandth part of the tip of an autumn spikelet, is still wise enough to withhold vain talk and die,--how much more those who exemplify TAO? To the eye it is formless, and to the ear it is noiseless. Those who discuss it, speak of it as 'the obscure.' But the mere fact of discussing TAO makes it not TAO." * * * * *