At this the Empyrean asked Without-end, saying, "Do you know TAO?" "I do not," replied Without-end; whereupon the Empyrean proceeded to ask Inaction. "I do know TAO," said Inaction. "Is there any method," asked the Empyrean, "by which you know TAO?" "There is," replied Inaction. "What is it?" asked the Empyrean. "I know," answered Inaction, "that TAO may honour and dishonour, bind and loose. That is the method by which I know TAO." The Empyrean repeated these words to No-beginning, and asked him which was right, the ignorance of Without-end or the knowledge of Inaction. "Not to know," replied No-beginning, "is profound. To know is shallow. Not to know is internal. To know is external." Here the Empyrean broke in with a sigh, "Then ignorance is knowledge, and knowledge ignorance! But pray whose knowledge is the knowledge of not knowing?" "TAO," said No-beginning, "cannot be heard. Heard, it is not TAO. It cannot be seen. Seen, it is not TAO. It cannot be spoken. Spoken, it is not TAO. That which imparts form to forms is itself formless; therefore TAO cannot have a name." Form precedes name. No-beginning continued, "He who replies to one asking about TAO, does not know TAO. Although one may hear about TAO, he does not really hear about TAO. There is no such thing as asking about TAO. There is no such thing as answering such questions. To ask a question which cannot be asked is vain. To answer a question which cannot be answered is unreal. And one who thus meets the vain with the unreal is one who has no physical perception of the universe, and no mental perception of the origin of existence,--unfit alike to roam over the K'un-lun peak or to soar into the Supreme Void." * * * * * Light asked Nothing, saying, "Do you, Sir, exist, or do you not exist?" But getting no answer to his question, Light set to work to watch for the appearance of Nothing. Hidden, vacuous,--all day long he looked but could not see it, listened but could not hear it, grasped at but could not seize it. See _The Remains of Lao Tzŭ_, p. 31. "Bravo!" cried Light. "Who can equal this? I can get to be nothing, Darkness. but I cannot get as far as the absence of nothing. Assuming that Nothing has an objective existence, how can it reach this next stage?" * * * * * The man who forged swords for the Minister of War was eighty years of age. Yet he never made the slightest slip in his work. The Minister of War said to him, "Is it your skill, Sir, or have you any method?" Any TAO?--in its earlier sense of _way_ of doing things. "It is concentration," replied the man. "When twenty years old, I took to forging swords. I cared for nothing else. If a thing was not a sword, I did not notice it. I availed myself of whatever energy I did not use in other directions in order to secure greater efficiency in the direction required. Still more of that which is never without use;-- TAO.