So that there was nothing which did not lend its aid. * * * * * Jen Ch'iu asked Confucius, saying, "Can we know about the time before the universe existed?" "We can," replied Confucius. "Time was of old precisely what it is now." At this rebuff, Jen Ch'iu withdrew. Next day he again visited Confucius and said, "Yesterday when I asked you that question and you answered me, I was quite clear about it. To-day I am confused. How is this?" "Your clearness of yesterday," answered Confucius, "was because my answer appealed direct to your natural intelligence. Your confusion of to-day results from the intrusion of something other than the natural intelligence. You have passed from "simple apprehension" to "judgment." There is no past, no present, no beginning, no end. To-day will be the yesterday of to-morrow. To have posterity before one has posterity,--is that possible?" Jen Ch'iu made no answer, and Confucius continued, "That will do. Do not reply. If life did not give birth to death, and if death did not put an end to life, surely life and death would be no longer correlates, but would each exist independently. What there was before the universe, was TAO. TAO makes things what they are, but is not itself a thing. Nothing can produce TAO; yet everything has TAO within it, and continues to produce it without end. In its offspring. And the endless love of the Sage for his fellow-man is based upon the same principle." * * * * * Yen Yüan asked Confucius, saying, "Master, I have heard you declare that there may be no eagerness to conform, no effort to adapt. If so, pray how are we to get along?" Reach that condition which is only attained by adaptation to environment. "The men of old," replied Confucius, "practised physical, but not moral, modification. They adapted themselves to the requirements of matter, while their hearts remained the same. The men of to-day practise moral, not physical modification. They allow their hearts to be influenced while resisting the exigencies of the external. Let your modification extend to the external only. Internally, be constant without modification. "How shall you modify, and how shall you not modify? How reconcile the divergence?--By not admitting division. _I.e._ "by being constant without modification," says Lin Hsi Chung. "There was the garden of Hsi Wei, the park of the Yellow Emperor, the palace of Shun, the halls of T'ang and Wu. The allusion appears to be to schools of learning, like the Grove of Academus. See chs. vi, xii. These were perfect men; but had they been taught by Confucianists and Mihists, they would have hammered one another to pieces over scholastic quibbles. How much more then the men of to-day? "The perfect Sage, in his relations with the external world, injures nothing. Neither does anything injure him. And only he who is thus exempt can be trusted to conform and to adapt.