Herein is the abiding-place of the Sage. There where the matter of mortality shares the tenuity of the formless. "The knowledge of the ancients reached the highest point,--the time before anything existed. This is the highest point. It is exhaustive. There is no adding to it. "The second best was that of those who started from existence. Life was to them a misfortune. Death was a return home. There was already separation. "The next in the scale said that at the beginning there was nothing. Then life came, to be quickly followed by death. They made Nothing the head, Life the trunk, and Death the tail of existence, claiming as friends whoever knew that existence and non-existence, and life and death were all ONE. "These three classes, though different, were of the same clan; as were Chao Ching who inherited fame, and Chia who inherited territory. The fact of inheritance was the same, but not the thing inherited,--by these men of Ch'u. There are various interpretations of this passage. No two commentators agree. "Man's life is as the soot on a kettle. Meaning, concentrated smoke. Yet men speak of the subjective point of view. But this subjective point of view will not bear the test. It is a point of knowledge we cannot reach. Individual standards are fallacious. What is subjective from one point of view is objective from another. "At the winter sacrifice, the tripe may be separated from the great toe; yet these cannot be separated. Each carries away the characteristics of the whole. He who looks at a house, visits the ancestral hall, and even the latrines. Thus every point is the subjective point of view. Or else he has not seen the house but only a part. Where then is the subjective point of view of the house, and by analogy, of the man? "Let us try to formulate this subjective point of view. It originates with life, and, with knowledge as its tutor, drifts into the admission of right and wrong. In the abstract. But one's own standard of right is _the_ standard, and others have to adapt themselves to it. Men will die for this. Such people look upon the useful as appertaining to wisdom, the useless as appertaining to folly; upon success in life as honourable, upon failure as dishonourable. Not knowing the value of the useless, or perceiving that what is so at one time is not so at another. The subjective point of view is that of the present generation, who like the cicada and the young dove see things only from their own standpoint. See ch. i. "If a man treads upon a stranger's toe in the market-place, he apologises on the score of hurry. If an elder brother does this, he is quit with an exclamation of sympathy. And if a parent does so, nothing whatever is done. The child being part of himself. "Therefore it has been said, 'Perfect politeness is not artificial; Kuo Hsiang says this means treating others as oneself. Lin Hsi Chung takes the "natural" or "spontaneous" view which is here adopted.