To take a rod and line, and go to a pool, and catch small fry is a very different thing from catching big fish. And by means of a little show of ability to secure some small billet is a very different thing from really pushing one's way to the front. So that those who do not imitate the example of Jên Kung Tzŭ will be very far from becoming leaders in their generation. Also spurious. * * * * * When some Confucianists were opening a grave in accordance with their Canons of _Poetry_ and _Rites_, the master shouted out, "Day is breaking. How are you getting on with the work?" "Not got off the burial-clothes yet," answered an apprentice. "There is a pearl in the mouth." Now the Canon of _Poetry_ says-- The greenest corn Grows over graves. In life, no charity; In death, no pearl. So seizing the corpse's brow with one hand, and forcing down its chin with the other, these Confucianists proceed to tap its cheeks with a metal hammer, in order to make the jaws open gently and not injure the pearl! The above, pronounced by Lin Hsi Chung to be spurious, is aimed at the Confucianists, who are ready to commit any outrage on natural feeling so long as there is no violation of the details of their own artificial system. A disciple of Lao Lai Tzŭ A sage of the Ch'u State. while out gathering fuel, chanced to meet Confucius. On his return, he said, "There is a man over there with a long body and short legs, round shoulders and drooping ears. He looks as though he were sorrowing over mankind. I know not who he can be." "It is Confucius!" cried Lao Lai Tzŭ. "Bid him come hither." When Confucius arrived, Lao Lai Tzŭ addressed him as follows:-- "Ch'iu! Get rid of your dogmatism and your specious knowledge, and you will be really a superior man." Confucius bowed and was about to retire, when suddenly his countenance changed and he enquired, "Shall I then be able to enter upon TAO?" "The wounds of one generation being too much," answered Lao Lai Tzŭ, "you would take to yourself the sorrows of all time. Are you not weary? Is your strength equal to the task? "To employ goodness as a passport to influence through the gratification of others, is an everlasting shame. Yet this is the common way of all, to lure people by fame, to bind them by ties of gratification. "Better than extolling Yao and cursing Chieh is oblivion of both, keeping one's praises to oneself. These things react injuriously on self; the agitation of movement results in deflection. "The true Sage is a passive agent. If he succeeds, he simply feels that he was provided by no effort of his own with the energy necessary to success." * * * * * Prince Yüan of Sung dreamed one night that a man with dishevelled hair peeped through a side door and said, "I have come from the waters of Tsai-lu. I am a marine messenger attached to the staff of the River God. A fisherman, named Yü Ch'ieh, has caught me."