"That I know," replied the Prince; "but I am not equal to the task." "If you are not equal to this," said Chan Tzŭ, "then it were well for you to pursue your natural bent. Not to be equal to a task, and yet to force oneself to stick to it,--this is called adding one injury to another. And those who suffer such two-fold injury do not belong to the class of the long-lived." Prince Mou of Wei was heir to the throne of a large State. For him to become a hermit among the hills was more difficult than for an ordinary cotton-clothed scholar. And although he had not attained to TAO, he may be said to have been on the way thither. * * * * * When Confucius was caught between the Ch'êns and the Ts'ais, he went seven days without proper food. He ate soup of herbs, having no rice. He looked very much exhausted, yet he sat within playing his guitar and singing to it. Yen Hui was picking over the herbs, while Tzŭ Lu and Tzŭ Kung were talking together. One of them said, "Our Master has twice been driven out of Lu. They will have none of him in Wei. His tree was cut down in Sung. He got into trouble in Shang and Chou. And now he is surrounded by the Ch'êns and the Ts'ais. Whoever kills him is to be held guiltless. Whoever takes him prisoner is not to be interfered with. Yet all the time he goes on playing and singing without cease. Is this the right thing for a superior man to do?" Yen Hui said nothing, but went inside and told Confucius, who laid aside his guitar and said with a loud sigh, "Yu and Tzŭ are ignorant fellows. These were their personal names. Bid them come, and I will speak to them." When they entered Tzŭ Lu said, "We seem to have made a thorough failure." "What do you mean?" cried Confucius. "The superior man who succeeds in TAO, has success. If he fails in TAO, he makes a failure. Now I, holding fast to the TAO of charity and duty towards one's neighbour, have fallen among the troubles of a disordered age. What failure is there in that? "Therefore it is that by cultivation of the inner man there is no failure in TAO, and when danger comes there is no loss of virtue. It is the chill winter weather, it is frost, it is snow, which bring out the luxuriance of the pine and the fir. See _Lun Yü_, ix, 27. I regard it as a positive blessing to be thus situated as I am." Thereupon he turned abruptly round and went on playing and singing. At this Tzŭ Lu hastily seized a shield and began dancing to the music, while Tzŭ Kung said, "I had no idea of the height of heaven and of the depth of earth." The ancients who attained TAO were equally happy under success and failure. Their happiness had nothing to do with their failure or their success. TAO once attained, failure and success became mere links in a chain, like cold, heat, wind, and rain. Thus Hsü Yu enjoyed himself at Ying-yang, and Kung Poh found happiness on the hill-top. Whither he retired after a reign of 14 years.