Some prince having invited Chuang Tzŭ to enter his service, Chuang Tzŭ said in reply to the envoy, "Sir, have you ever noticed a sacrificial ox? It is bedecked with ribbons and fares sumptuously. But when it comes to be slaughtered for the temple, would it not gladly exchange places with some neglected calf?" Quoted, with variants, by the historian Ssŭ-ma Ch'ien, in his biographical notice of Chuang Tzŭ. See _Introduction_. * * * * * When Chuang Tzŭ was about to die, his disciples expressed a wish to give him a splendid funeral. But Chuang Tzŭ said, "With Heaven and Earth for my coffin and shell; with the sun, moon, and stars as my burial regalia; and with all creation to escort me to the grave,--are not my funeral paraphernalia ready to hand?" And had he not high honour?-- The hillside for his pall; To lie in state while angels wait With stars for tapers tall; And the dark rock pines like nodding plumes Above his bier to wave, And God's own hand in that lonely land To lay him in the grave. _The Burial of Moses_ (Mrs. Alexander). "We fear," argued the disciples, "lest the carrion kite should eat the body of our Master"; to which Chuang Tzŭ replied, "Above ground I shall be food for kites; below I shall be food for mole-crickets and ants. Why rob one to feed the other? With this may be compared the reply of Diogenes on a similar occasion. When the old cynic asked to be left unburied, his friends objected that he would be eaten by dogs and birds. "Place my staff near me," said Diogenes, "that I may drive them away." "How will you manage that?" enquired the friends. "You will not be conscious." "What then will it matter to me to be torn by beasts," cried Diogenes, "if I am not conscious of it?" "If you adopt, as absolute, a standard of evenness which is so only relatively, your results will not be absolutely even. If you adopt, as absolute, a criterion of right which is so only relatively, your results will not be absolutely right. Those who trust to their senses become slaves to objective existences. Those alone who are guided by their intuitions find the true standard. So far are the senses less reliable than the intuitions. Yet fools trust to their senses to know what is good for mankind, with alas! but external results." As the genuine text of the _Spring and Autumn_ ends with the appearance of the _ch'i lin_ (or _kilin_) and the death of Confucius, so have disciples of Chuang Tzŭ agreed that the genuine text of Chuang Tzŭ comes to a fitting close at the death-bed of their great Master. The final chapter is but a summary of the whole, compiled by the early editors of the work. CHAPTER XXXIII. THE EMPIRE. [Summary by early editors.] Systems of government are many. Each man thinks his own perfect. Where then does what the ancients called the system of TAO come in? There is nowhere where it does not come in.