“I am appreciated,” said Quentin. “He despises,” continued Hsiao, “the artificial bonds that check our natural impulses. He has become primitive. He gives rein to his nature. He gratifies it, and this is right, because life is short, and our days should not be occupied with conforming to external practices and submitting our natures to impossible inhibitions. There is only one virtue, and that is to behave according to our natures. Men are remembered not for their virtue or their wickedness, but only for having lived to their full bent. And all is soon enough forgotten. Indulge, therefore, the ear and the eye, the mouth and the belly—indulge the desires of body and mind.” “I am understood,” said Quentin. “It will be observed,” put in Yuan, “that Hsiao has halted in the pleasures of sense. He has been caught, like a fly in amber, in the beauty of appearances. He perceives, and indicates to us, the spirit, the underlying reality of Nature, but he permits himself the desires of sense, thus adding to the sum of human emotion. Such a man is not the perfect man.” “I should think not, indeed,” said Sprot. “Such a man is most dangerous.” “And what in your view is the perfect man?” asked Lord Sombrewater, with interest. “The perfect man,” replied Yuan, to an accompaniment of profound hilarity on the part of Wang Li, “is without passion, desires nothing and indicates nothing. He has the appearance of a fool and is usually ugly. In speaking I depart from wisdom. In speaking we limit truth. Yet, to come in the neighbourhood of definition, let me say that the perfect man neglects himself and is preserved; forgets himself and is remembered; takes what comes; makes no plans; eats what he likes; sleeps without dreams; wakes without care; breathes deep; conforms to custom, lest he become self-conscious; seems to be of the world while his thoughts are with eternity; uses language while communing in silence with what is beyond language; ignores the distinction between spirit and matter; is neither benevolent nor malevolent, wicked nor good, adding nothing to the sum of human emotion; and, his mind being utterly in repose, he dwells for ever with the unnameable.” “That again,” said Quentin, toying with a dish of spiced wild duck, “is me.” “But does not the true Sage calmly await annihilation?” ventured Blackwood. “The true Sage awaits nothing, calmly or otherwise.” It was Wang Li who thought fit to speak. He spoke or kept silence at random, recognizing no rule. “He pays no heed either to becoming or ceasing-to-be. He rejects distinctions of life or death, remaining as nearly as possible unconscious until, in the course of Nature, he returns to the non-relative—which is not to be described as annihilation.”