"The genesis of sound lies in the sense of hearing; but That which causes sound is never audible to the ear. The source of color"--for 'source' we might say, the 'issuing-point'--"is vision; but That which produces color never manifests to the eye. The origin of taste lies in the palate; but That which causes taste is never perceived by that sense. All these pehnomena are functions of the Principle of Inaction--the inert unchanging Tao." One is reminded of a passage in the _Talavakara-Upanishad:_ "That which does not speak by speech, but by which speech is expressed: That alone shalt thou know as Brahman, not that which they here adore. "That which does not think by mind, but by which mind is itself thought: That alone shalt thou know as Brahman, not that which they here adore." And so it continues of each of the sense-functions. After this, Liehtse for the most wanders from story to story; he taught in parables; and sometimes we have to listen hard to catch the meaning of them, he rarely insists on it, or drives it well home, or brings it down to levels of plain-spokenness at which it should declare itself to a westem mind. Here, again, is the Chinese characteristic: the touch is lighter; more is left to the intuition of the reader; the lines are less heavily drawn. They rely on a kind of intelligence in the readers, akin to the writers', to see those points at a glance, which we must search for carefully. Where each word has to be drawn, a little picture taking time and care, you are in no danger of overlavishness; you do not spill and squander your words, "intoxicated," as they say, "with the exuberance of your verbosity." Style was forced on the Chinese; ideograms are a grand preventive against pombundle.--I shall follow Liehtse's method, and go from story to story at random; perhaps interpreting a little by the way.