Chuang Tzu: Mystic, Moralist, and Social Reformer. Zhuangzi

Let that be your model. The water remains quietly within, and does not overflow. It is from the cultivation of such harmony that virtue results. And if virtue takes no outward form, man will not be able to keep aloof from it."

      Mankind will be regenerated thereby, in the same way that evenness is imparted by the aid of water to surfaces, although the water is all the time closed up and does not overflow.

      

      Some days afterwards Duke Ai told Min Tzŭ,

      One of Confucius' disciples.

      saying, "When first I took the reins of government in hand, I thought that in caring for my people's lives I had done all my duty as a ruler. But now that I have heard what a perfect man is, I fear that I have not been succeeding, but foolishly using my body and working destruction to my State. Confucius and I are not prince and minister, but merely friends with a care for each other's moral welfare."

      A certain hunchback, named Wu Ch'un, whose heels did not touch the ground, had the ear of Duke Ling of Wei. The Duke took a great fancy to him; and as for well-formed men, he thought their necks were too short.

      Another man, with a goitre as big as a large jar, had the ear of Duke Huan of Ch'i. The Duke took a great fancy to him; and as for well-formed men, he thought their necks were too thin.

      Thus it is that virtue should prevail and outward form be forgotten. But mankind forgets not that which is to be forgotten, forgetting that which is not to be forgotten. This is forgetfulness indeed! And thus with the truly wise, wisdom is a curse, sincerity like glue, virtue only a means to acquire, and skill nothing more than a commercial capacity. For the truly wise make no plans, and therefore require no wisdom. They do not separate, and therefore require no glue. They want nothing, and therefore need no virtue. They sell nothing, and therefore are not in want of a commercial capacity. These four qualifications are bestowed upon them by God and serve as heavenly food to them. And those who thus feed upon the divine have little need for the human. They wear the forms of men, without human passions. Because they wear the forms of men, they associate with men. Because they have not human passions, positives and negatives find in them no place. Infinitesimal indeed is that which makes them man: infinitely great is that which makes them divine!

      Hui Tzŭ said to Chuang Tzŭ, "Are there then men who have no passions?"

      Chuang Tzŭ replied, "Certainly."

      "But if a man has no passions," argued Hui Tzŭ, "what is it that makes him a man?"

      "Tao," replied Chuang Tzŭ, "gives him his expression, and God gives him his form. How should he not be a man?"

      "If then he is a man," said Hui Tzŭ, "how can he be without passions?"

      "What you mean by passions," answered Chuang Tzŭ, "is not what I mean. By a man without passions I mean one who does not permit good and evil to disturb his internal economy, but rather falls in with whatever happens, as a matter of course, and does not add to the sum of his mortality."

      The play of passion would tend to create conditions which otherwise would not exist.

      

      "But whence is man to get his body," asked Hui Tzŭ, "if there is to be no adding to the sum of mortality?"

      This is of course a gibe. Hui Tzŭ purposely takes Chuang Tzŭ's words à double entente.

      "Tao gives him his expression," said Chuang Tzŭ, "and God gives him his form. He does not permit good and evil to disturb his internal economy. But now you are devoting your intelligence to externals, and wearing out your mental powers. You prop yourself against a tree and mutter, or lean over a table with half-closed eyes.

      God has made you a shapely sight,

      Yet your only thought is the hard and white."

      Chang Tzŭ puts his last sentence into doggerel, the more effectively to turn the tables against Hui Tzŭ, whose paradoxical theories he is never tired of ridiculing. See ch. ii.