CHAPTER II. · 3

Probably an allusion to Lao Tzŭ's "Use the light that is within you to revert to your natural clearness of sight." We should then be able to view things in their true light. See Tao-Tê-Ching, ch. lii., and The Remains of Lao Tzŭ, p. 34.

"To take a finger in illustration of a finger not being a finger is not so good as to take something which is not a finger. To take a horse in illustration of a horse not being a horse is not so good as to take something which is not a horse.

"So with the universe and all that in it is. These things are but fingers and horses in this sense. The possible is possible: the impossible is impossible. Tao operates, and given results follow. Things receive names and are what they are. They achieve this by their natural affinity for what they are and their natural antagonism to what they are not. For all things have their own particular constitutions and potentialities. Nothing can exist without these.

These last few sentences are repeated in ch. xxvii. ad init.

"We can never know anything but phenomena. Things are what they are, and their consequences will be what they will be."—J. S. Mill.

"Therefore it is that, viewed from the standpoint of Tao, a beam and a pillar are identical.

The horizontal with the vertical.

So are ugliness and beauty, greatness, wickedness,[20] perverseness, and strangeness. Separation is the same as construction: construction is the same as destruction. Nothing is subject either to construction or to destruction, for these conditions are brought together into One.

"Only the truly intelligent understand this principle of the identity of all things. They do not view things as apprehended by themselves, subjectively; but transfer themselves into the position of the things viewed.

Avoiding the fallacious channels of the senses.

And viewing them thus they are able to comprehend them, nay, to master them;—and he who can master them is near. So it is that to place oneself in subjective relation with externals, without consciousness of their objectivity,—this is Tao. But to wear out one's intellect in an obstinate adherence to the individuality of things, not recognising the fact that all things are One,—this is called Three in the Morning."

"What is Three in the Morning?" asked Tzŭ Yu.

"A keeper of monkeys," replied Tzŭ Ch'i, "said with regard to their rations of chestnuts that each monkey was to have three in the morning and four at night. But at this the monkeys were very angry, so the keeper said they might have four in the morning and three at night, with which arrangement they were all well pleased. The actual number of the chestnuts remained the same, but there was an adaptation to the likes and dislikes of[21] those concerned. Such is the principle of putting oneself into subjective relation with externals.

"Wherefore the true Sage, while regarding contraries as identical, adapts himself to the laws of Heaven. This is called following two courses at once.

He is thus prevented from trying to walk through walls, etc., as later Taoists have professed themselves able to do, of course with a view to gull the public and enrich themselves. "God," says Locke, "when he makes the prophet, does not unmake the man."

So Carlyle in his essay on Novalis:—"To a Transcendentalist, matter has an existence but only as a Phenomenon.... It is a mere relation, or rather the result of a relation between our living souls and the great First Cause."

"The knowledge of the men of old had a limit. It extended back to a period when matter did not exist. That was the extreme point to which their knowledge reached.

"The second period was that of matter, but of matter unconditioned.

By time or space. "Being, in itself," says Herbert Spencer, "out of relation, is itself unthinkable." Principles of Psychology, iii. p. 258.

"The third epoch saw matter conditioned, but contraries were still unknown. When these appeared, Tao began to decline. And with the decline of Tao, individual bias arose.

"Have then these states of falling and rising real existences? Surely they are but as the falling[22] and rising of Chao Wên's music,—the consequences of his playing.

Chao Wên played the guitar. Shih K'uang wielded the bâton.

To keep time.

Hui Tzŭ argued. Herein these three men excelled, and in the practice of such arts they passed their lives.

"Hui Tzŭ's particular views being very different from those of the world in general, he was correspondingly anxious to enlighten people. But he did not enlighten them as he should have done,

By the cultivation and passive manifestation of his own inward light.

and consequently ended in the obscurity of the 'hard and white.'

Hui Tzŭ regarded such abstractions as hardness and whiteness as separate existences, of which the mind could only be conscious separately, one at a time.

Subsequently, his son searched his works for some clue, but never succeeded in establishing the principle. And indeed if such were possible to be established, then even I am established; but if not, then neither I nor anything in the universe is established!

"Therefore what the true Sage aims at is the light which comes out of darkness. He does not view things as apprehended by himself, subjectively, but transfers himself into the position of the things viewed. This is called using the light.