But see what he did. The gates of hell were swung wide, and for the time being, not the hosts of the Seraphim and Cherubim,—not the armed Bodhisatvas and Dhyanis,—could have forced them back on their hinges: "the ripple of effect," we read, "thou shalt let run its course." But in the ideal world he erected a barrier against them. He set up a colossal statue with arms outthrown to bar the egress; the statue of Confucius preaching the Balanced Life. With time it materialized, so to say, and fell into place. You can never certainly stop the gates of hell,—in this stage of our evolution. But perhaps as nearly as it can be done, he did it. Rome fell, and Christendom made a mess of things; it has never yet achieved that union which is the first condition of true civilization. But China, older than Rome, despite her sins and vicissitudes, has made a shift to stand. I shall come to comparing the two histories presently; then you will see. When the pralaya came on her, and the forces of life all went elsewhere—as they do and must from every civilization in their season,—China lost two of her treasures: Plenydd's vision, and Alawn's gift of song, were taken from her. But this stability; these Gloves of Gwron; this instinct for middle courses and the balance, this Doctrine of the Mean and love of plain sane doings: she has retained enough of this to keep her in being. And it was K'ung Ch'iu of Lu that gave it to her. Shall we not call him Such a One as only the Gods send?
Someone told me the other day what he had seen a couple of Chinamen do in a Californian garden. They had a flower-bed to plant, about forty feet long; and each a basket of seedlings to plant it with, and a slip of wood for a model, with mystic unintelligible signs inscribed thereon: WELCOME HOME in English capitals. One went to one end of the bed and the other to the other, and they began their planting. They made no measurements or calculations; used no rod or line; but just worked ahead till they met in the middle. When that happened, and the job was done, the bed was inscribed, in perfectly formed and proportioned English capitals made of young plants, WELCOME HOME. There was no crowding or omission. To account for it you have twenty-four centuries of Confucianism,—of Katherine Tingley's doctrine of Middle Lines, the Balanced Life.
It is a very small thing; but it may help us to understand.
XII. TALES FROM A TAOIST TEACHER
Confucius died in 478: the year, it may be noted, in which Athens attained her hegemony: or just when the Greek Cycle thirteen decades was opening. Looking backward thirteen decades from that, we come to 608 B.C.; four years after which date, according to the usually accepted tradition, Laotse was born. Thus we find the cycle preceding that of Greece mainly occupied, in China, by the lives of the two great Teachers.
We should have seen by this time that these two lives were, so to say, parts of a single whole: co-ordinated spiritually, if not in an organization on this plane. Laotse, like H.P. Blavatsky, brought the Teachings; he illuminated the inner worlds. That was his work. We can see little of him as he accomplished it: and only the smallest fragment of his doctrine remains:—five thousand words, out of his whole long life. But since we have had in our own time an example of how these things are done, we may judge him and his mission by this analogy; also by the results. Then came Confucius, like Katherine Tingley, to link this wisdom with individual and national life. The teachings were there; and he had no need to restate them: he might take the great principles as already enounced. But every Teacher has his own method, and his need to accentuate this or that: so time and history have had most to say about the differences between these two. What Confucius had to do, and did, was to found his school, and show in the lives of his disciples, modeled under his hands, how the wisdom of the Ages (and of Laotse) can be made a living power in life and save the world.
Contrasting the efforts of that age and this, we may say that then, organization, such as we have now, was lacking. Confucius did not come as the official successor of Laotse; Laotse, probably, had had no organized school that he could hand over to Confucius. He had taught, and his influence had gone far and wide, affecting the thought of the age; but he had had no trained and pledged body of students to whom he could say: 'Follow this man when I am gone; he is my worthy successor.'— All of which will be laughed at: I firmly believe, however, that it is an accurate estimate of things. When you come to think of it, it was by the narrowest margine that H. P. Blavatsky, through Mr. Judge—and his heroism and wisdom alone to be thanked for it!—had anything beyond the influence of her ideas and revelation to hand on to Katherine Tingley. In the way of an organization, I mean. Very few among her disciples had come to have any glimmering of what discipleship means, or were prepared to follow her accredited successors.
And Confucius, in his turn, had no established center for his school; it was a thing that wandered the world with him, and ceased, as in organization (however hazy) to exist when he died. Nothing remained, then, of either Teacher for posterity except the ideas and example. And yet I have hinted, and shall try to show, that tremendous results for good followed: that the whole course of history was turned in an upward direction. You may draw what inferences you will. The matter is profoundly significant.
Thirteen decades after the death of Confucius, Plato died in Greece; and about that time two men arose in China to carry forward, bring down, and be the expositors of, the work of the two great Teachers of the sixth and seventh centuries. These were Chwangtse for Taoism, and Mangtse or Mencius for Confucius: the one, the channel through which spiritual thought flowed to the quickening of the Chinese imagination; the other, the man who converted the spiritual thought of Confucius into the Chinese Constitution. Alas! they were at loggerheads: a wide breach between the two schools of thought had come to be by their time; or perhaps it was they who created it. We shall arrive at them next week; tonight, to introduce you to Liehtse, a Taoist teacher who came sometime between Laotse and Chwangtse;—perhaps in the last quarter of the fifth century, when Socrates was active in Greece.
Professor De Groot, of Holland, speaks boldly of Confucius as a Taoist; and though I dislike many of this learned Dutchman's ideas, this one is excellent. His thesis is that Laotse was no more an innovator than Confucius; that both but gave a new impulse to teachings as old as the race. Before Laotse there had been a Teacher Quan, a statesman-philosopher of the seventh century, who had also taught the Tao. The immemorial Chinese idea had been that the Universe is made of the interplay of two forces, Yang and Yin, positive and negative;—or simply the Higher and the Lower natures. To the Yang, the Higher, belong the Shen or gods,—all conscious beneficent forces within and without man. To the Yin or lower belong the kwei, the opposite of gods: fan means foreign; and Fan Kwei is the familiar Chinese term for white men. From Shen and Tao we get the term Shentao, which you know better as Shinto,—the Way of the Gods; or as well, the Wisdom of the Gods; as good an equivalent of our term Theosophy as you should find; perhaps indeed better than Theosophy itself; for it drives home the idea that the Wisdom is a practical Way of Life. Shentao, the Taoism of the Higher Nature, then, was the primeval religion of the Chinese;—Dr. De Groot arrives at this, though perhaps hardly sees how sensible a conclusion he has reached. In the sixth century B.C. it was in a fair way to becoming as obsolete as Neoplatonism or Gnosticism in the nineteenth A.D.; and Laotse and Confucius simply restated some aspects of it with a new force and sanction;—just as H.P. Blavatsky, in the Key to Theosophy, begins, you will remember, with an appeal to and restatement of the Theosophy of the Gnostics and Neoplatonists of Alexandria.
It may seem a kind of divergence from our stream of history, to turn aside and tell stories from the Book of Liehtse; but there are excuses. Chinese history, literature, thought— everything—have been such a closed book to the West, that those scholars who have opened a few of its pages are to be considered public benefactors; and there is room and to spare for any who will but hold such opened pages up;—we are not in the future to dwell so cut off from a third of mankind. Also it will do us good to look at Theosophy from the angle of vision of another race. I think Liehtse has much to show us as to the difference between the methods of the Chinese and Western minds: the latter that must bring most truths down through the brain-mind, and set them forth decked in the apparel of reason; the former that is, as it seems to me, often rather childlike as to the things of the brain-mind; but has a way of bringing the great truths down and past the brain-mind by some circuitous route; or it may be only by a route much more direct than ours. The West presents its illuminations so that they look big on the surface; you say, This is the work of a great mind. A writer in the Times Literary Supplement brought out the idea well, in comparing the two poetries. What he said was, in effect, as follows:—the Western poet, too often, dons his singing robe before he will sing; works himself up; expects to step out of current life into the Grand Manner;—and unless the Soul happens to be there and vocal at the time, achieves mostly pombundle. The Chinaman presents his illumination as if it were nothing at all,—just the simplest childish-foolish thing; nothing in the world for the brain-mind to get excited about. You take very little notice at the time: more of their quaint punchinello chinoiserie, you say. Three weeks after, you find that it was a clear voice from the supermundane, a high revelation. The Chinese poet saunters along playing a common little tune on his Pan-pipes. Singing robes?— None in the world; just what he goes to work in. Grand Manner?— 'Sir,' says he, 'the contemptible present singer never heard of it; wait for that till the coming of a Superior Man.'—'Well,' you say, 'at least there is no danger of pombundle'; and indeed there is not. But you rather like the little tune, and stop to listen . . . and then . . . Oh God! the Wonder of wonders has happened, and the Universe will never be quite the dull, fool, ditchwater thing it was to you before . . .
Liehtse gives one rather that kind of feeling. We know practically nothing about him.—I count three stages of growth among the sinologists: the first, with a missionary bias; the second, with only the natural bias of pure scholarship and critical intellectualism, broad and generous, but rather running at times towards tidying up the things of the Soul from off the face of the earth; the third, with scholarship plus sympathy, understanding, and a dash of mystical insight. The men of the first stage accepted Liehtse as a real person, and called him a degenerator of Taoism, a teacher of immoral doctrine;—in the Book of Liehtse, certainly, such doctrine is to be found. The men of the second stage effectually tidied Liehtse up: Dr. H. A. Giles says he was an invention of the fertile brain of Chwangtse, and his book a forgery of Han times. Well; people did forge ancient literature in those days, and were well paid for doing so; and you cannot be quite certain of the complete authenticity of any book purporting to have been written before Ts'in Shi Hwangti's time. Also Chwangtse's brain was fertile enough for anything;—so that there was much excuse for the men of the second stage. But then came Dr. Lionel Giles* who belongs to the third stage, and perhaps is the third stage. He shows that though there is in the Book of Liehtse a residue or scum of immoral teaching, it is quite in opposition to the tendency of the teaching that remains when this scum is removed; and deduces from this fact the sensible idea that the scum was a later forgery; the rest, the authentic work of a true philosopher with an original mind and a style of his own. Such a man, of course, might have lived later than Chwangtse, and taken his nom de plume of Liehtse from the latter's book; but against this there is the fact that Liehtse's teaching forms a natural link between Chtangtse's and that of their common Master Laotse; and above all—and herein lies the real importance of him—the real Liehtse treats Confucius as a Teacher and Man of Tao. But by Chwangtse's time the two schools had separated: Confucius was Chwangtse's butt;—we shall see why. And in the scum of Liehtse he is made fun of in Chwangtse's spirit, but without Changtse's wit and style.
——— * Whose translation of parts of the Book of Liehtse, with an invaluable preface, appears in the Wisdom of the East Series; from which translation the passages quoted in this lecture are taken;—as also are many ideas from the preface. ———
So that whoever wrote this book,—whether it was the man referred to by Chwangtse when he says: "There was Liehtse again; he could ride upon the wind and go wheresoever he wished, staying away as long as thirteen days,"—or someone else of the same name, he did not take his non de plume from that passage in Chwangtse, because he was probably dead when Chwangtse wrote it. We may, then, safely call him a Taoist Teacher of the fifth century,—or at latest of the early fourth.
The book's own account of itself is, that it was not written by
Liehtse, but compiled from his oral teaching by his disciples.
Thus it begins:
"Our Master Liehtse live in the Cheng State for forty years, and no man knew him for what he was. The prince, his ministers, and the state officials looked upon him as one of the common herd. A time of dearth fell upon the state, and he was preparing to emigrate to Wei, when his disciples said to him: 'Now that our Master is going away without any prospect of returning, we have ventured to approach him, hoping for instruction. Are there no words from the lips of Hu-Ch'iu Tsu-lin that you can impart to us?'—Lieh the Master smiled and said: 'Do you suppose that Hu Tzu dealt in words? However, I will try to repeat to you what my Teacher said on one occasion to Po-hun Moujen. I was standing by and heard his words, which ran as follows.'"
Then come some rather severe metaphysics on cosmogony: really, a more systematic statement of the teaching thereon which Laotse referred to, but did not (in the Tao Teh King) define. 'More systematic,'—and yet by no means are the lines laid down and the plan marked out; there is no cartography of cosmogenesis; . . . but seeds of meditation are sown. Of course, it is meaningless nonsense for the mind to which all metaphysics and abstract thought are meaningless nonsense. Mystics, however, will see in it an attempt to put the Unutterable into words. One paragraph may be quoted:
"There is life, and That which produces life; form, and That which imparts form; sound, and That which causes color; taste, and That which causes taste. The source of life is death; but That which produces life never comes to an end."
Remember the dying Socrates: 'life comes from death, as death from life.' We appear, at birth, out of that Unseen into which we return at death, says Liehtse; but that which produces life, —which is the cause of this manifestation (you can say, the Soul),—is eternal.
"The origin of form is matter; but That which imparts form has no material existence."
No; because it is the down-breathing spirit entering into matter; matter being the medium through which it creates, or to which it imparts, form. "The form to which the clay is modeled is first united with"—or we may say, projected from—"the potter's mind."
"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.
We saw how Confucius insisted on balance: egging on Jan Yu, who was bashful, and holding back Tse Lu, who had the pluck of two;— declaring that Shih was not a better man than Shang, because too far is not better than not far enough. The whole Chinese idea is that this balance of the faculties is the first and grand essential. Your lobsided man can make no progress really;—he must learn balance first. An outstanding virtue, talent, or aptitude, is a deterrent, unless the rest of the nature is evolved up to it;—that is why the Greatest Men are rarely the most striking men; why a Napoleon catches the eye much more quickly than a Confucius; something stands out in the one,—and compels attention; but all is even in the other. You had much better not have genius, if you are morally weak; or a very strong will, if you are a born fool. For the morally weak genius will end in moral wreck; and the strong-willed fool—a plague upon him! This is the truth, knowledge of which has made China so stable; and ignorance of which has kept the West so brilliant and fickle,—of duality such poles apart,—so lobsided and, I think, in a true sense, so little progressive. For see how many centuries we have had to wait while ignorance, bigotry, wrong ideas, and persecution, have prevented the establishment on any large scale of a Theosophical Movement—and be not too ready to accept a whirl of political changes, experiment after experiment,—and latterly a spurt of mechanical inventions,—for True Progress: which I take to mean, rightly considered, the growth of human egos, and freedom and an atmosphere in which they may grow. But these they had in China abundantly while China was in manvantara; do not think I am urging as our example the fallen China of these pralayic times. Balance was the truth Confucius impressed on the Chinese mentality: the saving Truth of truths, I may say; and it is perhaps the truth which most of all will stand connected with the name of Katherine Tingley in the ages to come:—the saving Truth of truths, which will make a new and better world for us. You must have it, if you are to build solidly; it is the foundation of any true social order; the bedrock on which alone a veritable civilization can be built. Oh, your unbalanced genius can produce things of startling beauty; and they have their value, heaven knows. The Soul watches for its chances, and leaps in at surprising moments: the arm clothed in white samite may reach forth out of the bosom of all sorts of curious quagmires; and when it does, should be held in reverence as still and always a proof of the underlying divinity of man. But—there where the basis of things is not firmly set: where that mystic, wonderful reaching out is not from the clear lake, but from turbidity and festering waters— where the grand balance has not been acquired:—You must look to come on tragedy. The world has gained something from the speech of the Soul there; but the man through whom It spoke;—it has proved too much for him. The vibrations were too strong, and shattered him. Think of Keats . . . and of thousands of others, poets, musicians, artists. Where you get the grand creations, the unfitful shining,—there you get evidence of a balance: with genius—the daimonic force—no greater than, perhaps not so keen as, that of those others, you find a strong moral will. Dante and Milton suffered no less than others from those perils to which all creative artists are subject: both complain bitterly of inner assailments and torment; but they had, to balance their genius, the strong moral urge to fight their weaknesses all through life. It could not save their personalities from suffering; but it gave the Soul in each of them a basis on which to build the grand steadfast creations.—All of which Chinese Liehtse tells you without comment, and with an air of being too childish-foolish for this world, in the following story:—
Kung-hu and Chi-ying fell ill, and sought the services of the renowned doctor, Pien-chiao. He cured them with his drugs; then told them they were also suffering from diseases no drugs could reach, born with them at their birth, and that had grown up with them through life. "Would you have me grapple with these?" said he.—"Yes," said they; but wished first to hear the diagnosis.— "You," he said to kung-hu, "have strong mental powers, but are weak in character; so, though fruitful in plans, you are weak in decision." "You," he said to Chi-ying, "are stong of will, though stupid; so there is a narrowness in your aims and a want of foresight. Now if I can effect an exchange of hearts between you, the good will be equally balanced in both."
They agreed at once: Kung-hu, with the weaker will, was to get the smaller mental powers to match it; Chi-ying was to get a mentality equal to his firm will. We should think Kung-hu got very much the worst of the bargain; but he, and Dr. Pien-chiao, and Liehtse, and perhaps Chinamen generally, thought and would think nothing of the kind. To them, to have balanced faculties was far better than to have an intellect too big for one's will-power; because such balance would afford a firm basis from which will and intellect might go forward in progress harmoniously. So Pien-chiao put both under a strong anaesthetic, took out their hearts, and made the exchange (the heart being, with the Chinese, the seat of mentality); and after that the health of both was perfect.—You may laugh; but after all there is a grandeur in the recognition implied, that the intellect is not the man, but only one of his possessions. The story is profoundly characteristic: like Ah Sin's smile in the poem, "childlike and bland"; but hiding wonderful depths of philosophy beneath.
Laotse showed his deep Occult wisdom when he said that the Man of Tao "does difficult things while they are still easy." Liehtse tells you the story of the Assitant to the Keeper of the Wild Beasts at Loyang. His name was Lian yang, and his fame went abroad for having a wonderful way with the creatures in his charge. Hsuan Wang, the Chow king, heard of it; and sent orders to the Chief Keeper to get the secret from Liang, lest it should die with him.—"How is it," said the Keeper, "that when you feed them, the tigers, wolves, eagles, and ospreys all are tame and tractable? That they roam at large in the park, yet never claw and bite one another? That they propagate their species freely, as if they were wild? His Majesty bids you reveal to me the secret."
A touch of nature here: all zoologists know how difficult it is to get wild beasts to breed in captivity.
Lian Yang answered: "I am only a humble servant, and have really no secret to tell. I fear the king has led you to expect something mysterious. As to the tigers: all I can say is that, like men, when yielded to they are pleased and when opposed they are angry. Nothing gives way either to pleasure or to anger without a cause; and anger, by reaction, will follow pleasure, and pleasure anger. I do not excite the tigers' joy by giving them live creatures to kill, or whole carcasses to tear up. I neither rouse their anger by opposing them, nor humor them to make them pleased. I time their periods of hunger and anticipate them. It is my aim to be neither antagonistic nor compliant; so they look upon me as one of themselves. Hence they walk about the parks without regretting the tall forests and broad marshes, and rest in the enclosure without yearning for lonely mountain or dark vale. It is merely using common sense."
And there Liehtse leaves it in all its simplicity; but I shall venture to put my spoke in, and add that he has really given you a perfect philosophy for the conduct of life: for the government of that other and inner tiger, the lower nature, especially; it is always that, you will remember, for which the Tiger stands in Chinese symbology;—and also for education, the government of nations—everything. Balance,—Middle lines,—Avoidance of Extremes,—Lines of Least Resistance:—by whom are we hearing these things inculcated daily? Did they not teach Raja-Yoga in ancient China? Have not our school and its principles a Chinese smack about them? Well; it was these principles made China supremely great; and kept her alive and strong when all her contemporaries had long passed into death; and, I hope, have ingrained something into her soul and hidden being, which will make her rise to wonderful heights again.
You can hear Laotse in them; it is the practical application of Laotse's doctrine. But can you not equally hear the voice of Confucius: "too far is not better than not far enough"? Western ethical teaching has tended towards inculcating imitation of the soul's action: this Chinese teaching takes the Soul for granted; says very little about it; but shows you how to provide the soul with the conditions through and in which it may act. "Love your enemies;"—yes; that is fine; it is what the Soul, the Divine Part of us, does;—but we are not in the least likely to do it while suffering from the reaction from an outburst of emotion; ethics grow rather meaningless to us when, for example, we have toppled over from our balance into pleasure, eaten not wisely but too well, say; and then toppled back into the dumps with an indigestion. But where the balance is kept you need few ethical injunctions; the soul is there, and may speak; and sees to all that.
Hu-Chiu Tzu-lin, we read, taught Liehtse these things. Said he: "You must familiarize yourself with the Theory of Consequents before you can talk of regulating conduct." Liehtse said:—"Will you explain what you mean by the Theory of Consequents?" "Look at your shadow," said his teacher; "and you will know." Liehtse turned his head and looked at his shadow. When his body was bent the shadow was crooked; when upright, it was straight. Thus it appeared that the attributes of straightness and crookedness were not inherent in the shadow, but corresponded to certain positions in the body . . . . "Holding this Theory of Consequents," says Liehtse, "is to be at home in the antecedent." Now the antecedent of the personality is the Soul; the antecedent of the action is the motive; the antecedent of the conduct of life is the relation in which the component faculties of our being stand to each other and to the Soul. If the body is straight, so is the shadow; if the inner harmony or balance is attained and held to—well; you see the point. "The relative agrees with its antecedent," say the grammar books, very wisely. It is karma again: the effect flowing from the cause. "You may consider the virtues of Shennung and Yuyen," says Liehtse; "you may examine the books of Yu, Kia, Shang, and Chow,"—that is, the whole of history;—"you may weight the utterances of the great Teachers and Sages; but you will find no instance of preservation or destruction, fulness or decay, which has not obeyed this supreme Law of Causality."
Where are you to say that Liehtse's Confucianism ends, and his Taoism begins? It is very difficult to draw a line. Confucius, remember, gave "As-the-heart" for the single character that should express his whole doctrine. Liehtse is leading you inward, to see how the conduct of life depends upon Balance, which also is a word that may translate Tao. Where the balance is, there we come into relations with the great Tao. There is nothing supra-Confucian here; though soon we may see an insistence upon the Inner which, it may be supposed, later Confucianism, drifting toxards externalism, would hardly have enjoyed.—A man in Sung carved a mulberry-leaf in jade for his prince. It took three years to complete, and was so well done, so realistic in its down and glossiness, that if placed in a heap of real mulberry-leaves, it could not be distinguished from them. The State pensioned him as a reward; but Liehtse, hearing of it, said: "If God Almighty took three years to complete a leaf, there would be very few trees with leaves on them. The Sage will rely less on human skill and science, than on the evolution of Tao."
Lung Shu came to the great doctor Wen Chih, and said to him: "You are the master of cunning arts. I have a disease; can you cure it, Sir?" "So far," said Wen Chih, "you have only made known your desire. Please let me know the symptoms of your disease." They were, utter indifference to the things and events of the world. "I hold it no honor to be praised in my own village, nor disgrace to be decried in my native State. Gain brings me no joy, loss no sorrow. I dwell in my home as if it were a mere caravanserai, and regard my native district as though it were one of the barbarian kingdoms. Honors and rewards fail to rouse me, pains and penalties to overawe me, good or bad fortune to influence me; joy or grief to move me. What disease is this? What remedy will cure it?" *
——— * I may say here that though I am quoting the speeches more or less directly from Dr. Lionel Giles' translation, too many liberties are being taken, verbally, with the narative parts of these stories, to allow quotation marks and small type. One contracts and expands (sparingly, the latter); but gives the story. ———
Wen Chih examined his heart under X-rays;—really and truly that is in effect what Liehtse says.—"Ah," said he, "I see that a good square inch of your heart is hollow; you are within a little of being a true Sage. Six of the orifices are open and clear, and only the seventh is blocked up. This last is doubtless due to the fact that you are mistaking for a disease what is in reality an approach to divine enlightenment. It is a case in which my shallow art is of no avail."
I tell this tale, as also that other about the exchange of hearts, partly to suggest that Liehtse's China may have had the actuality, or at least a reminiscence, of scientific knowledge since lost there, and only discovered in Europe recently. In the same way one finds references to automatic oxen, self-moving chariots, traveling by air, and a number of other things which, as we read of them, sound just like superstitious nonsense. There are old Chinese drawings of pterodactyls, and suchlike unchancey antediluvian wild fowl. Argal, (you would say) the Chinese knew of these once; although Ptero and his friends have been extinct quite a few million years, one supposes. Or was it superstition again? Then why was it not superstition in Professor So-and-so, who found the bones and reconstructed the beastie for holiday crowds to gaze upon at the Crystal Palace or the Metropolitan Museum? Knowledge does die away into reminiscence, and then into oblivion; and the chances are that Liehtse's time retained reminiscences which have since become oblivion-hidden;—then rediscovered in the West.—But I tell the tale also for a certain divergence marked in it, between Taoist and Confucian thought. Laotse would have chuckled over it, who brooded much on 'self-emptiness' as the first step towards illumination. Confucius would have allowed it; but it would not have occurred to him, unsuggested.
Now here is something still further from Confucianism; something prophetic of later Taoist developments, though it still contains Laotse's thought, and—be it said—deep wisdom.
Fan Tsu Hua was a bully and a charlatan, who by his trickery had won such hold over the king of Tsin that anyone he might recommend was surely advanced to office, and anyone he cried down would lose his all. So it was said he had magic to make the rich poor and the poor rich. He had many disciples, who were the terror of the peaceably disposed.
One day they saw an old weak man approaching, 'with weather-beaten face and clothes of no particular cut.' A chance for sport not to be neglected, they thought; and began to hustle him about in their usual fashion, 'slapping him on the back, and what not.' But he—Shang Ch'iu K'ai was his name—seemed only full of joy and serenity, and heeded nothing. Growing tired of their fun at last, they would make an end of it; and led him to the top of a high cliff. "Whoever dares throw himself over," said one of them, "will find a hundred ounces of silver," which certainly he had not had with him at the top, and none of them had put there.
It was a wonder; and still more a wonder his being unhurt; but you can make chance account for most things, and they meant to get rid of him. So they brought him to the banks of the river, saying: "A pearl of great price is here, to be had for the diving." In he went without a word, and disappeared duly; and so, thought they, their fun had come to a happy end. But no: as they turned to go, up he came, serene and smiling, and scrambled out. "Well; did you find the pearl?" they asked. "Oh yes," said Shang; "it was just as your honors said." He showed it to them; and it was indeed a pearl of great price.
Here was something beyond them; the old man, clearly, was a favorite of Fortune; Fan their master himself must deal with him. So they sent word ahead, and brought him to the palace of Fan. Who understood well the limitations of quack magic: if he was to be beaten at these tricks, where would his influence be? So he heaped up riches in the courtyard, and made a great fire all round.—"Anyone can have those things," he announced, "who will go in and get them." Shang quietly walked through the flames, and came out with his arms full; not a hair of his head was singed.
And now they were filled with consternation; they had been making a mock of Tao these years; and here evidently was a real Master of Tao, come to expose them.—"Sir," they said, "we did not know that you posessed the Secret, and were playing you tricks. We insulted you, unaware that you were a divine man. But you have leaped from the cliff, dived into the Yellow River, and walked through the flames without injury; you have shown us our stupidity, blindness, and deafness. We pray you to forgive us, and to reveal to us the Secret."
He looked at them in blank amazement.—"What is this you are telling me?" said he. "I am only old Shang Ch'iu K'ai the peasant. I heard that you, Sir, by your magic could make the poor rich. I wanted to be rich, so I came to you. I believed in you absolutely, and in all your disciples said; and so my mind was made one; I forgot my body; I saw nothing of cliffs or fire or water. But now you say you were decieving me, my soul returns to its perplexity, and my eyes and ears to their sight and hearing. What terrible dangers I have escaped! My limbs freeze with horror to think of them."
Tsai Wo, continues Liehtse, told this story to Confucius.—"Is this so strange to you?" said the latter. "The man of perfect faith can move heaven and earth, and fly to the six cardinal points without hindrance. His powers are not confined to walking in perilous places and passing through water and fire. If Shang Ch'iu K'ai, whose motive was greed and whose belief was false, found no obstacle in external things, how much more certainly will it be so when the motive is pure and both parties sincere?"
I will finish it with what is really another of Liehtse's stories,—also dealing with a man who walked through fire uninjured, unconscious of it because of the one-pointedness of his mind.
The incident came to the ears of Marquis Wen of Wei, who spoke to Tsu Hsia, a disciple of Confucius, about it.—"From what I have heard the Master say," said Tsu Hsia, "the man who achieves harmony with Tao enters into close relations with outer objects, and none of them has power to harm or hinder him."—"Why, my friend," said the Marquis, "cannot you do all these marvels?"—"I have not yet succeeded," said Tsu Hsia, "in cleansing my heart from impurities and discarding brainmind wisdom."—"And why," said the Marquis, "cannot the Master himself" (Confucius, of course) "perform such feats?"—"The Master," said Tsu Hsia, "is able to perform them; but he is also able to refrain from performing them."—which, again, he was. Here is another example:
Hui Yang went to visit Prince K'ang of Sung. The prince, however, stamped his foot, rasped his throat, and said angrily:— "The things I like are courage and strength. I am not fond of your good and virtuous people. What can a stranger like you have to teach me?"
"I have a secret," said Hui Yang, "whereby my opponent, however brave or strong, can be prevented from harming me either by thrust or blow. Would not Your Highness care to know that secret?"
"Capital!" said the Prince; "that is certainly something I should like to hear about."
"True," said Hui yang, "when you render his stabs or blows ineffectual, you cover your opponent with shame. But my secret will make him, however brave or strong, afraid to stab or strike at all."
"Better still," said the Prince; "let me hear about it."
"It is all very well for him to be afraid to do it." said Hui Yang; "but that does not imply he has no will to do it. Now, my secret would deprive him even of the will."
"Better and better," said Prince K'ang; "I beseech you to reveal it to me."
"Yes," said Hui Yang; "but this not having the will to injure does not necessarily connote a desire to love and do good. But my secret is one whereby every man, woman, and child in the empire shall be inspired with the friendly desire to love and do good to each other. This is much better than the possession of mere courage and strength. Has Your Highness no mind to acquire such a secret as this?"
The Prince confessed that, on the contray, he was most anxious to learn it.
"It is nothing else than the teachings of Confucius and Mo Ti," said Hui Yang.
A main idea of Taoism—one with which the Confucius of orthodox Confucianism did not concern himself—is the possibility of creating within one's outer and mortal an inner and immortal self; by subduing desire, by sublimating away all impurities, by concentration. The seed of that Immortality is hidden in us; the seed of mastery of the inner and outer worlds. Faith is the key. Shang Ch'iu K'ai, whose "faith had made him whole," walked through fire. "Whoso hath faith as a grain of mustard-seed," said Jesus, can move mountains. It sounds as if he had been reading the Book of Liehtse; which is at pains to show how the thing is done. T'ai-hsing and Wang-wu, the mountains, stood not where they stand now, but in the south of the Chi district and north of Ho-yang. I like the tale well, and shall tell it for its naive Chinesity. The Simpleton of the North Mountain, an old man of ninety, dwelt opposite to them, and was vexed in spirit because their northern flanks blocked the way for travelers, who had to go round. So he called his family together and broached a plan.—"Let us put forth our utmost strength and clear away this obstacle," said he; "let us cut right through the mountains till we come to Han-yin." All agreed except his wife. "My goodman," said she, "has not the strength to sweep away a dung-hill, let alone such mountains as T'ai-hsing and Wang-wu. Besides, where will you put the earth and stones?" They answered that they would throw them on the promontory of P'o-hai. So the old man, followed by his son and grandson, sallied forth with their pickaxes, and began hewing away at the rocks and cutting up the soil, and carting it away in baskets to the promontory. A widow who lived near by had a little boy who, though he was only just shedding his milk-teeth, came skipping along to give them what help he could. Engrossed in their toil they never went home except once at the turn of the season.
The Wise Old Man of the River-bend burst out laughing and urged them to stop. "Great indeed is your witlessness!" said he. "With the poor remaining strength of your declining years you will not succeed in removing a hair's-breadth of the mountains, much less the whole vast mass of rock and soil." With a sigh the Simpleton of the North Mountain answered:—"Surely it is you who are narrow-minded and unreasonable. You are not to be compared with the widow's son, despite his puny strength. Though I myself must die, I shall leave my son behind me, and he his son. My grandson will beget sons in his turn, and those sons also will have sons and grandsons. With all this posterity my line will not die out; while on the other hand the mountains will receive no increment or addition. Why then should I despair of leveling them to the ground at last?"—The Wise Old Man of the River-bend had nothing to say in reply.
Chinese! Chinese!—From whatever angle you look at it, it smacks of the nation that saw Babylon fall, and Rome, and may yet—
But look now, at what happened. There was something about the project and character of the Simpleton of the North Mountain, that attracted the attention of the Serpent-Brandishing deities. They reported the matter to Almighty God; who was interested; and perhaps was less patient than the simpleton.—I do not quite know who this person translated 'Almighty God' may be; I think he figures in the Taoist hierarchy somewhere below Laotse and the other Adepts. At any rate he was in a position to order the two sons of K'ua O—and I do not know who K'ua O and his sons were— to expedite matters. So the one of them took up T'ai-hsing, and the other Wu-wang, and transported them to the positions where they remain to this day to prove the truth of Liehtse's story. Further proof:—the region between Ts'i in the north and Han in the south—that is to say, northern Homan—is still and has been ever since, an unbroken plain.
And perhaps, behind this naive Chinesity, lie grand enunciations of occult law. . . .
I will end with what is probably Liehtse's most famous story— and, from a purely literary standpoint, his best. It is worthy of Chwangtse himself; and I tell it less for its philosophy than for its fun.
One morning a fuel-gatherer—we may call him Li for convenience, though Liehtse leaves him nameless—killed a deer in the forest; and to keep the carcass safe till he went home in the evening, hid it under a pile of brushwood. His work during the day took him far and when he looked for the deer again, he could not find it. "I must have dreamed the whole thing," he said;—and satisfied himself with that explanation. He made a verse about it as he trudged home through the woods, and went crooning:
At dawn in the hollow, beside the stream,
I hid the deer I killed in the dream;
At eve I sought for it far and near;
And found 'twas a dream that I killed the deer.
He passed the cottage of Yen the woodman—Yen we may call him, though Liehtse calls him nothing.—who heard the song, and pondered. "One might as well take a look at the place," thought he; it seemed to him it might be such and such a hollow, by such and such a stream. Thither he went, and found the pile of brushwood; It looked to him a likely place enough to hide a deer under. He made search, and there the carcass was.
He took it home and explained the matter to his wife. "Once upon a time," said he, "a fuel-gatherer dreamed he had killed a deer and forgotten where he had hidden it. Now I have got the deer, and here it is; so his dream came true, in a way."—"Rubbish!" she answered. "It was you must have dreamed the fuel-gatherer and his dreim. You must have killed the deer yourself, since you have it there; but where is your fuel-gatherer?"
That night Li dreamed again; and in his dream saw Yen fetch the deer from its hiding-place and bring it home. So in the morning he went to Yen's house and there, sure enough, the deer was. They argued the matter out, but to no purpose. Then they took it before the magistrate, who gave judgment as follows:
"The plaintiff began with a real deer and an alleged dream; and now comes forward with a real dream and an alleged deer. The defendant has the deer the plaintiff dreamed, and wants to keep it. According to his wife, however, the plaintiff and the deer are both but figments of the defendant's dream. Meanwhile, there is the deer; which you had better divide between you."
The case was reported to the Prince of Cheng, whose opinion was that the magistrate had dreamed the whole story, himself. But his Prime Minister said: "If you want to distinguish between dream and waking, you would have to go back to the Yellow Emperor or Confucius. As both are dead, you had better uphold the magistrate's decision." *
——— * The tale is told both in Dr. Lionel Giles's translation mentioned above, and also, with verbal differences, in Dr. H. A. Giles's work on Chinese Literature. The present telling follows now one, now the other version, now goes its own way;— and pleads guilty to adding the verse the woodman crooned. ———
XIII. MANG THE PHILOSOPHER, AND BUTTERFLY CHWANG
Liehtse's tale of the Dream and the Deer leads me naturally to this characteristic bit from Chwangtse:*—
"Once upon a time, I, Chwangtse, dreamed I was a butterfly fluttering hither and thither; to all intents and purposes a veritable butterfly. I followed my butterfly fancies, and was unconscious of my individuality as a man. Suddenly I awoke, and there I lay, a man again. Now how am I to know whether I was then, Chwangtse dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am Chwang?"
——— * Which, like nearly all the other passages from him in this lecture, is quoted from Dr. H. A. Giles's Chinese Literature, in the Literatures of the World series; New York, Appleton. ———
For which reason he is, says Dr. Giles, known to this day as "Butterfly Chwang"; and the name is not all inappropriate. He flits from fun to philosophy, and from philosoply to fun, as if they were dark rose and laughing pansy; when he has you in the gravest depths of wisdom and metaphysic, he will not be content till with a flirt of his wings and an aspect gravely solemn he has you in fits of laughter again. His is really a book that belongs to world-literature; as good reading, for us now, as for any ancient Chinaman of them all. I think he worked more strenuously in the field of sheer intellect—stirred the thought stuff more—than most other Chinese thinkers,—and so is more akin to the Western mind; he carves his cerebrations more definitely, and leaves less to the intuition. The great lack in him is his failure to appreciate Confucius; and to explain that, before I go further with Butterfly Chwang, I shall take a glance at the times he lived in.
They were out of joint when Confucius came; they were a couple of centuries more so now. Still more was the Tiger stalking abroad: there were two or three tigers in particular, among the Great Powers, evidentlv crouching for a spring—that should settle things. Time was building the funeral pyre for the Phoenix, and building it of the debris of ruined worlds. In the early sixth century, the best minds were retiring in disgust to the wilds;—you remember the anchorite's rebuke to Tse-Lu. But now they were all coming from their retirement—the most active minds, whether the best or not—to shout their nostrums and make confusion worse confounded. All sorts of socialisms were in the air, raucously bellowed by would-be reformers. A "loud barbarian from the south" (as Mencius called him—I do not know who he was) was proclaiming that property should be abolished, and all goods held in common. One Yang Chu was yelling universal egoism: "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." Against him, one Mo Ti had been preaching universal altruism;—but I judge, not too sensibly, and without appeal to philosophy or mysticism. Thought of all kinds was in a ferment, and the world filled with the confused noise of its expression; clear voices were needed, to restate the message of the Teachers of old.
Then Mencius arose to speak for Confucius in this China so much further progressed along the Gadarene road. A strong and brilliant man, he took the field strongly and brilliantly, and filled the courts of dukes and kings with a roll of Confucian drums. Confucius, as I have tried to show you, had all Mysticism divinely behind and backing him, though he said little about it; Mencius, I think, had none. Mencius remade a Confucius of his own, with the mystical elements lacking. He saw in him only a social reformer and teacher of ethics; and it is the easiest thing in the world to see Confucius only through Mencian spectacles.
I would not fall into the mistake of undervaluing Mencius. He was a very great man; and the work he did for China was enormous, and indispensable. You may call him something between the St. Paul and the Constantine of Confucianism. Unlike Constantine, he was not a sovereign, to establish the system; but he hobnobbed with sovereigns, and never allowed them to think him their inferior; and it was he who made of Confucianism a system that could be established. Unlike St. Paul, he did not develop the inner side of his Master's teachings; but he so popularized them as to ensure their triumph. He took the ideas of Confucius, such of them as lay within his own statesmanlike and practical scope of vision, restated and formulated them, and made of them what became the Chinese Constitution. A brave and honest thinker, essentially a man of action in thought, he never consciously deteriorated or took away from Confucius' doctrine. It is more as if some great President or Prime Minister, at some future time, should suddenly perceive that H.P. Blavatsky had brought that which would save his nation; and proceed to apply that saving thing, as best he might, in the field of practical politics and reform—or rather to restate it in such a way that (according to his view) it might be applied.
He put the constituents parts of society in order of importance as follows: the People; the Gods; the Sovereign: and this has been a cardinal principle in Chinese polity. He saw clearly that the Chow dynasty could never be revived; and arrived at the conclusion that a dynasty was only sacred while it retained the "mandate of heaven." Chow had lost that; and therefore it was within the rights of Heaven, as you may say, to place its mandate elsewhere;—and within the rights of the subject—as the logic of events so clearly proved Chow had lost the mandate—to rebel. Confucius had hoped to revivify Chow—had begun with that hope, at any rate: Mencius hoped to raise up some efficient sovereign who should overturn Chow. The Right of Rebellion, thus taught by him, is another fundamental Chinese principle. It works this way: if there was discontent, there was misrule; and it was the fault of the ruler. If the latter was a local magistrate, or a governor, prefect, or viceroy, you had but to make a demonstration, normally speaking, before his yamen: this was technically a 'rebellion' within Mencius' meaning; and the offending authority must report it to Pekin, which then commonly replaced him with another. (It would get to Pekin's ears anyway; so you had better—and ususally did—report it yourself.) If the offender was the Son of Heaven, with all his dynasty involved— why, then one had to rebel in good earnest; and it was to be supposed that if Heaven had really given one a mandate, one would win. The effect was that, although nominally absolute, very few emperors have dared or cared to fly quite in the face of Confucius, or Mencius, of their religio-political system, of the Board of Censors whose business it was to criticize the Throne, and of a vast opinion.
There was the tradition an emperor ruled for the people. The office of ruler was divine; the man that held it was kept an impersonality as much as possible. He changed his name on coming to the throne, and perhaps several times afterwards: thus we speak of the great emperors Han Wuti and Tang Taitsong; who might, however, be called more exactly, Liu Ch'e, who was emperor during the period Wuti of the Han Dynasty; Li Shihmin, who filled the throne during the T'ang period called Taitsong. Again, there was the great idea, Confucio-Mencian, that the son of Heven must be 'compliant': leading rather than driving. He promulgated edicts, but they were never rigidly enforced; a certain voluntaryism was allowed as to the carrying out of them: if one of them was found unsuccessful, or not to command popular approval, another could be—and was—issued to modify or change it. So that the whole system was far removed from what we think of as an 'Oriental Despotism'; on the contrary, there was always a large measure of freedom and self-government. You began with the family: the head of that was its ruler, and responsible for order in his little realm. But he governed by consent and affection, not by force. Each village-community was self-governing; the headman in it taking the place of the father in the family; he was responsible for order, so it was his business to keep the people happy;—and the same principle was extended to fit the province, the viceroyalty, the empire. Further, there was the absence of any aristocracy or privileged class; and the fact that all offices were open to all Chinamen (actors excepted)—the sole key to open it being merit, as attested by competitive examinations.
The system is Mencian; the inspiration behind it from Confucius. It is the former's working out of the latter's superb idea of the li.
The Mencian system has broken down, and been abolished. It had grown old, outworn and corrupt. But it was established a couple of centuries before that of Augustus, and has been subject to the same stress of time and the cycles; and only broke down the other day. Time will wear out anything made by man. There is no garment, but the body will out-grow or out-wear it; no body, but the soul will outlive it and cast it away. Mencius, inspired by his Master Confucius, projected a system that time took two thousand years and more to wear out in China. It was one that did much or everything to shield the people from tyranny. Whether a better system has been devised, I do not know; but should say not—in historical times. As to the inspiration behind it—well, lest you should doubt the value of Confucius, compare the history of Europe with that of China. We have disproportioned ideas, and do not see these things straight. The Chinese Empire was founded some two centuries before the Roman: both composed of heterogeneous elements. Both, after about four centuries, fell; but China, after about four centuries more, came together and was great again. Fifteen hundred years after Ts'in Shi Hwangti had founded China, her manvantara then having ended, and her whole creative cycle run through, she fell to the Mongols. Fifteen hundred years after Julius Caesar had founded his empire, the last wretched remnant of it fell to the Turks. But China first compelled her conquerors to behave like Chinamen, and then, after a century, turned them out. The Turks never became Greek or Roman, and so far have not quite been turned out. The roman empire disappeared, and never reunited;—that is what has been the matter with Europe ever since. Europe, in her manvantara, has wasted three parts of her creative force in wars and disunion. But China, even in her pralaya, became a strong, united power again under the Mings (1368-1644)—the first of them—a native dynasty. Conquered again, now by the Manchus, she mader her conquerors behave like Chinamen,—imposed on them her culture;—and went forth under their banners to conquer. The European pralaya (630-1240) was a time barren of creation in art and literature, and in life uttterly squalid and lightless The Chinese pralaya, after the Mongol Conquest, took a very long time to sink into squalidity. The arts, which had died in Europe long before Rome fell, lived on in China, though with ever-waning energy, through the Mongol and well into the Ming time: the national stability, the force of custom, was there to carry them on. What light, what life, what vigor was there in Rome or Constantinople a century and a half after Alaric or Heraclius? But Ming Yunglo, a century and a half after the fall of Sung, reigned in great splendor; sent his armies conquering to the Caspian, and his navies to the conquest of Ceylon, the discovery of Africa, the gathering in of the tribute of the Archipelago and the shores of the Indian Ocean. Until the end of the eighteenth century the minor arts and crafts—pottery and bronzes—of which there was nothing to speak of in Europe in the corresponding European age—were flourishing wonderfully; and in the seventeenth and eighteeenth centuries, under Kanghi and Kienlung, China was once more a great military power. She chased and whipped the Goorkhas down through the Himalays and into India, only twenty years before England fought difficult and doubtful campaigns with those fierce little mountaineers. You may even say she has been better off in her pralaya, in many ways, and until recently, than most of Europe has been in most of her manvantara. In Kienlung's reign, for example (1735-1795) there were higher standards of life, more security, law, and order, than in the Europe of Catherine of Russia, Frederick the Great, Louis XV and the Revolution, and the English Georges. There was far less ferment of the Spirit, true; less possibility of progress;—but that is merely to say that China was in pralaya, Europe in high manvantara. The explanation is that a stability had been imparted to that Far Eastern civilization, which Europe has lacked altogether; whose history, for all its splendid high- lights, has had thousands of hideous shadows; has not been so noble a thing as we tacitly and complacently assume; but a long record of wars, confusions, disorder, and cruelities, with only dawning now the possibility of that union which is the first condition of true progress, as distinguished from the riot of material inventions and political experiments that has gone by that name.—But now, back to Mencius again.
In all things he tried to follow Confucius; beginning early by being born in the latter's own district of Tsow in Shantung, and having a woman in ten thousand for his mother;—she has been the model held up to all Chinese mothers since. He grew up strong in body and mind, thoughtful and fearless; a tireless student of history, poetry, national institutions, and the lives of great men. Like Confucius, he opened a school, and gathered disciples about him: but there was never the bond of love here, that there had been between Confucius and Tse Lu, Yen Huy, and the others. These may have heard from their Master the pure deep things of Theosophy; one would venture the statement that none of Mencius' following heard the like from him. He saw in Confucius that which he himself was fitted to be, and set out to become. He went from court to court, and everywhere, as a great scholar, was received with honor. (You will note as one more proof of an immemorial culture, that then, as now the scholar, as such, was at the very top of the social scale. There was but one word for scholar and official.)—He proposed, like Confucius, that some king should make him his minister; and like Confucius, he was always disappointed. But in him we come on none of the soft lights and tones that endear Confucius to us; he fell far short of being Such a One. A clear, bold mind, without atmosphere, with all its lines sharply defined…. he made free to lecture the great ones of the earth, and was very round with them, even ridiculing them at his pleasure. He held the field for Confucius—not the Taoist, but the Mencian Confucius—against all comers; smote Yang Chu the Egotist hip and thigh; smote gentle Mo Ti, the Altruist; preached fine and practical ethics; and had no patience with those dreamers of the House of Laotse.—A man sent from the Gods, I should say, to do a great work; even though—
And then there was that dreamer of dreams, of Butterfly dreams,— subtle mystical humorous Chwangtse: how could it be otherwise than that clear-minded clarion-throated Philosopher Mang should afford him excellent play? Philosopher Mang (Philosopher of the Second Class, so officially entitled), in the name of his Master K'ung Ch'iu, fell foul of Dreamer Chwang; how could it be otherwise than that Dreamer Chwang should aim his shafts, not a Mang merely, but (alas!) at the one whose name was always on Mang's lips?—"Confucius says, Confucius says, Confucius says"— cries Philosopher Mang.—"Oh hang your Confucius!" thinks Chwang the Mystic; "let us have a little of the silence and splendor of the Within!" (Well, Confucius would have said the same thing, I think.) "Let me tell you a tale," says Chwang; and straight goes forward with it.
"It was the time of the autumn floods. Every stream poured into the river, which swelled in its turbid course. The banks were so far apart that from one to the other you could not tell a cow from a horse.
"Then the Spirit of the River laughed for joy that all the beauty of the earth was gathered to himself. Down with the current he journeyed east, until he reached the Ocean. There looking eastward, and seeing no limit to its expanse of waves, his countenance changed. As he gazed out, he sighed, and said to the Spirit of the Ocean: 'A vulgar proverb says that he who has heard but a part of the truth thinks no one equal to himself. Such a one am I.
"'When formerly I heard people detracting from the learning of Confucius, or underrating the heroism of Po I. I did not believe. But now that I have looked on your inexhaustibility— alas for me had I not reached your abode! I should have been forever a laughing-stock to those of comprehensive enlightenment.'
"To which the Spirit of the Ocean answered: 'You cannot speak of ocean to a well-frog,—the creature of a narrower sphere. You cannot speak of ice to a summer insect,—the creature of a season. You cannot speak of Tao to a pedant; his scope is too restricted. But now that you have emerged from your narrow sphere, and have seen the great sea, you know your own insignificance, and I can speak of great principles.
"Have you never heard of the Frog of the Old Well? The Frog said to the Turtle of the Eastern Sea, 'Happy indeed am I! I hop on the rail around the well. I rest in the hollow of some broken brick. Swimming, I gather the water under my arms and shut my mouth tight. I plunge into the mud, burying my feet and toes. Not one of the cockles, crabs, or tadpoles I see around me is my match. Why do you not come, Sir, and pay me a visit?'"
"Now the Turtle of the Eastern Sea had not got its left leg down ere its right leg had stuck fast, so it shrank back and begged to be excused. It then described the sea, saying, 'A thousand leagues would not measure its breadth, nor a thousand fathoms its depth. In the days of Yu the Great there were nine years of flood out of ten; but this did not add to its contents. In the days of T'ang there were seven years of drought out of eight, but this did not narrow its span. Not to be affected by volume of water, not to be affected by duration of time—this is the happiness of the Eastern Sea.' At this the Frog of the Old Well was considerably astonished, and knew not what to say next. And for one whose knowledge does not reach to the positive-negative domain the attempt to understand me is like a mosquito trying to carry a mountain, or an ant to swim the Yellow River,—they cannot succeed."
If Chwangtse had lived before Mencius, or Mencius after Chwangtse, Chwangtse could have afforded to see Confucius in his true light, as Liehtse did; but the power and influence of the mind of Mencius were such that in his time there was no looking at the Master except through his glasses. We do not know what happened when Laotse and Confucius met; but I suspect it was very like what happened when Mr. Judge met Madame Blavatsky. But Butterfly Chwang, the rascal, undertook to let us know; and wrote it out in full. He knew well enough what would happen if he met Mencius; and took that as his model. He wanted Mencius to know it too. He itched to say to him, "Put away, sir, your flashy airs," and the rest; and so made Laotse say it to Confucius. It shows how large Philosopher Mang had come to loom, that anyone could attribute "flashy airs" to that great-hearted simple Gentleman K'ung Ch'iu. One thing only I believe in about that interview: Confucius' reputed speech on coming forth from it to his disciples:—"There is the Dragon; I do not know how he mounts upon the wind and rises about the clouds. Today I have seen Laotse, and can only compare him to the Dragon." He would have said that; it has definite meaning; the Dragon was the symbol of the spirit, and so universally recognised.—Confucius appears to have taken none of his disciples into the Library; and Confucianist writers have had nothing to say about the incident, except that it occurred, I believe. Chwangtse, and all Taoist writers after him, show Confucius taking his rating very quietly;—as indeed, he would have done, had Laotse been in a mood for quizzing. For Confucius never argued or pressed his opinions; where his words were not asked for and listened to, he retired. But it is not possible the recognition should have been other than mutual: the great Laotse would have known a Man when he saw him. I like the young imperturbable K'ung Jung, precocious ten-year-old of some seven centuries later. His father took him up to the capital when the Dragon Statesman Li Ying was the height of his power; and the boy determined on gaining an interview with Li. He got admission to the latter's house by claiming blood-relationship. Asked by the great man wherein it lay, says he very sweetly: "Your ancestor Laotse and my ancestor Confucius were friends engaged in the search for truth; may we not then be said to be of the same family?"— "Cleverness in youth," sneered a bystander, "does not mean brilliancy in later life."—"You, Sir," says Ten-years-old, turning to him, "must have been a very remarkable boy." *
———- * Giles: Chinese Literature. ———-
The truth is, both Mencius and Chwangtse stood a step lower and nearer this world than had the two they followed: whose station had been on the level platform at the top of the altar. But Mencius descending had gone eastward; Chwangtse towards the west.
He was all for getting at the Mean, the Absolute Life, beyond the pairs of opposites;—which is, indeed, the central Chinese thought, Confucian or Taoist, the raison d'etre of Chinese longevity, and the saving health of China. But unfortunately he —Chwangtse—did not see that his own opposite, Philosopher Mang, was driving him an inch or two away from the Middle Line. So, with a more brilliant mind (a cant phrase that!) he stands well below Laotse; just as Mencius stands below K'ung Ch'iu. The spiritual down-breathing had reached a lower plane: soon the manvantara was to begin, and the Crest-Wave to be among the black-haired People. For all these Teachers and Half-Teachers were but early swallows and forerunners. Laotse and Confucius had caught the wind at its rising, on the peaks where they stood very near the Spirit; Chwangtse and Mangtse caught it in the region of the intellect: the former in his wild valley, the latter on his level prosaic plain. They are both called more daring thinkers than their predecessors; which is merely to say that in them the Spirit figured more on the intellectual, less on its own plane. They were lesser men, of course. Mencius had lost Confucius' spirituality; Chwangtse, I think, something of the sweet sanifying influence of Laotse's universal compassion.
Well, now: three little tales from Chwangtse, to illustrate his wit and daring; and after then, to the grand idea he bequeathed to China.
"Chwangtse one day saw an empty skull, bleached, but still preserving its shape. Striking it with his riding-whip, he said: 'Was thou once some ambitious citizen whose inordinate yearnings brought him to this pass?—some statesman who plunged his country in ruin, and perished in the fray?—some wretch who left behind him a legacy of shame?—some beggar who died in the pangs of hunger and cold? Or didst thou reach this state by the natural course of old age?'
"He took the skull home, and slept that night with it under his head for a pillow, and dreamed. The skull appeared to him in his dream, and said: 'You speak well, Sir; but all you say has reference to the life of mortals, and to mortal troubles. In death there are none of these things. Would you like to hear about death?'
"Cwangtse, however, was not convinced, and said: 'Were I to prevail upon God to let your body be born again, and your bones and flesh be renewed, so that you could return to your parents, to your wife and to the friends of your youth—would you be willing?'
"At this the skull opened its eyes wide and knitted its brows and said: 'How should I cast aside happiness greater than that of a king, and mingle once again in the toils and troubles of mortality?'"
Here is the famous tale of the Grand Augur and the Pigs:—
"The Grand Augur, in his ceremonial robes, approached the shambles and thus addressed the Pigs:—
"'Why,' said he, 'should you object to die? I shall fattan you for three months. I shall discipline myself for ten days and fast for three. I shall strew fine grass, and place you bodily upon a carved sacrificial dish. Does not this satisfy you?
"'Yet perhaps after all,' he continued, speaking from the pigs' point of view, 'it is better to live on bran and escape the shambles…
"'No,' said he; speaking from his own point of view again. 'To enjoy honor when alive one would readily die on a war-shield or in the haeadsman's basket.'
"So he rejected the pigs' point of view and clung to his own. In what sense, then, was he different from the pigs?"
And here, the still more famous tale of the Sacred Tortoise:—
"Chwantse was fishing in the river P'u when the Prince of Ch'u sent two high officials to ask him to take charge of the administration.
"Chwangtse went on fishing, and without turning his head said: 'I have heard that in Ch'u there is a sacred tortoise which has been dead now some three thousand years. And that the prince keeps this tortoise carefully enclosed in a chest on the altar of his ancestral temple. Now if this tortoise had its choice, which would it prefer: to be dead, and have its remains venerated; or to be alive, and wagging its tail in the mud?'
"'Sir,' replied the two officials, 'it would rather be alive, and wagging its tail in the mud.'
"'Begone!' cried Chwangtse. 'I too will wag my tail in the mud!'"
Well; so much for Butterfly; now for Chwang—and to introduce you to some of his real thought and teaching. You will not have shot so wide of the mark as to see in his story of the skull traces of pessimism: Chwantse had none of it; he was a very happy fellow; like the policeman in the poem,
"…..a merry genial wag Who loved a mad conceit."
But he was by all means and anyhow for preaching the Inner as against the outer. Yet he did not dismiss this world, either, as a vain delusion and sorrowful mockery;—the gist of his teaching is this: that men bear a false relation to the world; and he desired to teach the true relation. He loved the Universe, and had a sublime confidence in it as the embodiment and expression of Tao; and would apply this thought as a solvent to the one false thing in it: the human personality, with its heresy of separateness. Dissolve that,—and it is merely an idea; in the words of a modern philosopher, all in the mind,—and you have the one true elixir flowing in your veins, the universal harmony; are part of the solemn and glorious pageant of the years. The motions of the heavenly bodies, the sweetness of Spring and the wistfulness of Autumn, flaunting Summer and Winter's beauty of snow—all are parcel of yourself, and within the circle of your consciousness. Often he rises to a high poetic note;—it is largely the supreme beauty of his style which keeps his book, so thouroughly unorthodox, still alive and wagging its tail among his countrymen. Chwangtse will not help you through the examinations; but he is mighty good to read when your days of competing are over; as I think it is Dr. Giles who says.