CHAPTER XXI.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Zhuangzi and Giles, Herbert Allen
Fu Hsi and the Yellow Emperor could not make friends of them. Life and death are great; yet these gave them no pang.
That would cause them to sacrifice truth.
How much less then rank and power!
"The souls of such men pierced through huge mountains as though they had been nothing; descended into the abyss without getting wet; occupied lowly stations without chagrin. They filled the whole universe; and the more they gave to others, the more they had themselves."
These last words occur in chapter lxxxi. of the Tao-Tê-Ching. It is, to say the least, strange to find them here in the mouth of Confucius without a hint as to their alleged Taoistic source.
The explanation is that when this episode was penned, that patchwork treatise which passes under the name of the Tao-Tê-Ching had not been pieced together.
The Prince of Ch'u was sitting with the Prince of Fan. By and by, one of the officials of Ch'u said, "There were three indications of the destruction of the Fan State."
"The destruction of the Fan State," cried the Prince of Fan, "did not suffice to injure my existence.
Which was already, by virtue of Tao, beyond the reach of mundane influences.
And while the destruction of the Fan State did not suffice to injure my existence, the preservation of the Ch'u State will not be enough to preserve yours.
You being without Tao.
From this point of view it will be seen that while we Fans have not begun to be destroyed, you Ch'us have not begun to exist."
A good specimen of the Fallacia Amphiboliæ.