Chuang-Tzǔ: The Inner Chapters

There are three dialogues in Chuang-tzŭ which share the theme of the ‘Great Man’ (ta jen) and his ‘Great Scope’ (ta fang), his breadth of vision. We shall call them the ‘Autumn floods’, the ‘Know-little’, and the ‘Snail’. The first two, which are the longer and philosophically the more interesting, are so alike in phrasing as well as thought that we need not hesitate to ascribe them to one author, who probably wrote the ‘Snail’ dialogue as well. As for his date, he once pairs the abdications of the pre-dynastic emperor Yao and of King K’uai of Yen in 316 BC as ‘former’ events,¹⁹ so that he can hardly be earlier than the late third if not the second century BC. There are several other passages related to the three dialogues – in particular three expositions of respectively the ‘integrity’, the ‘teaching’ and the ‘conduct’ of the Great Man – which, though scattered over different chapters, belong together and have the look of fragments broken off the end of the mutilated ‘Autumn floods’ dialogue. It would seem that the Great Man and his Great Scope are the slogans of a particular tendency in Taoism. The ‘Snail’ dialogue actually puts the Great Man above the sage.²⁰ In the ‘Autumn floods’ the river god seeking instruction from the sea god Jo expresses the fear, ‘If I do not come for lessons at your gate I shall be a laughing-stock for ever in the School of Great Scope.’²¹

The most striking characteristic of these sections is a trust in the intellect which might be thought quite un-Taoist. ‘Autumn floods’ and ‘Know-little’ are sustained expositions of a coherent metaphysical system. Except at certain rhetorical climaxes there is none of the usual Taoist play with ambiguity and paradox. Remarkably, the word ‘knowledge’ is always used in a good sense. That this rationalising tendency made the Great Man philosophy suspect to some other Taoists is confirmed by a single example of the term outside the three dialogues and the related passages. In the exuberant attack on knowledge which introduces the chapter ‘Knowledge roams north,’²² personified Knowledge requests and receives from the Yellow Emperor a verbal exposition of the Way, in which it is declared that only the Great Man easily returns to the root of things. But the Yellow Emperor then repudiates his own account by adding that he and Knowledge are both remote from the Way precisely because they know about it. Here “Great Man” serves as a catch-phrase to identify a too intellectual type of Taoism.

The basis of the ‘Great Man’ metaphysic is the distinction between finite and infinite. We can count finite things, name them, sort them, and establish the ‘patterns’ (li) in which they are organised. But the whole out of which we divide them is infinite, nameless, called the ‘Way’ only by extending to it a name from the finite, just as we use the word wan, ‘myriad’ (in Chinese as in English primarily the number 10,000), for an indefinitely large number. Within the realm of the finite we can ask whether an event has some cause or agent or has none, but it is a mistake to extend the question to the cosmic process as a whole, since the whole transcends even the distinction between Something and Nothing.²³ (The philosophers Chi Chen and Chieh-tzŭ mentioned as rivals on this issue unfortunately left no extant writings.)

The Great Man, by identifying himself with the whole, widens his perspective to a full view of everything, with the result that he sees finite things in proportion, as only relatively great or small, good or bad. In this relativism, as in the treatment of infinity, one may suspect some influence of the Sophists. We have noticed ²⁴ that although Chuang-tzŭ derides the Sophist Hui Shih he owes him a debt. But although Taoists might be impressed by Hui Shih’s arguments for the unreality of distinctions, they must always have detested the Sophists such as Kung-sun Lung who took the opposite course, of distinguishing what to common sense is the same. This was known as ‘parting the hard from the white’, and the Inner chapters use chien pai ‘hard and white’, as a contemptuous term for logic (we translate it by ‘chop-logic’²⁵). It is interesting to find both the great Sophists making personal appearances in the present cycle. In the ‘Snail’ dialogue a Great Man who discourses on infinity is introduced to court by Hui Shih in person, from which we may infer that Hui Shih is respected, but not acknowledged as himself a Great Man. On the other hand, in another story Kung-sun Lung is turned into a laughing-stock, baffled and humiliated when he hears the teaching of Chuang-tzŭ.²⁶

At the climax of ‘Autumn floods’, after an apparently total dismissal of all value judgements, the disoriented inquirer raises the question (never put directly anywhere else in the book) ‘What is there to value in the Way?’ The answer is almost disappointingly moderate and sensible. If you possess the Way you are aware of the ‘patterns’, the local regularities of the cosmic order, which enables you to weigh things justly against each other and avoid harm. Here a Westerner interested in moral philosophy will wonder how he is expected to weigh things except in relation to those standards of value which Taoists refuse to recognise. We touched on this issue in the Introduction.²⁷ The Great Man’s ultimate motions are spontaneous, from Heaven and not from man. We can conceive his weighing of things not as evaluation but simply as an objective estimation of their greater or lesser effects on each other and on himself, so that he will respond to them in full awareness of their interrelations and consequences. The only value judgement assumed, therefore, is that aware reactions are better than unaware ones, which is no more than preferring truth to falsehood, reality to illusion. In Western terms it is a judgement outside moral philosophy altogether, yet it will recommend the sage to act on one kind of incipient reaction rather than another, and therefore provide him with a principle of action.

The floods of autumn came with the season, a hundred streams poured into the Yellow River, the rushing current was so great that from between the cliffs and islets of the two shores you could not tell a cow from a horse. Then the Lord of the River was exuberantly pleased with himself, thinking that everything beautiful in the world was within himself. Following the current he voyaged eastwards, until he came to the North Sea. He looked out towards the east, and did not see an end to the water. Then for the first time the Lord of the River screwed up his face. Peering into the distance towards Sea-god Jo he sighed

‘There’s a proverb, “At the hundredth thing he heard about the Way he thought there was nobody like him”; it is me that’s about. Then too, I used to hear men belittle the fame of Confucius and decry the dutifulness of Po Yi, and never believed them; but now that I perceive how immense you are, if I do not come for lessons at your gate it will be the worse for me, I shall be a laughing-stock for ever in the School of the Great Scope.’

‘You can’t talk to a frog in a well about the sea’, said Jo of the North Sea, ‘because it is cramped inside its hole. You can’t talk to the insects of summer about ice, because they are stuck fast in their own season. You can’t talk to hole-in-the-corner scholars about the Way, because they are constricted by their doctrines. Now that you have come out from your banks and have a view of the great sea, you have the good sense to be ashamed of yourself; it will be possible to talk to you about the grand pattern.

‘No waters in the world are greater than the sea. Though a myriad streams end up in it, on and on till who knows when, it does not fill; though it is draining away at Wei-lü, on and on who knows how long, it does not empty. Through spring and autumn it does not alter, it knows nothing of flood or drought. How far it surpasses the streams of the Yellow River and the Yangtse is beyond measuring or counting; and, if in spite of this I have never made much of myself, it is because I recognise that, having a body sheltered by heaven and earth and energies drawn from the Yin and Yang, within the compass of heaven and earth I am no more than a pebble or a bush on a great mountain. Belonging as I do among the lesser in comparison, what excuse would I have to make much of myself?

‘If you measure the Four Seas against heaven and earth, are they not like an anthill on the wide moors? If you measure the Middle Land against the Four Seas, is it not like a rice grain in a vast granary? As a term for the number of things we call them ‘myriad’, and mankind amounts to one of them. In the nine regions populated by men, where grain grows and ships and carriages pass, a man amounts to one of them. If you compare him to the ‘myriad things’, is he not like the tip of a hair on the body of a horse? What the Five Emperors abdicated, what the Three Kings fought over, what the benevolent man worries about, what the responsible man labours for, is no more than this. Po Yi by resigning it won himself a name, Confucius for talking about it was deemed a learned man; in thinking so much of themselves did not these men resemble you, when just now you thought yourself the greatest of the waters?’

‘In that case, is it allowable for me to judge heaven and earth great and the tip of a hair small?’

‘No. Throughout the realm of things, measuring has no limit, times have no stop, portions have no constancy, nothing whether ending or starting stays as it was. Therefore the wisest, because they have a full view of far and near, do not belittle the smaller or make much of the greater, knowing that measuring has no limit; because they have an assured comprehension of past and present, they are not disheartened by indefinite delay or on tiptoes for what is within reach, knowing that times have no stop; because they are discerning about cycles of waxing and waning, they are not pleased when they win or anxious when they lose, knowing that our portions have no constancy; because they are clear-sighted about our unvarying path, they do not rejoice in being alive or think it a calamity to die, knowing that nothing ending or starting can be kept as it was. Reckon up what a man knows; it does not compare with what he does not know. Or the time that he is alive; it does not compare with the time before he was born. He tries to use the smallest to exhaust the compass of the greatest, that is why he is lost and confused and incapable of finding himself. Seeing from this point of view, how do I know that the tip of a hair is enough to establish a standard for the most minute? Or that heaven and earth are enough to exhaust the compass of the greatest?’

‘Debaters of the age all say that the most quintessential has no shape at all, the greatest cannot be encompassed. Is this the truth of the matter?’

“When the great is seen from the viewpoint of the minute, some is out of sight; when the minute is seen from the viewpoint of the great, it is invisible. The quintessential is the small as it ceases to be discernible, the outlying is the great receding out of sight, therefore their differentiation is for convenience; it is a matter of the situation from which one is seeing. The quintessential and the massive we specify in things which do have shape. What has no shape at all, number cannot divide; what cannot be encompassed, number cannot exhaust. Those which can be sorted in words are the more massive among things; those which can be conveyed through ideas are the more quintessential among things. As for what words cannot sort or ideas convey, we do not specify anything in it as quintessential or massive.’

‘Beyond the realm of things, or within the realm of things, to what viewpoint must one attain if one is to find standards for noble and base, small and great?’

‘If we examine them in relation to the Way, things are neither noble nor base. If we examine them in relation to other things, they see themselves as noble and each other as base. If we examine them in relation to custom, the nobility or baseness does not depend on oneself.

‘Examining them in terms of degree, if assuming a standpoint from which it is great you see it as great, not one of the myriad things is not great; if assuming a standpoint from which you see it as small you see it as small, not one of the myriad things is not small. When you know that heaven and earth amount to a grain of rice, that the tip of a hair amounts to a hill or a mountain, the quantities of degree will be perceived.

‘Examining them in terms of achievements, if assuming a standpoint from which it has them you see it as having, not one of the myriad things does not have them; if assuming a standpoint from which it lacks them you see it as lacking, not one of the myriad things does not lack them. When you know that east and west are opposites yet cannot do without each other, portions in achievement will be decided.

‘Examining them in terms of inclinations, if assuming a standpoint from which it is right you see it as right, not one of the myriad things is not right; if assuming a standpoint from which it is wrong you see it as wrong, not one of the myriad things is not wrong. When you know that sage Yao and tyrant Chieh each thought himself right and the other wrong, the commitments behind the inclinations will be perceived.

‘In former times, Shun took the throne yielded by Yao and became Emperor, Chih took the throne yielded by K’uai and was ruined. T’ang and Wu fought for a throne and reigned, Po-kung fought for a throne and perished. Judging by these cases, the propriety of contending or deferring, the conduct of a Yao or a Chieh, will be noble at one time and base at another, and is not to be taken as a constant. A battering-ram is good for smashing down a wall, but not for stopping up a hole, which is to say that it is a tool with a special use. Hua-liu the thoroughbred horse gallops a thousand miles in a day, but for catching mice is not worth a wildcat or a weasel, which is to say that it has a special accomplishment. At night the horned owl will snatch a flea and discern the tip of a hair, but when it comes out in daytime it blinks its eyes and doesn’t see a mountain, which is to say that it has a special nature. If then we say “Why not take the right as our authority and do without the wrong, take the ordered as our authority and do away with the unruly”, this is failing to understand the pattern of heaven and earth, and the myriad things as they essentially are. It is as though you were to take heaven as your authority and do without earth, take the Yin as your authority and do without the Yang; that it is impracticable is plain enough. But still they go on telling us to do so, if not foolishly then dishonestly. There were special circumstances for the abdications of the Emperors and Kings, special circumstances for the successions of the Three Dynasties. Whoever misses the time and flouts the custom is called a usurper, whoever hits on the time and accords with the custom is called a dutiful man. Hush, hush, Lord of the River! How would you know which gate is noble or base, which school is small or great?’

‘If that is so, what shall I do and what shall I not do? On what final consideration am I to refuse or accept, prefer or discard?’

What shall we think noble, what shall we think base?
This is called drifting back to the source.
Don’t fix a sphere for your intent,
Or you’ll be too lame to walk the way.

What shall we belittle, what shall we make much of?
This is called letting their turns come round.
Don’t walk always on one course,
You’ll be at odds and evens with the Way.

Stern!
As a lord to his state, no private favours.
Bountiful!
As the earth-god at the sacrifice, no private blessings.
Flowing everywhere!
As the infinite in the four directions, fenced in nowhere.

Embrace the myriad creatures every one,
Which of them deserves to be helped ahead?
This is called being open in every direction.
All the myriad creatures in oneness even out.
Which of them is short, which of them long?

The Way has no end and no start,
There are things which die, things which are born.
Can’t be sure of a prime of life.
Now they empty, now they fill,
There’s no reserved seat for their shapes.

The years cannot be warded off,
Times cannot be made to stop.
Dwindling and growing, filling and emptying,
Whatever is an end is also a start.

This is how to tell of the range of the grand summing-up and to sort out the patterns of the myriad things. A thing’s life is like a stampede, a gallop, at every prompting it alters, there is never a time when it does not shift. What shall we do? What shall we not do? It is inherent in everything that it will transform of itself.’

‘Heaven and earth have supreme beauty but do not speak, the four seasons have clear standards but do not judge, the myriad things have perfect patterns but do not explain. The sage in fathoming the beauty of heaven and earth penetrates the patterns of the myriad things. Hence, in “the utmost man does nothing, the great sage does not initiate”, what is meant is that he has a full view of heaven and earth. Now whether in that most quintessential of the daemonic and illuminated or in those hundredfold transformations, already things live and die, are round or square, and no one knows their Root. While they proliferate as the myriad things, inherently from old it is what it was. The universe though so vast has never separated from within it, an autumn hair though so tiny depends on it to be formed. While everything in the world floats or sinks and never through its lifetime stays as it was, while Yin and Yang and four seasons pass through their cycles and each keeps its place in the sequence, in the obscurity it seems lost yet it is there, in the blur it is unshaped yet daemonic, and the myriad things are nourished by it without their knowing. It is this I call the fundamental Root, from which one can have a full view of Heaven.

‘Whoever knows the Way is sure of penetrating the patterns, whoever penetrates the patterns is sure to be clear-headed in weighing things, whoever is clear-headed in weighing things will not use other things to his own harm. The man of utmost Power

Fire cannot burn,
Water cannot drown,
Heat and cold cannot harm,
Beasts and birds cannot rend,

which is not to say that he ignores them, it means that since he is perspicacious about safety and danger, secure in fortune and misfortune, careful in approaching and shunning, none of them is able to harm him. As the saying goes, “Heaven is within, man is without’, and the Power goes on residing in what is from Heaven. If you know the workings of Heaven and of man, you

Stay rooted in Heaven,
Stay seated in the Power,
Advance, retreat, extend, retract,
And by returning to the crucial expound the highest.’

‘That oxen and horses have four feet, this we ascribe to Heaven; haltering horses’ heads and piercing oxen’s noses, this we ascribe to man. Hence it is said:

“Don’t let man extinguish Heaven,
Don’t let deliberation extinguish destiny.
Guard it carefully, don’t lose it.
Call it ‘returning to the genuine’.” ’

(Chuang-tzŭ, chapter 17)

NOTE The ‘Autumn floods’ dialogue seems to be mutilated towards the end. The following three paragraphs on the integrity, teaching and conduct of the Great Man are very probably remains of the conclusion.

‘Hence as the sea which accepts whatever flows east is of all things the greatest, so the sage joins together and encompasses heaven and earth and his bounty extends to the whole world, yet his identity and clan-name are unknown. Therefore alive he has no dignities, dead has no posthumous title, his deeds are unrecorded, his name is unestablished. It is this that is meant by the Great Man. One does not think well of a dog because it is good at barking nor of a man because he is good at talking, still less does one deem him greatest! Being deemed greatest is insufficient for being deemed the Great, still less for being deemed Power! The Great is comprehensive : nothing equals heaven and earth, but in what that we seek in them can the greatness be comprehensive? One who knows the comprehensive in greatness does not seek anything, nor does he lose or discard anything, for he refuses to take other things in exchange for himself. Being inexhaustible to self-inspection, without friction in according with the ancient, this is the integrity of the Great Man.’ (Chuang-tzŭ, chapter 24)

‘The teaching of the Great Man is as shape to shadow, as sound to echo. When asked he answers, and by drawing on everything in his own bosom he is the counterpart of the whole world. He goes on dwelling in the echoless, travelling in the directionless. Be finished with your restless journeying and returning, and roam out into the infinite; have no banks between which you go in and out, and every day renew your beginnings. In describing and sorting out shapes and bodies, remain joined with them in ultimate sameness. In ultimate sameness you have no self; and without a self from where would you get to have anything? The man who perceives something is the “gentleman” you were yesterday, the man who perceives Nothing is the friend of heaven and earth.’ (Chuang-tzŭ, chapter 11)

‘Therefore the conduct of the Great Man never takes a course harmful to others, yet he does not make much of being benevolent or generous; his motions are not prompted by gain, yet he does not despise the gatekeeper waiting for a tip. As for goods and possessions, he does not compete for them, yet he does not make much of deferring and renouncing; he works for them without relying on others, yet does not make much of living by his own efforts, and does not despise the greedy and corrupt. In conduct he differs from the vulgar, yet he does not make much of being eccentric and extraordinary; he lives as one of the common people, yet he does not despise the flatterers at court. The titles and salaries of the age are insufficient to induce him, its punishments and disgrace are insufficient to humiliate him. He knows that there can be no fixed portions for the right and the wrong, no fixed standards for the minute and the great. I have heard said:

The man of the Way is not heard of,
The utmost Power wins no gains,
The Great Man has no self,

which is to be at the final knot where all portions are tied up.’ (Chuang-tzŭ, chapter 17)

‘A ward or sector establishes it as customary to take ten surnames, a hundred given names together. It joins together the different and treats them as similar, disperses the similar and treats them as different. Now the fact that when you point out from each other the hundred parts of a horse you do not find the horse, yet there the horse is, tethered in front of you, is because you stand the hundred parts on another level to call them “horse”. For the same reason, a hill or mountain accumulates the low to become the high, the Yangtse and the Yellow River join together the small to become the big, and the Great Man joins together the partial to become impartial. This is why for influences from outside he has an appropriator which makes them his own, and he does not cling to one or another; and for outgoings from within he has a regulator which sets them in the true direction, so that others do not resist them. The four seasons have weathers proper to them; Heaven does not favour one rather than another, and so the year completes its course. The Five Bureaux have tasks proper to them; the prince is not partial to one or another, and so the state is ordered. Peace and war have abilities proper to them; the Great Man does not favour one or another, and so the Power in him is comprehensive. The myriad things have patterns proper to them; the Way is not partial to one or another, and so does not have the name of one rather than another, and so does not do one thing rather than another, and in doing nothing there is nothing it does not do.

‘Times have an end and a start, ages have their alterations and transformations. Fortune and misfortune arrive mingled inextricably, and in flouting one thing they suit something else. Each thing pursues the direction proper to it, and on its true course from one viewpoint is deviant from another. Compare them to the wide woodland, where all the hundred timbers have their own measures; or take in a full view of the great mountain, where trees and rocks share the same base. Such are what one means by “ward and sector” words.’

‘No. Suppose you were counting off the number of things you would not stop at one myriad, yet we specify them as the “myriad things”, for we use a high number as a label for what we are counting towards. Similarly, heaven and earth are the greatest of shapes, and Yin and Yang the greatest of energies, and “Way” covers both of them impartially; if we are utilising the greatest of them to label what we continue towards, that is allowable, but once we have it, can we treat it as comparable with anything else? Then if we use it in chopping to bits and disputing over alternatives, and treat it as analogous with the logician’s “dog” or “horse”, it will be much less adequate than they are.’

‘Within the four directions, inside the six-way-oriented, from what does it arise, that from which the myriad things are born?’

‘The Yin and Yang illuminate and cover over and regulate, the four seasons alternate and generate and kill. Then desire and dislike, inclination and aversion, spring up in turn; then by the coupling of male and female existence is perpetuated.

As safety and danger change places,
And fortune and misfortune generate each other,
And the easy and the urgent rub against each other,
Between cohering and dissolving each has its form.

These are the things of which names and substances can be recorded, of which even the most quintessential and least discernible can be noted.

Their mutual patterning as they follow in sequence,
Their mutual causation as their cycles recur,
At its limit turns back again,
At its end begins again.

These are the regularities which things possess, words exhaust, knowledge attains; they extend throughout but no further than the realm of things. The man who perceives the Way does not pursue them to where they vanish or explore the source from which they arise. This is the point where discussion stops.’

‘Of the proposals of the two schools, of Chi Chen that “Nothing does it” and of Chieh-tzŭ that “Something causes it”, which is just to the facts about them, which takes a one-sided view of their patterns?’

‘That a cock has crowed or a dog barked a man knows well enough but, however great his knowledge, he cannot in words trace back to the source out of which they have transformed, or measure in thought what they will become. If you chop up into smaller and smaller divisions, you end up with something too quintessential for grading, and something too big to be encompassed. With “Something causes it” and “Nothing does it” we never escape from the realm of things, yet persist in supposing that we have passed beyond it.

A “something which causes” is substance,
A “nothing which does” is a void.
There is a name, there is a substance
– Then it occupies a place with other things.
There is no name, there is no substance
– Then it occupies the void between things.
What can be said, what can be conceived,
Recedes from it farther the more you say.
What was before birth we could not forbid,
What comes after death we cannot halt.
It is not that death and life are far away
But the pattern of them cannot be perceived.

“Something causes it” and “Nothing does it” are suppositions to which we resort in doubt. If we examine something for the root from which it grew, its past is limitless; if we search it for its offshoots, their future never stops. The limitless which never stops is nothing sayable, yet shares its pattern with things. Something having caused or nothing having done is the root of saying, but ends and begins with the things themselves.

‘The Way cannot be treated as Something, or as Nothing either. “Way” as a name is what we borrow to walk it. “Something causes it” and “Nothing does it” are at single corners of the realm of things; what have they to do with the Great Scope? If you use words adequately, however much you say it is all about the Way; if inadequately, however much you say it is all about the realm of things. The ultimate both of the Way and of things neither speech nor silence is adequate to convey.

In what is neither speech nor silence
May discussion find its ultimate.’

(Chuang-tzŭ, chapter 25)

King Ying of Wei made a treaty with Mou, the Marquis T’ien of Ch’i. The Marquis broke the treaty, the King was angry and intended to send an assassin to stab him.

‘Your Majesty is a lord of ten thousand chariots, yet you are using a commoner to avenge you. I request that you provide me with 200,000 armoured men; I’ll attack Ch’i for you, take all its people captive, tie up all its oxen and horses, and get its lord so hot inside that boils break out on his back before we have even taken his capital. As for his general Chi, we’ll wait until he makes a run for it, then we’ll hit him from behind and smash his spine.’

‘If you are building an eighty-foot city wall, and when it is already some fifty feet high you pull it down, even the convicts would complain at the waste of their labour. We have had no war now for seven years, and have laid the foundations of the government of a True King. Kung-sun Yen is a troublemaker, don’t listen to him.’

‘The one so eloquent for invading Ch’i is a troublemaker, the one so eloquent against it is a troublemaker too, and to call them both troublemakers is to be another troublemaker.’

‘There is a thing called a snail,’ said Tai Chin-jen. ‘Does Your Majesty know about it?’

‘There is a state on the snail’s left horn called Bash, and another on its right horn called Bully. From time to time they have territorial disputes and go to war. The corpses lie on the battlefield in tens of thousands, and when the victors harry the retreat they do not turn back for fifteen days.’

‘Allow me to substantiate it for Your Majesty. Do you think there are limits in the four directions and above and below?’

‘Do you know how to let the heart roam in the limitless, so that when it returns among the lands within our ken they seem hardly to exist?’

‘Among the lands within our ken is Wei. Inside Wei is the city of Liang. Inside the city of Liang is Your Majesty. Between you and Bash and Bully, is there any distinction for disputation to make?’

When the guest went out the King was in a daze, as though he had lost his wits. Hui Shih presented himself.

‘He’s a Great Man,’ said the King. ‘ “Sage” is inadequate to describe him.’

‘A puff into a flute’, said Hui Shih, ‘is like a scream, a puff into the ring on the hilt of your sword is no more than a wheeze. Yao and Shun are praised by everyone; but to cite Yao and Shun in front of Tai Chin-jen would be like uttering a single wheeze.’ (Chuang-tzŭ, chapter 25)

‘I learned as a child the Way of the former kings, and grew up enlightened about the conduct of Goodwill and Duty. I joined together the same and the different, parted the hard from the white, found the not so to be so and the unallowable allowable, frustrated the cleverness of the hundred schools and wore out the eloquence of one speaker after another; I seemed to myself peerless in understanding. Now I have heard the words of Chuang-tzŭ, and am dazed with wonder at them. I don’t know whether it’s that I don’t think as coherently as he does or that I don’t know as much as he does. At present there isn’t a theme on which I would let a squawk out of my beak. May I ask the secret of it?’

Prince Mou, reclining elbow on armrest, took a long breath, looked up at the sky and smiled.

‘Did you never hear about the frog in the deep-down well? He said to the turtle of the East Sea “A happy life I have! I go out and hop up on to the well-rail, come in and rest on the wall where there’s a cracked tile. I have water to plunge in which comes right up to my armpits and holds up my chin, mud to wade in which submerges my feet so deep that you can’t see the heels. Look round at the mosquito larvae and crabs and the tadpoles, not one of them compares with me. And to have the water of an entire hole at your command, the joy of a deep-down well where you can do as you please, is the highest of distinctions. Why don’t you call now and then, sir, come in and see the view?”

‘Before the turtle of the East Sea got his left foot in, his right foot was already jammed. Then as he shuffled backwards he told him about the sea. “A distance of 1,000 miles gives no idea of its size, a height of 8,000 feet gives no impression of its depth. In the time of Yü there were nine floods in ten years, but its water was not swelled by them; in the time of T’ang, there were seven droughts in eight years, but its shores were not shrunk by them. Not to be pushed into shifting when durations are too short or long, not to be driven forward or backward when the water is too much or little, this is the great joy of living in the East Sea.” ’ Then the frog of the deep-down well was stunned with amazement to hear it, beside himself with bewilderment.

‘To resume, if, without the wit even to know the border between the right and the wrong, you wish to have a full view of what Chuang-tzŭ talks about, it’s like making a mosquito carry a mountain on its back, or a millipede gallop through the Yellow River; most certainly you are unequal to the burden. And someone who, without the wit to know how to evaluate supremely subtle words, makes the best of the advantages of his own time, is he not the frog in the deep-down well?

‘Moreover, that man treads the Yellow Springs and mounts the heights of the sky, has no north, no south, free to range in every direction, to merge in the immeasurable; he has no east, no west, begins in the black abyss, returns to the universal thoroughfare. But you in your bewilderment seek by scrutiny, grope by disputation, which is simply to use a tube to peer at the breadth of the sky, use an awl to poke into the depths of the earth; isn’t the means after all too petty? You had better be gone.

‘One thing more. Did you never hear of the boy of Shou-ling who mimicked the walk of Han-tan? He failed to catch on to the local knack, but lost his original gait too; all he could do was crawl home on his hands and knees. You had better be off now, or you will forget what you could originally do, lose your art.’

Kung-sun Lung’s mouth gaped and would not shut, his tongue lifted and would not come down, then he broke away and ran. (Chuang-tzŭ, chapter 17)

In the ultimate Beginning there is nothing, without anything, without a name. It is that from which the One arises; there is the One, but not yet shaped. When things get it as the means by which they are generated, we call it the ‘Power’.

In the not yet shaped there is division. The about to be so without anything intervening, this we call ‘destined’. By halts in its motions it generates things. Things completing the patterns of their generation, this we call ‘shaping’. Each shaped body, for the protection of the daemonic in it, has its own norm or rule; this we call its ‘nature’.

By the training of our nature we recover the Power. When Power is at its utmost, we accord with the Beginning. In according we attenuate, in attenuating we become Great, and blend together the twitters of the beaks. When the twitters of the beaks blend, we are blended with heaven and earth.

Their blending is a blurring,
You seem a fool, you seem obscure.
It is this one calls the Power from the depths.
In accord with the ultimate course.

(Chuang-tzŭ, chapter 12)

NOTE Except for a string of definitions in chapter 23 (translated p. 190 below) this is the most comprehensive attempt in Chuang-tzŭ to organise basic concepts in a cosmological scheme. It shares two traditional Chinese assumptions: (1) the generation of things from the ultimate root is not an event at the beginning of time but a continuing process; (2) the substantial condenses out of and dissolves into the insubstantial, the ch’i (for which our English equivalent is ‘energy’) which has the place in Chinese cosmology occupied by matter in ours. The basic metaphor behind the word ‘matter’ is of timber (Latin materia), inert and chopped up and put together by the carpenter; ch’i on the other hand is in the first place the breath, alternating between motion and stillness, extended in space but insubstantial, although condensing to become visible on a frosty day. The ch’i is conceived as becoming solider the more slowly it moves, with the more tenuous circulating within and energising the inert, for example as the ching ‘quintessence’, the vitalising fluid in the living body. In its ultimate degree of fineness we could think of it in Western terms as pure energy. Here this pure energy is identified, on the one hand with the Nothing in which things originate, on the other with the Power at the centre of the man which generates him and all those of his motions which are not chosen but ‘destined’, those which are on the point of coming about unless thought intervenes. By identifying himself with his most tenuous energies he assumes the larger view of the Great Man, and sees the utterances of philosophers (which Chuang-tzŭ compared to the twittering of birds, p. 52 above) as equally valid and invalid from their different viewpoints; his own language blends them all and seems nonsensical.

The identification of the ultimate with Nothing, although common in later Taoism, is surprising in Chuang-tzŭ, which generally seems to put the Way beyond the dichotomy of something and nothing, as both ‘without anything’ and ‘without nothing’ (cf. pp. 55, 103, 104, 153, 163f). Some scholars therefore prefer a different punctuation of the first sentence, which becomes “In the ultimate Beginning there is that which is without nothing, which is without a name.”

4Rationalising the Way: the ‘Great Man’

4
Rationalising the Way: the ‘Great Man’