When Yen Hui went east to Ch’i, Confucius looked worried. Tzŭ-kung left his mat to inquire
‘Your disciple ventures to ask, sir, why you look so worried about Hui going east to Ch’i?’
‘A good question of yours, that! Formerly Kuan-tzŭ said something which I think very good: “A bag too small cannot hold something big, a well-rope too short cannot draw from deep down.” Such a man recognises that one is destined to accomplish only so much, is shaped to be fit only for so much; no matter how, it cannot be increased or reduced. I am afraid that Hui will speak with the Marquis of Ch’i about the Way of Yao, Shun and the Yellow Emperor, and emphasise his points with sayings of Sui-jen and Shen-nung. The Marquis will search within himself for something he will not find. Not finding it, he will be perplexed; and when the man you are advising is perplexed, you die.
‘Besides, don’t tell me that you haven’t heard the story? – Once a seabird came down in the suburbs of Lu. The Marquis of Lu welcomed and banqueted it in the shrine of his ancestors, performed the music of the Nine Shao to entertain it, provided the meats of the T’ai-lao sacrifice as delicacies for it. Then the bird stared with dazed eyes and worried and pined, did not dare to eat one slice, did not dare to drink one cup, and within three days it died. This was caring for a bird with the cares proper to oneself, not to a bird. Someone who cared for it with the cares proper to a bird would let it perch in the deep woods, play on the shoals, float in the Yangtse and the Lakes, eat loaches and minnows, come down with the column as it flies in formation to veer with the line of least resistance and settle. There was nothing that bird hated more to hear than a human voice, what would it make of all our hubbub? Perform the music of the Hsien-ch’ih and the Nine Shao in the wilds of Lake Tung-t’ing, and when the birds hear it they fly up, when the beasts hear it they run off, when the fish hear it they plunge deep, when humans hear it they gather in a circle to watch. A fish by staying in the water lives, a man by staying in the water dies; that they necessarily differ from each other is because their needs are inherently different.
Therefore the former sages
Did not expect people to be one in their abilities,
Did not set them the same tasks.
The name stayed confined to the substance,
The duty was fitted to the occasion.
It is this that is meant by “as branches reaching all the way out, as spokes held firm at the centre”.’ (Chuang-tzŭ, chapter 18)
The bait is the means to get the fish where you want it, catch the fish and you forget the bait. The snare is the means to get the rabbit where you want it, catch the rabbit and you forget the snare. Words are the means to get the idea where you want it, catch on to the idea and you forget about the words. Where shall I find a man who forgets about words, and have a word with him? (Chuang-tzŭ, chapter 26)
The ‘Way’ is the Power’s arranging in a layout. ‘Life’ is the emanation from the Power. The ‘nature’ of something is its resources for life. The motions from our nature are called ‘doing’. Doing becoming contrived is called ‘failing’.
‘Knowing’ is being in touch with something, ‘knowledge’ is a representation of it. As for what knowledge does not know, it is as though you were peering in one direction.
It is what sets moving on the course which is inevitable that is called the ‘Power’. It is the motions being from nowhere but yourself that is called being in ‘order’. The names contrast but the substances take their courses from each other. (Chuang-tzŭ, chapter 23)
NOTE To organise basic concepts in a system of definitions may seem an un-Taoistic enterprise, but we have already noticed one instance (p. 156 above). Here the model seems to be Mohist. The later Mohists developed chains of definitions, deriving the circle from the concept of similarity and the moral virtues from the opposites ‘desire’ and ‘dislike’.50 From a couple of references to ‘what the sage desires and dislikes beforehand on behalf of men’ and to the circle as ‘known beforehand‘,51 it seems that they thought of the definitions as establishing what we would call ‘a priori’ knowledge. The Taoist attempts to construct a similar chain deriving his concepts, not from ‘desire’ and ‘dislike’, but from the ‘inevitable’, the unchosen, the motion in which thought does not intervene.
The sentences about knowledge are outside the chain. ‘Knowing’ (which is a good thing) is being in touch with things as they come and go, ‘knowledge’ (which is a bad thing) is preserving fixed representations of them. When Taoists speak of ‘what knowledge does not know’51 the point, we are told, is that knowledge immobilises as though we remained peering in one direction. This section is directly related to the definitions and illustrations in the Mohist Canons A 3–6: ‘The “wits” are the capability…. Like the eyesight.’ ‘ “Knowing” is being in touch with something … Like seeing.’ ‘ “Thinking” is seeking it … Like peering. ‘ “Understanding” is being clear about it…. Like seeing clearly.’
The conductor of the sacrifice to the ancestors donned his black square-cut vestments and looked down through the bars of the pen to give advice to the pigs:
‘What is your objection to dying? For three months I shall fatten you up, for ten days do austerities, for three days fast; I shall spread white reeds and lay out your shoulders and rumps on an engraved stand. Will you agree to it then?’
Giving counsel on the pigs’ behalf you would say: ‘The best thing for them is to feed them husks and dregs and keep them inside the bars of the pen.’ But when you take counsel on your own behalf, if alive you will be honoured with a carriage and cap of office, and dead you can get to be on top of a painted hearse inside a richly ornamented coffin, you’ll agree to it. What on the pigs’ behalf you would refuse, on your own behalf you will accept. Where’s the difference between you and the pigs? (Chuang-tzŭ, chapter 19)
Duke Huan went hunting in the lowlands with Kuan Chung as his charioteer, and saw a sprite there. The Duke clutched Kuan Chung’s hand.
‘Did you see that?’
‘I didn’t see anything.’
When the Duke got back he was raving and fell ill, and did not come out for several days. One of the knights of Ch’i, Huang-tzŭ Kao-ao, said to him
‘It is Your Grace who is wounding himself, how could a sprite wound Your Grace? If energies which have congested blow away and do not return to the body, one is enfeebled; if they rise high and won’t come down, it makes one irritable; if they sink low and won’t go up, it makes one forgetful; if they settle mid-way, at the heart, one falls ill.’
‘If that’s so, do sprites exist at all?’
‘They do. In the ditch there’s Li, in the stove there’s Chi. In the rubbish-heap inside the door lives Lei-t’ing. Under the north-east corner Pei-a and Kuei-lung go hopping about, and, as for the north-west corner, Yi-yang lives down below there. In the water there’s Wang-hsiang, in the hills Hsin, in the mountains K’uei, in the moors P’ang-huang, and in the lowlands Wei-yi.’
‘May I ask what Wei-yi looks like?’
‘Wei-yi is in girth no bigger than a wheel-hub but is as long as a carriage-shaft, he wears a purple coat and scarlet hat. He’s an ugly-looking thing, and when he hears the noise of a thundering carriage he supports his head with both hands and stands straight up. The man who sees him is on the verge of becoming overlord of the empire.’
Duke Huan smiled with delight.
‘That’s the one I saw.’
Then straightening coat and cap he sat down beside Huang-tzŭ, and before the day was out had not noticed that his sickness was gone. (Chuang-tzŭ, chapter 19)
NOTE In case the reader wishes to search for these creatures round the house, here are descriptions by commentators, from between the third and seventh centuries AD. ‘The daemon of the stove looks like a beautiful girl, wears a red dress, its name is Chi.’ ‘Kuei-lung looks like a small boy, 1 foot 4 inches high, in a black coat, red headscarf, and big cap, wears a sword and grasps a spear.’ ‘Yi-yang has a leopard’s head and horse’s tail – some say a dog’s head.’ ‘Wang-hsiang: it looks like a small boy, red and black in colour, with red claws, big ears, long arms.’ ‘Hsin: it looks like a dog with horns, body tattooed in the five colours.’ ‘K’uei: as big as an ox, looks like a drum, walks on one foot.’ ‘P’ang-huang: it looks like a snake, with two heads, tattooed in the five colours.’
When Confucius travelled west to Wey, Yen Hui asked Music-master Chin:
‘What do you think of our master’s travels?’
‘A pity! Such trouble he’ll be getting into!’
‘Why so?’
‘Before the straw dogs are laid out for the sacrifice, they are packed in bamboo boxes wrapped in patterned brocades, and the medium and the priest fast and do austerities before escorting them. But once the sacrifice is over, nothing remains for them but to have their heads and spines trampled by the passers-by, or be gathered as fuel for the kitchen stove. If you were to pick them up again, put them in the boxes, wrap them in the brocades, should some traveller or townsman doze in their shade, even if he did not dream he would surely be often troubled in his sleep. Now your master has indeed picked up the straw dogs once laid out by the former kings, and gathered disciples who on his travels and at home doze in their shade. So when a tree was chopped down over him in Sung, and he had to hide his tracks in Wey, and was in such straits in Shang and Chou, weren’t these his dreams? When he was besieged between Ch’en and Ts’ai and for seven days did not eat cooked food, and death and life were next-door neighbours, wasn’t that his troubled sleep?
‘On water it is most convenient to travel by boat, on dry land in a carriage; if you were to try to push a boat on land because it goes so well on water, you could last out the age without travelling an inch. Are not the past and the present his water and his dry land? And Chou and Lu his boat and carriage? At the present day, to have an urge to get the institutions of Chou running in Lu is like pushing a boat on dry land, there’s no result for all your labour, you’re certain to bring disaster on yourself. He has never known about the turns which have no fixed direction, about being unrestricted in responding to things. Besides, don’t tell me that you have never seen a well-sweep? Pull and it points down, let go and it points up. The pulling is by the man, it isn’t it that pulls the man, so whether up or down it cannot be blamed by the man.
‘Therefore in the rites and duties, laws and measures, of the Three Highnesses and the Five Emperors, what mattered was not having them the same but having things in order. So if you want an analogy for their rites and duties, laws and measures, aren’t they like the cherry-apple, pear, orange and pumelo? The flavours contrast but all are approved by the mouth. Just so a rite, duty, law or measure is something which alters in response to the times.
‘Now suppose you take an ape and dress him in the robes of the Duke of Chou, he will surely bite and gnaw, tug and tear, restless until he has ripped everything off. When you observe the differences between past and present, they are as different as an ape and the Duke of Chou. Just so when Hsi Shih had heartburn and was scowling at the neighbours, the ugliest woman in the neighbourhood saw it and thought she looked beautiful, and after getting home she too pounded herself on the breast and scowled at the neighbours. When the rich men of the neighbourhood saw her they shut their doors tight and would not go out, when poor men saw her they snatched their wives and children by the hand and hurried away. She knew the scowl was beautiful but not why it was beautiful. A pity! Such trouble he’ll be getting into!’ (Chuang-tzŭ, chapter 14)