Sacred Books of the East Vol. 40 - Taoism Vol. 2

{fn. 1. This is the secret of the Tâo.} {fn. 2. The last member of this sentence is the reading adopted by Wû Khäng towards the conclusion of the thirty-ninth chapter of the Tâo Teh King, instead of the common {img 00300}.} {p. 4} nowhere! How imperceptible and vast!--there is no visible image of it! All things in all their variety grow from this Inaction. Hence it is said, 'Heaven and Earth do nothing, and yet there is nothing that they do not do{fr. 1}.' But what man is there that can attain to this inaction? 2. When Kwang-dze's wife died, Hui-dze went to condole with him, and, finding him squatted on the ground, drumming on the basin{fr. 2}, and singing, said to him, 'When a wife has lived with her husband, and brought up children, and then dies in her old age, not to wail for her is enough. When you go on to drum on this basin and sing, is it not an excessive (and strange) demonstration?' Kwang-dze replied, 'It is not so. When she first died, was it possible for me to be singular and not affected by the event? But I reflected on the commencement of her being{fr. 3}. She had not yet been born to life; not only had she no life, but she had no bodily form; not only bad she no bodily form, but she had no breath. During the intermingling of the waste and dark chaos{fr. 3}, there ensued a change, and there was breath; another change, and there was the bodily form; another change, and there came birth