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

{fn. 1. The famous archer of the Hsiâ dynasty, in the twenty-second century B.C.} {fn. 2. The name of Kung-sun Lung, the Lung Li-khän of Bk. XXI. par. 1.} {fn. 3. Only mentioned here. The statement of his disciple and his remark on it are equally obscure, though the latter is partially illustrated from the twenty-third, twenty-fourth, and other hexagrams of the Yih King.} {fn. 4. The sounds of the first and third notes of the Chinese musical scale, corresponding to our A and E. I know too little of music myself to pronounce further on Lû Kü's illustration.} {p. 100} from the normal arrangement of the five notes, the five-and-twenty strings would all have vibrated, without any difference of their notes, the note to which he had tuned them ruling and guiding all the others. Is your maintaining your view to be right just like this?' Hui-dze replied, 'Here now are the literati, and the followers of Mo, Yang, and Ping. Suppose that they have come to dispute with me. They put forth their conflicting statements; they try vociferously to put me down; but none of them have ever proved me wrong --what do you say to this?' Kwang-dze said, 'There was a man of Khî who cast away his son in Sung to be a gatekeeper there, and thinking nothing of the mutilation lie would incur; the same man, to secure one of his sacrificial vessels or bells, would have it strapped and secured, while to find his son who was lost, he would not go out of the territory of his own state:--so forgetful was he of the relative importance of things. If a man of Khû, going to another state as a lame gate-keeper, at midnight, at a time when no one was nigh, were to fight with his boatman, he would not be able to reach the shore, and he would have done what he could to provoke the boatman's animosity{fr. 1}.'