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

{fn. 1. Elsewhere unknown.} {p. 232} all his talents, vast as they were, made nothing out; he pursued all subjects and never came back (with success). It was like silencing an echo by his shouting, or running a race with his shadow. Alas! {file "The Thâi-Shang Tractate of Actions and Their Retributions"} {p. 235} THE THÂI-SHANG TRACTATE OF ACTIONS AND THEIR RETRIBUTIONS{fr. 1}. 1. The Thâi-Shang (Tractate) says, 'There are no special doors for calamity and happiness (in men's {lq. The Thesis.} lot); they come as men themselves call them. Their recompenses follow good and evil as the shadow follows the substance{fr. 2}. 2. 'Accordingly, in heaven and earth{fr. 3} there are {lq. Machinery to secure retribution.} spirits that take account of men's transgressions, and, according to the lightness or gravity of their offences, take away from their term of life{fr. 4}. When that term is curtailed, men become poor and reduced, and meet with many sorrows and afflictions. All (other) men hate them; punishments and calamities attend them; good luck and occasions for felicitation shun them; {fn. 1. See vol. xxxix, pp. 38-40.} {fn. 2. This paragraph, after the first three characters, is found in the Zo Khwan, under the tenth and eleventh notices in the twenty-third year of duke Hsiang (B.C. 549),--part of an address to a young nobleman by the officer Min Dze-mâ. The only difference in the two texts is in one character which does not affect the meaning. Thus the text of this Tâoist treatise is taken from a source which cannot be regarded as Tâoistic.}