Page:A history of Chinese literature - Giles.djvu/307

 to an absence of care ? No. It results because the things that man can provide against are human, while those that elude his vigilance and overpower his strength are divine."

After giving several striking examples from history, the writer continues :

"All the instances above cited include gifted men whose wisdom and genius overshadowed their genera- tion. They took counsel and provided against disruption of the empire with the utmost possible care. Yet mis- fortune fell upon every one of them, always issuing from some source where its existence was least suspected. This, because human wisdom reaches only to human affairs and cannot touch the divine. Thus, too, will sickness carry off the children even of the best doctors, and devils play their pranks in the family of an exorcist. How is it that these professors, who succeed in grappling with the cases of others, yet fail in treating their own ? It is because in those they confine themselves to the human ; in these they would meddle with the divine.

"The men of old knew that it was impossible to provide infallibly against the convulsions of ages to come. There was no plan, no device, by which they could hope to prevail, and they refrained accordingly from vain scheming. They simply strove by the force of Truth and Virtue to win for themselves the approba- tion of God ; that He, in reward for their virtuous conduct, might watch over them, as a fond mother watches over her babes, for ever. Thus, although fools were not wanting to their posterity fools able to drag an empire to the dust still, the evil day was deferred. This was indeed foresight of a far-reaching kind.

" But he who, regardless of the favour of Heaven,

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