Page:A history of Chinese literature - Giles.djvu/74

 62 CHINESE LITERATURE

traditions of the teachings of Lao Tzu, we seem to obtain this, that man should remain impassive under the operation of an eternal, omnipresent law (Tao), and that thus he will become in perfect harmony with his environment, and that if he is in harmony with his environment, he will thereby attain to a vague condition of general immunity. Beyond this the teachings of Lao Tzu would not carry us. Chuang Tzu, however, from simple problems, such as a drunken man falling out of a cart and not injuring himself a common superstition among sailors because he is unconscious and there- fore in harmony with his environment, slides easily into an advanced mysticism. In his marvellous chapter on The Identity of Contraries, he maintains that from the standpoint of Tao all things are One. Positive and negative, this and that, here and there, somewhere and nowhere, right and wrong, vertical and horizontal, sub- jective and objective, become indistinct, as water is in water. " When subjective and objective are both with- out their correlates, that is the very axis of Tao. And when that axis passes through the centre at which all Infinities converge, positive and negative alike blend into an infinite One." This localisation in a Centre, and this infinite absolute represented by One, were too concrete even for Chuang Tzu. The One became God, and the Centre, assigned by later Taoist writers to the pole-star (see Book IV. ch. i.), became the source of all life and the haven to which such life returned after its transitory stay on earth. By ignoring the distinctions of contraries "we are embraced in the obliterating unity of God. Take no heed of time, nor of right and wrong ; but passing into the realm of the Infinite, make your final rest therein."

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