Page:Gems of Chinese literature (1922).djvu/46

 manhood; she gives me repose in old age; she gives me rest in death. And she who is so kind an arbiter of my life, is necessarily the best arbiter of my death. “Suppose that the boiling metal in a smelting-pot were to bubble up and say, ‘Make of me an Excalibur;’ I think the caster would reject that metal as uncanny. And if a sinner like myself were to say to God, ‘Make of me a man, make of me a man;’ I think he too would reject me as uncanny. The universe is the smelting-pot, and God is the caster. I shall go whithersoever I am sent, to wake unconscious of the past, as a man wakes from a dreamless sleep.”

How do I know that love of life is not a delusion? How do I know that those who fear death are not mere lost lambs which cannot find their way back to the fold? A daughter of the Governor of Ai, when first captured by the Chins, saturated her robe with tears; but afterwards, when she went into the prince's palace and lived with him on the fat of the land, she repented having wept. And how do I know that the dead do not now repent their former craving for life? One man will dream of the banquet hour, but wake to lamentation and sorrow. Another will dream of lamentation and sorrow, but wake to enjoy himself in the hunting-field. While men are dreaming, they do not perceive that it is a dream. Some will even have a dream in a dream; and only when they awake do they know that it was all a dream. And so, only when the Great Awakening comes upon us, shall we know this life to be a great dream. Fools believe themselves to be awake now.

Chuang Tzŭ one day saw an empty skull, bleached, but still preserving its shape. Striking it with his riding-whip, he said, “Wert thou once some ambitious citizen whose inordinate yearnings brought