Page:Gems of Chinese literature (1922).djvu/51

  “You not being yourself a fish,” said Hui Tzŭ, “how can you possibly know in what the pleasure of fishes consists?” “And you not being I,” retorted Chuang Tzŭ, “how can you know that I do not know?” “That I, not being you, do not know what you know,” replied Hui Tzŭ, “is identical with my argument that you, not being a fish, cannot know in what the pleasure of fishes consists.” “Let us go back to your original question,” said Chuang Tzŭ. “You ask me how I know in what consists the pleasure of fishes. Your very question shows that you knew I knew. I knew it from my own feelings on this bridge. 

 Chuang Tzŭ was one day fishing, when the Prince of Ch'u sent two high officials to interview him, saying that his Highness would be glad of Chuang Tzŭ's assistance in the administration of his government. The latter quietly fished on, and without looking round, replied, “I have heard that in the State of Ch'u there is a sacred tortoise, which has been dead three thousand years, and which the prince keeps packed up in a box on the altar in his ancestral shrine. Now do you think that tortoise would rather be dead and have its remains thus honoured, or be alive and wagging its tail in the mud?” The two officials answered that no doubt it would rather be alive and wagging its tail in the mud; whereupon Chuang Tzŭ cried out “Begone! I too elect to remain wagging my tail in the mud.” 

 The perfect man is like a spirit. Were the ocean to be scorched up, he would not be hot. Were the Milky Way to be fast frozen, he would not feel cold. Of thunder which rives mountains, of wind which lashes the sea, he is not afraid; and thus, charioted on the clouds of heaven, or riding on the sun and moon, he journeys