Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/104



"The sources of happiness that I possess," rejoined Lin-lei, smiling, "are equally possessed by all; the only difference is, that others turn them into sources of sorrow. It is just because I was not diligent in my youth, and did not seize on opportunities during the prime of life, that I have been able to reach my present age; it is because I am wifeless and childless in my old age, and because the time of my dissolution is drawing nigh, that I am as joyful as you see me."

"Old age," remarked Tzŭ Kung, "is what all men desire; but death is what all men dread. How comes it, Sir, that you find joy in the thought of death?"

"Death," said the old man, "is to life, as going away is to coming. How can we know that to die here is not to be born elsewhere? I know that birth and death are outwardly unlike; but how can I tell whether, in their eager rush for life, men are not under a delusion?—how can I tell whether, if I die to-day, my lot may not prove far preferable to what it was when I was originally born?"

Tzŭ Kung, being weary of instruction, said to Confucius, "I long for rest!"

"There is no rest to be had in life," replied Confucius.

"Then is there no possibility of rest for me?" exclaimed Tzŭ Kung.

"There is," rejoined the Sage. "Look upon the graves around you—the mounds, the votive altars, the cenotaphs, the funeral urns; there can you know what rest is."

"How great, then, is death! " exclaimed Tzŭ Kung. "For the good man it is repose; for the bad man an engulfment."

"You now know the truth," observed Confucius. "Men all understand the joys of life, but they ignore its sorrows; they know the decrepitude of old age, but forget that it is the period of ease and leisure; they know the dreadfulness of death, but they do not know its rest."

"How excellent is it," exclaimed Yen-tzŭ, "that from all antiquity death has been the common lot of men! It is rest for the virtuous, and a hiding- away of the bad. Death is just