Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/105



a going home again. In ancient times it was said that the dead were those who had returned; if, then, the dead are those who have returned to their homes, it follows that the living are still travellers; and those who travel without a thought of returning have renounced their homes. Now, if a single person relinquishes his home, the whole world condemns him; but when the whole world relinquishes its [true] home [by avoiding death], there is no one who sees the error!"

We now come to a very curious subject of discussion, in which the disputants shall speak for themselves:—

An Impending Cataclysm.

In the State of Ch'i there lived a man who was so sadly afraid lest earth and sky should burst up and leave his body without a place of habitation, that he lost both his sleep and his appetite. A friend of his, feeling sorry for his anxiety, went to explain the matter to him. "The sky," he said, "is nothing but an accumulation of vapour, and there is no place where this vapour does not exist. Since, then, everybody sits down and stands up, breathes, moves, and rests all day long in the very midst of it, why should you dread its disruption?"

"But if the sky is nothing more than accumulated vapour," replied the nervous man, "does it not follow that the sun, the moon, and the stars will fall from their positions?"

"The heavenly bodies," said his counsellor, "are themselves nothing but luminosities which exist in the midst of this accumulated air; so that even if they were to fall it would be impossible for them to hurt anybody."

"But supposing the earth were to burst up?" pursued the other.

"The earth," he replied, "is just an accumulation of clods, which pervade every empty space; there is no place where these clods or lumps of matter do not exist. Since, then, a man can hobble about or tramp along, walking and stopping alternately the whole day upon the surface of the earth, what reason have you to apprehend its destruction?"

Then the other, much relieved, experienced great joy; and