Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/135



voices and wept in company. "We depend on your Highness's generosity," they said, "for the coarse food and bad flesh we are able to obtain, and for the ill-tempered horses we harness to our carriages; yet even we do not wish to die,—how much less, indeed, should your Highness?"

Yen-tzŭ, however, laughed at this scene as he stood apart. Thereupon the Duke, wiping away his tears, turned to him and said, "My excursion to-day is a very sad one. My other courtiers join me in weeping; how is it that you alone begin to laugh?"

"If," replied the philosopher, "virtuous monarchs enjoyed perpetual tenure of the throne, Dukes T'ai and Huan would be in possession of it to this day; or if that were the case with brave monarchs, then Dukes Chuang and Ling would similarly be reigning still. If, in short, all these princes were perpetually in power, your Highness would to-day be wearing a straw hat and living among the ditches of some farm, where your occupation would be such as to leave you but little time for thinking about death. If your predecessors had been immortal, how would your Highness have been able to obtain the throne at all? It has now descended to you in the usual manner from those who previously occupied and vacated it, and yet you alone make it a cause of weeping! This is pure selfishness; and it was the sight of a selfish prince and a couple of sycophantic courtiers that led me to laugh on the sly."

The Duke was much abashed, and drank a glass of wine by way of punishing himself. He also exacted the same penalty from his two courtiers.

And now comes a chapter devoted to Yang Chu, a very celebrated philosopher indeed. He lived about the fourth or fifth century B.C., and may be called the Epicurus of China, being, curiously enough, a contemporary of the Western philosopher, whose doctrines his own resembled so closely. "With him," says Mr. Mayers, "he agrees in preaching a sublime indifference to life