Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/137

 Kuan Chung is subsequently pressed into the service and made to utter the most atrocious doctrines.

Live while you can.

Yang Chu said, "It is only the living who differ among themselves; the dead are all alike. When a man is alive, he may be wise or he may be foolish, he may be noble or he may be mean; thus do the living differ. But the dead all stink, they are all corrupt, they all decay till there is nothing left of them; and thus they are all alike. Both these facts are beyond the power of man; neither are they the result of anything that people themselves may do. Some die when they are ten, and some when they are a hundred; the wisest and best die, just as the vilest and worst; a man may live as a Yao or a Shun [the typical saintly Emperors], or as a Chieh or a Shou [say a Nero or a Philip the Second], but when he dies he is nothing but rotten bones in either case. In fact, there is no difference between the rotten bones of a dead saint and those of a dead rascal. Wherefore, in life let us attend to the things of life; why should we trouble our heads about what is to take place after death?"

How to Live Long.

Yen P'ing-chung asked Kuan Chung, saying, "What is the best way to take care of one's health?"

"To do precisely what you please, without hindrance or restraint," replied Kuan Chung;" nothing more."

"Pray descend to particulars," urged his interlocutor.

"The thing is very simple," said Kuan Chung. "Whatever your eye delights to look at, that look at to your heart's content; whatever your ear loves to hear, your nose to smell, your mouth to speak; whatever your body finds pleasure in; whatever your heart prompts you to do, enjoy it all! If there is any sound you love, and you can't hear it, that is restraint of one sense; if there is any beauty you delight to gaze on, and can't, that is restraint of another sense; and so on through all the desires of which your soul is capable. Now,