Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/167

 great, and outside which there is nothing, is the Great Unit; and that that which is infinitesimally small, and inside which there is nothing, is the Atom. He says that the whole universe may be filled with matter even though there be no foundation for anything to rest upon; that heaven is no higher than the earth; that a mountain is as level as a pool; that sunset is the same as the meridian, in that one is the result of the other; that life comes from death, and death from life; that general resemblance is different from resemblance in details, and that this detailed resemblance should therefore be called a difference, while the final resemblances and differences in the universe only amount to saying that the differences are less than the resemblances." Hui Shih is said to have looked upon all this as a very fine performance, about which all his fellow-Sophists delighted to talk and argue. These men would undertake to prove a variety of absurdities—for instance, that there is no heat in fire; that the eye does not see; that a wheel does not triturate the ground; that when you have arrived at the farthest extreme there is nothing to prevent your going farther still; that there is hair upon an egg; that if the half of a stick a foot long be cut off every day, it will take ten thousand generations till there is nothing left. Chuang-tzŭ condemns all this as so much foolish, wordy babble, saying that the Sophists would argue with each other in a circle ceaselessly, puzzling people's minds to no purpose, and simply bent on showing off their own cleverness in disputation. His criticism on the arch-Sophist Hui Shih is dignified and to the point. "He talks away about everything without reflecting; the more he talks the farther he is from finishing. If he