Page:The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East, Volume 12.djvu/145

Rh into his hands. In a little time, however, he left me and went away. I was sorry and felt that I had sustained a loss, and as if there were no other to share the pleasures of the kingdom with me. What sort of man was he?"

Chung-ni said, "Once when I was sent on a mission to Chu, I saw some pigs sucking at their dead mother. After a little they looked with rapid glances, when they all left her, and ran away. They felt that she did not see them, and that she was no longer like themselves. What they had loved in their mother was not her bodily figure, but what had given animation to her figure. When a man dies in battle, they do not at his interment employ the usual appendages of plumes: as to supplying shoes to one who has lost his feet, there is no reason why he should care for them; in neither case is there the proper reason for their use. The members of the royal harem do not pare their nails nor pierce their ears; when a man is newly married, he remains for a time absent from his official duties, and unoccupied with them. That their bodies might be perfect was sufficient to make them thus dealt with; how much greater results should be expected from men whose mental gifts are perfect! This Ai-thai Tho was believed by men, though he did not speak a word; and was loved by them, though he did no special service for them. He made men appoint him to the government of their States, afraid only that he would not accept the appointment. He must have been a man whose powers were perfect, though his realization of them was not manifested in his person."

Duke Ai said, "What is meant by saying that his powers were complete?" Chung-ni replied, "Death and life, preservation and ruin, failure and success, poverty and wealth, superiority and inferiority, blame and praise, hunger and thirst, cold and heat — these are the changes of circumstances, the operation of our appointed lot. Day and night they succeed to one another before us, but there is no wisdom able to discover to what they owe their origination. They are not sufficient therefore to disturb the harmony of the nature, and are not allowed to enter into the treasury of