Page:Zhuang Zi - translation Giles 1889.djvu/314

280 man does nothing, the true Sage performs nothing, beyond gazing at the universe.


 * In the hope of attaining, by contemplation, a like spontaneity.

For man's intellect, however keen, face to face with the countless evolutions of things, their death and birth, their squareness and roundness,—can never reach the root. There creation is, and there it has ever been.


 * But the secret of life is withheld.

The six cardinal points, reaching into infinity, are ever included in. An autumn spikelet, in all its minuteness, must carry within itself. There is nothing on earth which does not rise and fall, but it never perishes altogether.


 * Nihilo nil posse reverti.

The Yin and the Yang, and the four seasons, keep to their proper order. Apparently destroyed, yet really existing; the material gone, the immaterial left;—such is the law of creation, which passeth all understanding. This is called the root, whence a glimpse may be obtained of God.


 * From this point, upon which the finger of man can never be laid, his mind may perhaps faintly discern the transcendent workings of that Power by which all creation is swayed;—"uncover those secret recesses where Nature is sitting at the fires in the depths of her laboratory." Swedenborg.