Page:Zhuang Zi - translation Giles 1889.djvu/338

304 have form appear to all intents and purposes formless,—this is the sum of all things.


 * Man's final triumph over matter.

"Birth is not a beginning; death is not an end. There is existence without limitation; there is continuity without a starting-point. Existence without limitation is Space. Continuity without a starting-point is Time. There is birth, there is death, there is issuing forth, there is entering in. That through which one passes in and out without seeing its form, that is the Portal of God.

"The Portal of God is Non-Existence. All things sprang from Non-Existence. Existence could not make existence existence. It must have proceeded from Non-Existence,


 * The idea of existence, independent of its correlate, cannot be apprehended by the human intellect.

And Non-Existence and Nothing are.


 * If all things sprang from non-existence, it might be urged that non-existence had an objective existence. But non-existence is nothing, and nothing excludes the idea of something, making subjective and objective nothings.

Herein is the abiding-place of the Sage.


 * There where the matter of mortality shares the tenuity of the formless.

"The knowledge of the ancients reached the highest point,—the time before anything existed.