Page:Zhuang Zi - translation Giles 1889.djvu/37

CAP. I.] they know? Small knowledge has not the compass of great knowledge any more than a short year has the length of a long year.

How can we tell that this is so? The mushroom of a morning knows not the alternation of day and night. The chrysalis knows not the alternation of spring and autumn. Theirs are short years.

But in the State of Ch'u there is a tortoise whose spring and autumn are each of five hundred years' duration. And in former days there was a large tree which had a spring and autumn each of eight thousand years' duration. Yet, P'êng Tsu


 * The Methusaleh of China. His age has not been agreed upon by Chinese writers, but the lowest computation gives him a life of eight hundred years.

is still, alas! an object of envy to all.

It was on this very subject that the Emperor T'ang


 * B.C. 1766.

spoke to Chi, as follows:—"At the barren north there is a great sea, the Celestial Lake. In it there is a fish, several thousand li in breadth, and I know not how many in length. It is called the Leviathan. There is also a bird, called the Rukh, with a back like Mount T'ai,


 * China's most famous mountain, situated in the province of Shantung.

and wings like clouds across the sky. Upon a typhoon it soars up to a height of ninety thousand