Page:Zhuang Zi - translation Giles 1889.djvu/462

428 "The true Sage regards certainties as uncertainties; therefore he is never up in arms.


 * In a state of mental disturbance.

Men in general regard uncertainties as certainties; therefore they are constantly up in arms. To accustom oneself to arms causes one to fly to arms on every provocation; and to trust to arms is to perish.

"The intelligence of the mean man does not rise beyond bribes and letters of recommendation. His mind is be-clouded with trivialities. Yet he would penetrate the mystery of and of creation, and rise to participation in the . The result is that he is confounded by time and space; and that trammelled by objective existences, he fails to reach apprehension of that age before anything was.

"But the perfect man,—he carries his mind back to the period before the beginning. Content to rest in the oblivion of nowhere, passing away like flowing water, he is merged in the clear depths of the infinite.

"Alas! man's knowledge reaches to the hair on a hair, but not to eternal peace."

A man of the Sung State, named Ts'ao Shang, acted as political agent for the prince of Sung at the court of the Ch'in State. When he went thither, he had a few carriages; but the prince of Ch'in was so pleased with him that he added one hundred more.