Page:Zhuang Zi - translation Giles 1889.djvu/55

CAP. II.] those concerned. Such is the principle of putting oneself into subjective relation with externals.

"Wherefore the true Sage, while regarding contraries as identical, adapts himself to the laws of Heaven. This is called following two courses at once.


 * He is thus prevented from trying to walk through walls, etc., as later Taoists have professed themselves able to do, of course with a view to gull the public and enrich themselves. "God," says Locke, "when he makes the prophet, does not unmake the man." So Carlyle in his essay on Novalis:—"To a Transcendentalist, matter has an existence but only as a Phenomenon . . . . . It is a mere relation, or rather the result of a relation between our living souls and the great First Cause."

"The knowledge of the men of old had a limit. It extended back to a period when matter did not exist. That was the extreme point to which their knowledge reached.

"The second period was that of matter, but of matter unconditioned.


 * By time or space. "Being, in itself," says Herbert Spencer, "out of relation, is itself unthinkable." Principles of Psychology, iii. p. 258.

"The third epoch saw matter conditioned, but contraries were still unknown. When these appeared, began to decline. And with the decline of, individual bias arose.

"Have then these states of falling and rising real existences? Surely they are but as the falling