Page:Zhuang Zi - translation Giles 1889.djvu/184

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150
Chuang Tzŭ

original integrity, and with his nature and his spiritual part wrapped up in a body, passing through this common world of ours? Besides, to you and to me the science of the ante-mundane is not worth knowing."

It is only the present which concerns man.
This last is an utterance which might well have fallen from the lips of Confucius. But the whole episode is clearly an interpolation of later times.

As Chun Mang was starting eastwards to the ocean, he fell in with Yüan Fêng on the shore of the eastern sea.

These names are probably allegorical, but it is difficult to say in exactly what sense.

"Whither bound?" cried the latter.

"I am going to the ocean," replied Chun Mang.

"What are you going to do there?" asked Yüan Fêng.

"The ocean," said Chun Mang, "is a thing you cannot fill by pouring in, nor empty by taking out. I am simply on a trip."

You cannot do anything to the infinite.

"But surely you have intentions with regard to the straight-browed people? . . . . Come, tell me how the Sage governs."

The straight-browed, lit. horizontal-eyed, people, are said by one commentator to have been "savages."

"Oh, the government of the Sage," answered