eenth century is the ideal of Tâoism—not in the beggar’s sense of not working, but in the sense of not changing that which nature establishes and impels. Such inaction is regarded by the Tâoists as the indispensable means of ascending to the state of primal spontaneity:
Come and I will tell you the perfect Tâo. … You must be still; you must be pure; not subjecting your body to toil, not agitating your vital force;—then you may live for long. When your eyes see nothing, your ears hear nothing, and your mind knows nothing, your spirit will keep your body, and the body will live long. Watch over what is within you, shut up the avenues that connect you with what is external;—much knowledge is pernicious. … Watch over and keep your body, and all things will of themselves give it vigour. I maintain the (original) unity (of these elements), and dwell in the harmony of them. In this way I have cultivated myself for one thousand and two hundred years, and my bodily form has undergone no decay.[1]
It is with life as it is with implements. Thus spake the cook of King Hui:
A good cook changes his knife every year;—(it may have been injured) in cutting; an ordinary cook changes his every month;—(it may have been) broken. Now my knife has been in use for nineteen years; it has cut up several thousand oxen, and yet its edge is as sharp as if it had newly come from the whetstone.[2]
Kwang-tze does not exalt deathlessness as do the orthodox Tâoists. He knows how little worth
