prevent similar troubles for the future; when, lo! Wang Mang leaped upon the throne.[1]
Wang Mang took warning by his predecessors, and others, in like manner, took warning by his fate, each in turn providing against a recurrence of that which had proved fatal before. And in each case calamity came upon them from a quarter whence least expected.
The Emperor T‘ai Tsung of the T‘angs secretly learned that his issue would be done to death by Wu. He accordingly slew the Wu upon whom his suspicions fell: but the real Wu was all the time at his side.
The Emperor T‘ai Tsu of the Sungs persuaded those who had placed him upon the throne to retire into private life. He little foresaw that his descendants would writhe under the barbarian Tartar’s yoke.[2]
All the instances above cited include gifted men whose wisdom and genius overshadowed their generation. They took counsel and provided against disruption of their empire with the utmost possible care. Yet misfortune fell upon every one of them, always issuing from some source where its existence was least suspected. This, because human wisdom reaches only to human affairs, and cannot touch the divine. Thus, too, will sickness carry off the children even of the best doctors, and devils play their pranks in the family of an exorcist. How is it that these professors who succeed in grappling with the cases of others, yet fail in treating their own? It is because in those they confine themselves to the human; in these they would meddle with the divine.
The men of old knew that it was impossible to provide infallibly against the convulsions of ages to come. There was no plan, no device, by which they could hope to prevail; and they refrained accordingly from vain scheming. They simply strove by the force of Truth and Virtue to win for themselves the approbation
