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Romanised transliteration as printed by the translator, not the original script. This is what we hold.
1We do not know that there ever was a ruler of K4o who indulged in the love of the BK, XXXI. BRIEF NOTICES OF THE DIFFERENT BOOKS. 159 sword-fight, and kept about him a crowd of vulgar bravoes such as the story describes, We may be assured that our author never wore the bravo’s dress or girt on him the bravo’s sword. The whole is a metaphorical representation of the way in which a besotted ruler might be brought to a feeling of his degradation, and recalled to a sense of his duty and the way in which he might fulfil it. The narrative is full of interest and force. I do not feel any great difficulty in accepting it as the genuine composition of AK wang-jze. Who but himself could have composed it? Was it a goodhumoured caricature of him by an able Confucian writer to repay him for the ridicule he was fond of casting on the sage? Book XXXI. Yu-rt. ‘The Old Fisherman’ is the fourth of the Books in the collection of the writings of A wang-3ze to which, since the time of Sd Shih, the epithet of ‘spurious’ has been attached by many. My own opinion, however, has been already intimated that the suspicions of the genuineness of those Books have been entertained on insufficient grounds; and so far as ‘the Old Fisherman’ is concerned, I am glad that it has come down to us, spurious or genuine. There may be a certain coarseness in ‘the Robber Xih,’ which makes us despise Confucius or laugh at him; but the satire in this Book is delicate, and we do not like the sage the less when he walks up the bank from the stream where he has been lectured by the fisherman. The pictures of him and his disciples in the forest, reading and singing on the Apricot Terrace, and of the old man slowly impelling his skiff to the land and then as quietly impelling it away till it is lost among the reeds, are delicious; there is nothing finer of its kind in the volume. What hand but that of Kwang-jze, so light in its touch and yet so strong, both incisive and decisive, could have delineated them ? 160 THE TEXTS OF TAOISM. BK, XXXII. Book XXXII. Liew Yt-KHAUv. Lieh Yii-khau, the surname and name of Lieh-jze, with which the first paragraph commences, have become current as the name of the Book, though they have nothing to do with any but that one paragraph, which is found also in the second Book of the writings ascribed to Lieh-jze. There are some variations in the two Texts, but they are so slight that we cannot look on them as proofs that the two passages are narratives of independent origin.
2There are some variations in the two Texts, but they are so slight that we cannot look on them as proofs that the two passages are narratives of independent origin. Various difficulties surround the questions of the existence of Lieh-jze, and of the work which bears his name. They will be found distinctly and dispassionately stated and discussed in the 146th chapter of the Catalogue of the Khien-lung Imperial Library. The writers seem to me to make it out that there was such a man, but they do not make it clear when he lived, or how his writings assumed their present form. There is a statement of Lid Hsiang that he lived in the time of duke Ma of Kang (B.C. 627- 606); but in that case he must have been earlier than LAo-3ze himself, whom he very frequently quotes. The writers think that Lid’s ‘Ma of Kang’ should be Ma of La (B.C. 4¢9-377), which would make him not much anterior to Mencius and Awang-jze; but this is merely an ingenious conjecture. As to the composition of his chapters, they are evidently not at first hand from Lieh, but by some one of his disciples; whether they were current in Kwang-jze’s days, and he made use of various passages from them, or those passages were Kwang-jze’s originally, and taken from him by the followers of Lieh-3ze and added to what fragments they had of their master’s teaching ;—these are points which must be left undetermined. Whether the narrative about Lieh be from Awang-jze or not, its bearing on his character is not readily apprehended ; but, as we study it, we seem to understand. that his master Wi-zin condemned him as not having fully attained to the T4o, but owing his influence with others BK. XXXII. BRIEF NOTICES OF THE DIFFERENT BOOKS. I61 mainly to the manifestation of his merely human qualities. And this is the lesson which our author keeps before him, more or less distinctly, in all his paragraphs. As Li Shi-4ih says :—
3XXXII. BRIEF NOTICES OF THE DIFFERENT BOOKS. I61 mainly to the manifestation of his merely human qualities. And this is the lesson which our author keeps before him, more or less distinctly, in all his paragraphs. As Li Shi-4ih says :— ‘This Book also sets forth Doing Nothing as the essential condition of the Tao. Lieh-jze, frightened at the respect shown to him by the soup-vendors, and yet by his human doings drawing men to him, disowns the rule of the heavenly ; Hwan of Aang, thinking himself different from other men, does not know that Heaven recompenses men according to their employment of the heavenly in them ; the resting of the sages in their proper rest shows how the ancients pursued the heavenly and not the human; the one who learned to slay the Dragon, but afterwards did not exercise his skill, begins with the human, but afterwards goes on to the heavenly; in those who do not rest in the heavenly, and perish by the inward war, we sce how the small men do not know the secret of the Great Repose; 3hdo Shang, glorying in the carriages which he had acquired, is still farther removed from the heavenly; when Yen Ho shows that the sage, in imparting his instructions, did not follow the example of Heaven in diffusing its benefits, we learn that it is only the Doing Nothing of the, True Man which is in agreement with Heaven; the difficulty of knowing the mind of man, and the various methods required to test it, show the readiness with which, when not under the rule of Heaven, it seems to go after what is right, and the greater readiness with which it again revolts from it; in Khao-fa, the Correct, we have one indifferent to the distinctions of rank, and from him we advance to the man who understands the great condition appointed for him, and is a follower of Heaven; then comes he who plays the thief under the chin of the Black Dragon, running the greatest risks on a mere peradventure of success, a resolute opponent of Heaven; and finally we have Kwang-jze despising the ornaments of the sacrificial ox, looking in the same way at the worms beneath and the kites overhead, and regarding himself as quite independent [39] M 162 THE TEXTS OF TAOISM. BK, XXXII. of them, thus giving us an example of the embodiment of the spiritual, and of harmony with Heaven.’ So does this ingenious commentator endeavour to exhibit the one idea in the Book, and show the unity of its different paragraphs. Book XXXIII. TuHren HsiA.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
Romanised transliteration as printed by the translator, not the original script. This is what we hold.
1We do not know that there ever was a ruler of K4o who indulged in the love of the BK, XXXI. BRIEF NOTICES OF THE DIFFERENT BOOKS. 159 sword-fight, and kept about him a crowd of vulgar bravoes such as the story describes, We may be assured that our author never wore the bravo’s dress or girt on him the bravo’s sword. The whole is a metaphorical representation of the way in which a besotted ruler might be brought to a feeling of his degradation, and recalled to a sense of his duty and the way in which he might fulfil it. The narrative is full of interest and force. I do not feel any great difficulty in accepting it as the genuine composition of AK wang-jze. Who but himself could have composed it? Was it a goodhumoured caricature of him by an able Confucian writer to repay him for the ridicule he was fond of casting on the sage? Book XXXI. Yu-rt. ‘The Old Fisherman’ is the fourth of the Books in the collection of the writings of A wang-3ze to which, since the time of Sd Shih, the epithet of ‘spurious’ has been attached by many. My own opinion, however, has been already intimated that the suspicions of the genuineness of those Books have been entertained on insufficient grounds; and so far as ‘the Old Fisherman’ is concerned, I am glad that it has come down to us, spurious or genuine. There may be a certain coarseness in ‘the Robber Xih,’ which makes us despise Confucius or laugh at him; but the satire in this Book is delicate, and we do not like the sage the less when he walks up the bank from the stream where he has been lectured by the fisherman. The pictures of him and his disciples in the forest, reading and singing on the Apricot Terrace, and of the old man slowly impelling his skiff to the land and then as quietly impelling it away till it is lost among the reeds, are delicious; there is nothing finer of its kind in the volume. What hand but that of Kwang-jze, so light in its touch and yet so strong, both incisive and decisive, could have delineated them ? 160 THE TEXTS OF TAOISM. BK, XXXII. Book XXXII. Liew Yt-KHAUv. Lieh Yii-khau, the surname and name of Lieh-jze, with which the first paragraph commences, have become current as the name of the Book, though they have nothing to do with any but that one paragraph, which is found also in the second Book of the writings ascribed to Lieh-jze. There are some variations in the two Texts, but they are so slight that we cannot look on them as proofs that the two passages are narratives of independent origin.
2There are some variations in the two Texts, but they are so slight that we cannot look on them as proofs that the two passages are narratives of independent origin. Various difficulties surround the questions of the existence of Lieh-jze, and of the work which bears his name. They will be found distinctly and dispassionately stated and discussed in the 146th chapter of the Catalogue of the Khien-lung Imperial Library. The writers seem to me to make it out that there was such a man, but they do not make it clear when he lived, or how his writings assumed their present form. There is a statement of Lid Hsiang that he lived in the time of duke Ma of Kang (B.C. 627- 606); but in that case he must have been earlier than LAo-3ze himself, whom he very frequently quotes. The writers think that Lid’s ‘Ma of Kang’ should be Ma of La (B.C. 4¢9-377), which would make him not much anterior to Mencius and Awang-jze; but this is merely an ingenious conjecture. As to the composition of his chapters, they are evidently not at first hand from Lieh, but by some one of his disciples; whether they were current in Kwang-jze’s days, and he made use of various passages from them, or those passages were Kwang-jze’s originally, and taken from him by the followers of Lieh-3ze and added to what fragments they had of their master’s teaching ;—these are points which must be left undetermined. Whether the narrative about Lieh be from Awang-jze or not, its bearing on his character is not readily apprehended ; but, as we study it, we seem to understand. that his master Wi-zin condemned him as not having fully attained to the T4o, but owing his influence with others BK. XXXII. BRIEF NOTICES OF THE DIFFERENT BOOKS. I61 mainly to the manifestation of his merely human qualities. And this is the lesson which our author keeps before him, more or less distinctly, in all his paragraphs. As Li Shi-4ih says :—
3XXXII. BRIEF NOTICES OF THE DIFFERENT BOOKS. I61 mainly to the manifestation of his merely human qualities. And this is the lesson which our author keeps before him, more or less distinctly, in all his paragraphs. As Li Shi-4ih says :— ‘This Book also sets forth Doing Nothing as the essential condition of the Tao. Lieh-jze, frightened at the respect shown to him by the soup-vendors, and yet by his human doings drawing men to him, disowns the rule of the heavenly ; Hwan of Aang, thinking himself different from other men, does not know that Heaven recompenses men according to their employment of the heavenly in them ; the resting of the sages in their proper rest shows how the ancients pursued the heavenly and not the human; the one who learned to slay the Dragon, but afterwards did not exercise his skill, begins with the human, but afterwards goes on to the heavenly; in those who do not rest in the heavenly, and perish by the inward war, we sce how the small men do not know the secret of the Great Repose; 3hdo Shang, glorying in the carriages which he had acquired, is still farther removed from the heavenly; when Yen Ho shows that the sage, in imparting his instructions, did not follow the example of Heaven in diffusing its benefits, we learn that it is only the Doing Nothing of the, True Man which is in agreement with Heaven; the difficulty of knowing the mind of man, and the various methods required to test it, show the readiness with which, when not under the rule of Heaven, it seems to go after what is right, and the greater readiness with which it again revolts from it; in Khao-fa, the Correct, we have one indifferent to the distinctions of rank, and from him we advance to the man who understands the great condition appointed for him, and is a follower of Heaven; then comes he who plays the thief under the chin of the Black Dragon, running the greatest risks on a mere peradventure of success, a resolute opponent of Heaven; and finally we have Kwang-jze despising the ornaments of the sacrificial ox, looking in the same way at the worms beneath and the kites overhead, and regarding himself as quite independent [39] M 162 THE TEXTS OF TAOISM. BK, XXXII. of them, thus giving us an example of the embodiment of the spiritual, and of harmony with Heaven.’ So does this ingenious commentator endeavour to exhibit the one idea in the Book, and show the unity of its different paragraphs. Book XXXIII. TuHren HsiA.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
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