Three Ways of Thought in Ancient China

The Arthur Waley Estate, Arthur Waley

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780415612807
• eBook ISBN: 9781135652036
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Asian Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

First published in 1939.
This book consists chiefly of extracts from Chuang Tzu, Mencius and Han Fei Tzu. Chuang Tzu's appeal is to the imagination; the appeal of mencius is to the moral feelings; realism, as expounded by Han Fei Tzu, finds a close parallel in modern Totalitarianism and as a result these extracts from a book of the third century B.C. nonetheless have a very contemporary connection.

Chuang Tzu

Part 1

The Realm of Nothing Whatever

Stories of Chuang Tzu and Hui Tzu

Hui Tzu said to Chuang Tzu, ‘Your teachings are of no practical use’ Chuang Tzu said, ‘Only those who already know the value of the useless can be talked to about the useful. This earth we walk upon is of vast extent, yet in order to walk a man uses no more of it than the soles of his two feet will cover. But suppose one cut away the ground round his feet till one reached the Yellow Springs,¹ would his patches of ground still be of any use to him for walking?’ Hui Tzu said, ‘They would be of no use’ Chuang Tzu said, ‘So then the usefulness of the useless is evident.’

Hui Tzu recited to Chuang Tzu the rhyme:

‘I have got a big tree

That men call the chü.

Its trunk is knotted and gnarled,

And cannot be fitted to plumb-line and ink;

Its branches are bent and twisted,

And cannot be fitted to compass or square.

It stands by the road-side,

And no carpenter will look at it.’

‘Your doctrines,’ said Hui Tzu, ‘are grandiose, but useless, and that is why no one accepts them.’ Chuang Tzu said, ‘Can it be that you have never seen the pole-cat, how it crouches waiting for the mouse, ready at any moment to leap this way or that, high or low, till one day it lands plump on the spring of a trap and dies in the snare? Again there is the yak, “huge as a cloud that covers the sky.” It can maintain this great bulk and yet would be quite incapable of catching a mouse… . As for you and the big tree which you are at a loss how to use, why do you not plant it in the realm of Nothing Whatever, in the wilds of the Unpastured Desert, and aimlessly tread the path of Inaction by its side, or vacantly lie dreaming beneath it?

‘What does not invite the axe

No creature will harm.

What cannot be used

No troubles will befall.’

Hui Tzu said to Chuang Tzu, ‘The king of Wei gave me the seed of one of his huge gourds. I planted it, and it bore a gourd so enormous that if I had filled it with water or broth it would have taken several men to lift it, while if I had split it into halves and made ladles out of it they would have been so flat that no liquid would have lain in them. No one could deny that it was magnificently large; but I was unable to find any use for it, and in the end I smashed it up and threw it away.’ Chuang Tzu said, ‘I have noticed before that you are not very clever at turning large things to account. There was once a family in Sung that possessed a secret drug which had enabled its members for generations past to steep silk floss without getting chapped hands. A stranger hearing of it offered to buy the recipe for a hundred pieces of gold. The head of the family pointed out to his kinsmen that if all the money that the family had made in successive generations through the use of the drug were added together it would not come to more than one or two pieces of gold, and that a hundred pieces would amply repay them for parting with their secret. The stranger carried off the recipe and spoke of it to the king of Wu, whose country was being harried by the battleships of Yüeh. The stranger was put in command of the Wu fleet, and so efficacious was the remedy that despite the bitter cold (for it was a winter’s day) the fingers of the Wu sailors never once grew chapped or numbed, and the fleet of Yüeh was entirely destroyed. The land of Yüeh was divided and the stranger rewarded with a fief.

‘The sole property of the drug was that it prevented hands from getting chapped. Yet so much depends on the user that, if it had stayed with the man of Sung, it would never have done more than help him to steep floss; while no sooner had it passed into the stranger’s possession than it gained him a fief. As for you and your large gourd, why did you not tie it as a buoy at your waist, and, borne up by it on the waters, float to your heart’s content amid the streams and inland seas? Instead, you grumble about its gigantic dimensions and say that ladles made from it would hold nothing; the reason being, I fear, that your own thoughts have not learnt to run beyond the commonplace.’

Hui Tzu said to Chuang Tzu, ‘Can a man really become passionless?’ Chuang Tzu said, ‘He can.’ Hui Tzu said, ‘A man without passions cannot be called a man.’ Chuang Tzu said, ‘“Tao gave him substance, Heaven gave him form”; how is it possible not to call him a man?’ Hui Tzu said, ‘I would rather say, Granted that he is still a man, how is it possible for him to be passionless?’ Chuang Tzu said, ‘You do not understand what I mean when I say ‘‘passionless”² When I say “passionless” I mean that a man does not let love or hate do damage within, that he falls in with the way in which things happen of themselves, and does not exploit life.’ Hui Tzu said, ‘If he does not exploit life, what is the use of his having a body?’ Chuang Tzu said:

‘Tao gave him substance,

Heaven gave him form;

Let him not by love or hate

Bring this gift to harm.

‘Yet here are you,

‘Neglecting your soul,

Wearying your spirit.

Propped against a pile of books you drone,

Leaning against your zithern you doze.

Heaven made you sound and whole;

Yet all your song is hard and white.³

When Chuang Tzu’s wife died, Hui Tzu came to the house to join in the rites of mourning. To his surprise he found Chuang Tzu sitting with an inverted bowl on his knees, drumming upon it and singing a song.² ‘After all,’ said Hui Tzu, ‘she lived with you, brought up your children, grew old along with you. That you should not mourn for her is bad enough; but to let your friends find you drumming and singing—that is going too far!’ ‘You misjudge me,’ said Chuang Tzu. ‘When she died, I was in despair, as any man well might be. But soon, pondering on what had happened, I told myself that in death no strange new fate befalls us. In the beginning we lack not life only, but form. Not form only, but spirit. We are blended in the one great featureless indistinguishable mass. Then a time came when the mass evolved spirit, spirit evolved form, form evolved life. And now life in its turn has evolved death. For not nature only but man’s being has its seasons, its sequence of spring and autumn, summer and winter. If some one is tired and has gone to lie down, we do not pursue him with shouting and bawling. She whom I have lost has lain down to sleep for a while in the Great Inner Room. To break in upon her rest with the noise of lamentation would but show that I knew nothing of nature’s Sovereign Law. That is why I ceased to mourn.’

Chuang Tzu and Hui Tzu were strolling one day on the bridge over the river Hao. Chuang Tzu said, ‘Look how the minnows dart hither and thither where they will. Such is the pleasure that fish enjoy.’ Hui Tzu said, ‘You are not a fish. How do you know what gives pleasure to fish?’ Chuang Tzu said, ‘You are not I. How do you know that I do not know what gives pleasure to fish?’ Hui Tzu said, ‘If because I am not you, I cannot know whether you know, then equally because you are not a fish, you cannot know what gives pleasure to fish. My argument still holds.’ Chuang Tzu said, ‘Let us go back to where we started. You asked me how I knew what gives pleasure to fish. But you already knew how I knew it when you asked me. You knew that I knew it by standing here on the bridge at Hao.’

When Hui Tzu was minister in Liang, Chuang Tzu decided to pay him a visit. Someone said to Hui Tzu, ‘Chuang Tzu is coming and hopes to be made Minister in your place.’ This alarmed Hui Tzu and he searched everywhere in Liang for three days and three nights to discover where Chuang Tzu was. Chuang Tzu, however, arrived of his own accord and said, ‘In the South there is a bird. It is called yuan-ch’u.⁵ Have you heard of it? This yüan-ch’u starts from the southern ocean and flies to the northern ocean. During its whole journey it perches on no tree save the sacred wu-t’ung,⁶ eats no fruit save that of the lien,² drinks only at the Magic Well. It happened that an owl that had got hold of the rotting carcass of a rat looked up as this bird flew by, and terrified lest the yüan-ch’u should stop and snatch at the succulent morsel, it screamed, “Shoo! Shoo!” And now I am told that you are trying to “Shoo” me off from this precious Ministry of yours.’

Once when Chuang Tzu was walking in a funeral procession, he came upon Hui Tzu’s tomb, and turning to those who were with him he said, ‘There was once a wall-plasterer who when any plaster fell upon his nose, even a speck no thicker than a fly’s wing, used to get the mason who worked with him to slice it off. The mason brandished his adze with such force that there was a sound of rushing wind; but he sliced the plaster clean off, leaving the plasterer’s nose completely intact; the plasterer, on his side, standing stock still, without the least change of expression.

‘Yüan, prince of Sung, heard of this and sent for the mason, saying to him, “I should very much like to see you attempt this performance.” The mason said, “It is true that I used to do it. But I need the right stuff to work upon, and the partner who supplied such material died long ago.”

‘Since Hui Tzu died I, too, have had no proper stuff to work upon, have had no one with whom I can really talk.’

It was not always by dialogue that Chuang Tzu warred with the logicians. Another of his weapons was parody. A favourite method of the argumentative school of philosophy was to take an imaginary case: ‘take the case of a man who …,’ they constantly say to illustrate their argument.

‘Take the case of some words,’ Chuang Tzu says, parodying the logicians, ‘I do not know which of them are in any way connected with reality or which are not at all connected with reality. If some that are so connected and some that are not so connected are connected with one another, then as regards truth or falsehood⁸ the former cease to be in any way different from the latter. However, just as an experiment, I will now say them: If there was a beginning, there must have been a time before the beginning began, and if there was a time before the beginning began, there must have been a time before the time before the beginning began. If there is being, there must also be not-being. If there was a time before there began to be any not-being, there must also have been a time before the time before there began to be any not-being. But here am I, talking about being and not-being and still do not know whether it is being that exists and not-being that does not exist, or being that does not exist and not-being that really exists! I have spoken, and do not know whether I have said something that means anything or said nothing that has any meaning at all.

‘Nothing under Heaven is larger than a strand of gossamer, nothing smaller than Mt. T’ai. No one lives longer than the child that dies in its swaddling-clothes, no one dies sooner than P’êng Tsu.⁹ Heaven and earth were born when I was born; the ten thousand things and I among them are but one thing.’ All this the sophists have proved. But if there were indeed only one thing, there would be no language with which to say so. And in order that anyone should state this, there must be more language in which it can be stated. Thus their one thing together with their talk about the one thing makes two things. And their one thing together with their talk and my statement about it makes three things. And so it goes on, to a point where the cleverest mathematician could no longer keep count, much less an ordinary man. Starting with not-being and going on to being, one soon gets to three. What then would happen if one started with being and went on to being?

And again.

Suppose I am arguing with you, and you get the better of me. Does the fact that I am not a match for you mean that you are really right and I am really wrong? Or if I get the better of you, does the fact that you are not a match for me mean that I am really right and you really wrong? Must one of us necessarily be right and the other wrong, or may we not both be right or both be wrong? But even if I and you cannot come to an understanding, someone else will surely be a candle¹⁰ to our darkness? Whom then shall we call in as arbitrator in our dispute? If it is someone who agrees with you, the fact that he agrees with you makes him useless as an arbitrator. If it is someone who agrees with me, the fact that he agrees with me makes him useless as an arbitrator. If it is someone who agrees with neither of us, the fact that he agrees with neither of us makes him useless as an arbitrator. If it is someone who agrees with both of us, the fact that he agrees with us both makes him useless as an arbitrator. So then I and you and he can never reach an understanding. Are we then to go on piling arbitrator upon arbitrator in the hope that someone will eventually settle the matter? This would lead to the dilemma of the Reformation and the Sage.²

If we are not thus to wait in vain, what can we do but smooth out our differences with the Heavenly Pounder, entrust them to the care of eternity, and thus live out our days in peace? What is meant by smoothing out our differences with the Heavenly Pounder? It means the smoothing away of ‘is’ and ‘is not,’ of ‘so’ and ‘not so.’ If what ‘is’ really ‘is,’ if what ‘is not’ really ‘is not,’ then what ‘is’ would be different from what ‘is not,’ and there would be no room for argument. If what ‘is so’ really ‘is so,’ it would be different from what ‘is not so,’ and there would be no room for argument. Forget …...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Chuang Tzu
• Mencius
• The Realists
• Appendix
• Finding List
• Index
• Textual Notes