THE IDENTITY OF CONTRARIES.
_Argument_:--Contraries spring from our subjective
individuality--Identity of subjective and objective--The centre where
all distinctions are merged in ONE--How to reach this point--Speech an
obstacle--The negative state--Light out of darkness--Illustrations.
Tzŭ Ch'i of Nan-kuo sat leaning on a table. Looking up to heaven, he
sighed and became absent, as though soul and body had parted.
Yen Ch'êng Tzŭ Yu, who was standing by him, exclaimed, "What are you
thinking about that your body should become thus like dry wood, your
mind like dead ashes? Surely the man now leaning on the table is not he
who was here just now."
"My friend," replied Tzŭ Ch'i, "your question is apposite. _To-day I
have buried myself_.... Do you understand?... Ah! perhaps you only know
the music of Man, and not that of Earth. Or even if you have heard the
music of Earth, you have not heard the music of Heaven."
"Pray explain," said Tzŭ Yu.
"The breath of the universe," continued Tzŭ Ch'i, "is called wind. At
times, it is inactive. But when active, every aperture resounds to the
blast. Have you never listened to its growing roar?
"Caves and dells of hill and forest, hollows in huge trees of many a
span in girth;--these are like nostrils, like mouths, like ears, like
beam-sockets, like goblets, like mortars, like ditches, like bogs.
And the wind goes rushing through them, sniffing, snoring, singing,
soughing, puffing, purling, whistling, whirring, now shrilly treble,
now deeply bass, now soft, now loud; until, with a lull, silence reigns
supreme. Have you never witnessed among the trees such a disturbance as
this?"
"Well, then," enquired Tzŭ Yu, "since the music of earth consists of
nothing more than holes, and the music of man of pipes and flutes,--of
what consists the music of Heaven?"
"The effect of the wind upon these various apertures," replied
Tzŭ Ch'i, "is not uniform. But what is it that gives to each the
individuality, to all the potentiality, of sound?
"Great knowledge embraces the whole:
Sees both "the upper and under side of the medal of Jove" at once.
small knowledge, a part only. Great speech is universal:
Speech, according to Chuang Tzŭ's ideal, always covers the whole
ground in question, leaving no room for positive and negative to
appear in antagonism.
small speech is particular.
"For whether when the mind is locked in sleep or whether when in
waking hours the body is released, we are subject to daily mental
perturbations,--indecision, want of penetration, concealment, fretting
fear, and trembling terror. Now like a javelin the mind flies forth,
the arbiter of right and wrong.
Thus recognising contraries.
Now like a solemn covenanter it remains firm, the guardian of rights
secured.
Adhering to an opinion formed.
Then, as under autumn and winter's blight, comes gradual decay, a
passing away, like the flow of water, never to return. Finally, the
block when all is choked up like an old drain,--the failing mind which
shall not see light again.
"Joy and anger, sorrow and happiness, caution and remorse, come upon
us by turns, with ever-changing mood. They come like music from
hollowness, like mushrooms from damp. Daily and nightly they alternate
within us, but we cannot tell whence they spring. Can we then hope in a
moment to lay our finger upon their very Cause?
"But for these emotions _I_ should not be. But for _me_, they would
have no scope. So far we can go; but we do not know what it is that
brings them into play. 'Twould seem to be a _soul_; but the clue to its
existence is wanting. That such a Power operates, is credible enough,
though we cannot see its form. It has functions without form.
As will be gathered later on, Chuang Tzŭ conceives of the soul as an
emanation from God, passing to and from this earth through the portals
of Life and Death.
"Take the human body with all its manifold divisions. Which part of
it does a man love best? Does he not cherish all equally, or has he a
preference? Do not all equally serve him? And do these servitors then
govern themselves, or are they subdivided into rulers and subjects?
Surely there is some soul which sways them all.
"But whether or not we ascertain what are the functions of this soul,
it matters but little to the soul itself. For coming into existence
with this mortal coil of mine, with the exhaustion of this mortal coil
its mandate will also be exhausted. To be harassed by the wear and
tear of life, and to pass rapidly through it without possibility of
arresting one's course,--is not this pitiful indeed? To labour without
ceasing, and then, without living to enjoy the fruit, worn out, to
depart, suddenly, one knows not whither,--is not that a just cause for
grief?
"What advantage is there in what men call not dying? The body
decomposes, and the mind goes with it. This is our real cause for
sorrow. Can the world be so dull as not to see this? Or is it I alone
who am dull, and others not so?
"If we are to be guided by the criteria of our own minds, who shall be
without a guide?
The mind should be a _tabula rasa_, free from all judgments or
opinions of its own as to the external world, and ready only to accept
things as they are, not as they appear to be.
What need to know of the alternations of passion,
As above described.
when the mind thus affords scope to itself?--verily even the minds of
fools! Whereas, for a mind without criteria
As it should be.
to admit the idea of contraries, is like saying, _I went to Yüeh
to-day, and got there yesterday_.
One of Hui Tzŭ's paradoxes. See ch. xxxiii.
Or, like placing nowhere somewhere,--topography which even the Great Yü
The famous engineer of antiquity (B.C. 2205), who drained the empire
of a vast body of water and arranged its subdivision into nine
provinces.
would fail to understand; how much more I?
"Speech is not mere breath. It is differentiated by meaning. Take away
that, and you cannot say whether it is speech or not. Can you even
distinguish it from the chirping of young birds?
"But how can TAO be so obscured that we speak of it as true and
false? And how can speech be so obscured that it admits the idea of
contraries? How can TAO go away and yet not remain?
Being omnipresent.
How can speech exist and yet be impossible?
See p. 13.
"TAO is obscured by our want of grasp. Speech is obscured by the gloss
of this world.
_I.e._ by the one-sided meanings attached to words and phrases.
Hence the affirmatives and negatives of the Confucian and Mihist
schools,
Mih Tzŭ was a philosopher of the fourth century B.C., who propounded
various theories which were vigorously attacked by the Confucianists
under Mencius. We shall hear more of him by-and-by.
each denying what the other affirmed and affirming what the other
denied. But he who would reconcile affirmative with negative and
negative with affirmative,
The "union of impossibilities," which Emerson credits to Plato alone.
must do so by the light of nature.
_I.e._ Have no established mental criteria, and thus see all things as
ONE.
"There is nothing which is not objective: there is nothing which is
not subjective. But it is impossible to start from the objective. Only
from subjective knowledge is it possible to proceed to objective
knowledge. Hence it has been said,
By Hui Tzŭ.
'The objective emanates from the subjective; the subjective is
consequent upon the objective. This is the _Alternation Theory_.'
Nevertheless, when one is born, the other dies. When one is possible,
the other is impossible. When one is affirmative the other is negative.
Which being the case, the true sage rejects all distinctions of this
and that. He takes his refuge in GOD, and places himself in subjective
relation with all things.
It was to this end that Tzŭ Ch'i "buried himself."
"And inasmuch as the subjective is also objective, and the objective
also subjective, and as the contraries under each are indistinguishably
blended, does it not become impossible for us to say whether subjective
and objective really exist at all?
What is positive under the one will be negative under the other.
Yet as subjective and objective are really one and the same, their
positives and negatives must also be one and the same.
It is as though we were to view them through a kind of mental
Pseudoscope, by which means each would appear to be the other.
"When subjective and objective are both without their correlates, that
is the very axis of TAO. And when that axis passes through the centre
at which all Infinities converge, positive and negative alike blend
into an infinite ONE. Hence it has been said that there is nothing
like the light of nature.
Probably an allusion to Lao Tzŭ's "Use the light that is within you
to revert to your natural clearness of sight." We should then be able
to view things in their true light. See _Tao-Tê-Ching_, ch. lii., and
_The Remains of Lao Tzŭ_, p. 34.
"To take a finger in illustration of a finger not being a finger is not
so good as to take something which is not a finger. To take a horse in
illustration of a horse not being a horse is not so good as to take
something which is not a horse.
"So with the universe and all that in it is. These things are but
fingers and horses in this sense. The possible is possible: the
impossible is impossible. TAO operates, and given results follow.
Things receive names and are what they are. They achieve this by their
natural affinity for what they are and their natural antagonism to what
they are not. For all things have their own particular constitutions
and potentialities. Nothing can exist without these.
These last few sentences are repeated in ch. xxvii. _ad init._
"We can never know anything but phenomena. Things are what they are,
and their consequences will be what they will be."--_J. S. Mill._
"Therefore it is that, viewed from the standpoint of TAO, a beam and a
pillar are identical.
The horizontal with the vertical.
So are ugliness and beauty, greatness, wickedness, perverseness, and
strangeness. Separation is the same as construction: construction is
the same as destruction. Nothing is subject either to construction or
to destruction, for these conditions are brought together into ONE.
"Only the truly intelligent understand this principle of the identity
of all things. They do not view things as apprehended by themselves,
subjectively; but transfer themselves into the position of the things
viewed.
Avoiding the fallacious channels of the senses.
And viewing them thus they are able to comprehend them, nay, to master
them;--and he who can master them is near. So it is that to place
oneself in subjective relation with externals, without consciousness of
their objectivity,--this is TAO. But to wear out one's intellect in an
obstinate adherence to the individuality of things, not recognising the
fact that all things are ONE,--this is called _Three in the Morning_."
"What is _Three in the Morning_?" asked Tzŭ Yu.
"A keeper of monkeys," replied Tzŭ Ch'i, "said with regard to their
rations of chestnuts that each monkey was to have three in the morning
and four at night. But at this the monkeys were very angry, so the
keeper said they might have four in the morning and three at night,
with which arrangement they were all well pleased. The actual number
of the chestnuts remained the same, but there was an adaptation to
the likes and dislikes of those concerned. Such is the principle of
putting oneself into subjective relation with externals.
"Wherefore the true Sage, while regarding contraries as identical,
adapts himself to the laws of Heaven. This is called following two
courses at once.
He is thus prevented from trying to walk through walls, etc., as later
Taoists have professed themselves able to do, of course with a view
to gull the public and enrich themselves. "GOD," says Locke, "when he
makes the prophet, does not unmake the man."
So Carlyle in his essay on Novalis:--"To a Transcendentalist, matter
has an existence but only as a Phenomenon.... It is a mere relation,
or rather the result of a relation between our living souls and the
great First Cause."
"The knowledge of the men of old had a limit. It extended back to a
period when matter did not exist. That was the extreme point to which
their knowledge reached.
"The second period was that of matter, but of matter unconditioned.
By time or space. "Being, in itself," says Herbert Spencer, "out of
relation, is itself unthinkable." _Principles of Psychology_, iii. p.
258.
"The third epoch saw matter conditioned, but contraries were still
unknown. When these appeared, TAO began to decline. And with the
decline of TAO, individual bias arose.
"Have then these states of falling and rising real existences? Surely
they are but as the falling and rising of Chao Wên's music,--the
consequences of his playing.
Chao Wên played the guitar. Shih K'uang wielded the _bâton_.
To keep time.
Hui Tzŭ argued. Herein these three men excelled, and in the practice of
such arts they passed their lives.
"Hui Tzŭ's particular views being very different from those of the
world in general, he was correspondingly anxious to enlighten people.
But he did not enlighten them as he should have done,
By the cultivation and passive manifestation of his own inward light.
and consequently ended in the obscurity of the 'hard and white.'
Hui Tzŭ regarded such abstractions as hardness and whiteness as
separate existences, of which the mind could only be conscious
separately, one at a time.
Subsequently, his son searched his works for some clue, but never
succeeded in establishing the principle. And indeed if such were
possible to be established, then even I am established; but if not,
then neither I nor anything in the universe is established!
"Therefore what the true Sage aims at is the light which comes out
of darkness. He does not view things as apprehended by himself,
subjectively, but transfers himself into the position of the things
viewed. This is called using the light.
"There remains, however, Speech. Is that to be enrolled under either
category of contraries, or not? Whether it is so enrolled or not, it
will in any case belong to one or the other, and thus be as though it
had an objective existence. At any rate, I should like to hear some
speech which belongs to neither category.
Contraries being disposed of, there remains the vehicle _Speech_,
_i.e._ the actual terms in which it is stated that contraries have
ceased to be.
"If there was a beginning, then there was a time before that beginning.
And a time before the time which was before the time of that beginning.
"If there is existence, there must have been non-existence. And if
there was a time when nothing existed, then there must have been a time
before that--when even nothing did not exist. Suddenly, when nothing
came into existence, could one really say whether it belonged to the
category of existence or of non-existence? Even the very words I have
just now uttered,--I cannot say whether they have really been uttered
or not.
_I.e._ The words in the text, denying the existence of contraries.
"There is nothing under the canopy of heaven greater than the tip of an
autumn spikelet. A vast mountain is a small thing. Neither is there any
age greater than that of a child cut off in infancy. P'êng Tsu himself
died young. The universe and I came into being together; and I, and
everything therein, are ONE.
"If then all things are ONE, what room is there for Speech? On the
other hand, since I can utter these words, how can Speech not exist?
"If it does exist, we have ONE and Speech = two; and two and one =
three. From which point onwards even the best mathematicians will fail
to reach:
TAO.
how much more then will ordinary people fail?
"Hence, if from nothing you can proceed to something, and subsequently
reach three, it follows that it would be still more easy if you were to
start from something. To avoid such progression, you must put yourself
into subjective relation with the external.
"Before conditions existed, TAO was. Before definitions existed, Speech
was. Subjectively, we are conscious of certain delimitations which
are,--
Right and Left
Relationship and Obligation
Division and Discrimination
Emulation and Contention
These are called the _Eight Predicables_.
Not, of course, in the strict logical sense.
For the true Sage, beyond the limits of an external world, they exist,
but are not recognised. By the true Sage, within the limits of an
external world, they are recognised, but are not assigned. And so,
with regard to the wisdom of the ancients, as embodied in the canon of
_Spring and Autumn_,
Confucius' history of his native State. Now one of the canonical books
of China.
the true Sage assigns, but does not justify by argument. And thus,
classifying he does not classify; arguing, he does not argue."
"How can that be?" asked Tzŭ Yu.
"The true Sage," answered Tzŭ Ch'i, "keeps his knowledge within him,
while men in general set forth theirs in argument, in order to convince
each other. And therefore it is said that in argument he does not
manifest himself.
Others try to establish their own subjective view. The true Sage
remains passive, aiming only at the annihilation of contraries.
"Perfect TAO does not declare itself. Nor does perfect argument express
itself in words. Nor does perfect charity show itself in act. Nor
is perfect honesty absolutely incorruptible. Nor is perfect courage
absolutely unyielding.
"For the TAO which shines forth is not TAO. Speech which argues falls
short of its aim. Charity which has fixed points loses its scope.
Honesty which is absolute is wanting in credit. Courage which is
absolute misses its object. These five are, as it were, round, with a
strong bias towards squareness. Therefore that knowledge which stops at
what it does not know, is the highest knowledge.
"Who knows the argument which can be argued without words?--the TAO
which does not declare itself as TAO? He who knows this may be said
to be of GOD. To be able to pour in without making full, and pour out
without making empty, in ignorance of the power by which such results
are accomplished,--this is accounted _Light_."
Of old, the Emperor Yao said to Shun, "I would smite the Tsungs, and
the Kueis, and the Hsü-aos. Ever since I have been on the throne I have
had this desire. What do you think?"
"These three States," replied Shun, "are paltry out-of-the-way places.
Why can you not shake off this desire? Once upon a time, ten suns came
out together, and all things were illuminated thereby. How much more
then should virtue excel suns?"
Illustrating the use of "light." Instead of active force, substitute
the passive but irresistible influence of virtue complete. The sun
caused the traveller to lay aside his cloak when the north wind
succeeded only in making him draw it tighter around him.
Yeh Ch'üeh asked Wang I,
A disciple and tutor of remote antiquity. Said to have been two of the
four Sages on the Miao-ku-shê mountain mentioned in ch. i.
saying, "Do you know for certain that all things are subjectively the
same?"
"How can I know?" answered Wang I. "Do you know what you do not know?"
"How can I know?" replied Yeh Ch'üeh. "But can then nothing be known?"
"How can I know?" said Wang I. "Nevertheless, I will try to tell you.
How can it be known that what I call knowing is not really not knowing,
and that what I call not knowing is not really knowing? Now I would
ask you this. If a man sleeps in a damp place, he gets lumbago and
dies. But how about an eel? And living up in a tree is precarious and
trying to the nerves;--but how about monkeys? Of the man, the eel, and
the monkey, whose habitat is the right one, absolutely? Human beings
feed on flesh, deer on grass, centipedes on snakes, owls and crows on
mice. Of these four, whose is the right taste, absolutely? Monkey mates
with monkey, the buck with the doe; eels consort with fishes, while men
admire Mao Ch'iang and Li Chi,
Beauties of the fifth and seventh centuries B.C., respectively. The
commentators do not seem to have noted the very obvious anachronism
here involved.
at the sight of whom fishes plunge deep down in the water, birds soar
high in the air, and deer hurry away.
For shame at their own inferiority.
Yet who shall say which is the correct standard of beauty? In my
opinion, the standard of human virtue, and of positive and negative, is
so obscured that it is impossible to actually know it as such."
"If you then," asked Yeh Ch'üeh, "do not know what is bad for you, is
the Perfect Man equally without this knowledge?"
"The Perfect Man," answered Wang I, "is a spiritual being. Were the
ocean itself scorched up, he would not feel hot. Were the Milky Way
frozen hard, he would not feel cold. Were the mountains to be riven
with thunder, and the great deep to be thrown up by storm, he would not
tremble. In such case, he would mount upon the clouds of heaven, and
driving the sun and the moon before him, would pass beyond the limits
of this external world, where death and life have no more victory over
man;--how much less what is bad for him?"
* * * * *
Chü Ch'iao addressed Chang Wu Tzŭ
A disciple and tutor of antiquity.
as follows:--"I heard Confucius say, 'The true sage pays no heed to
mundane affairs. He neither seeks gain nor avoids injury. He asks
nothing at the hands of man. He adheres, without questioning, to TAO.
Without speaking, he can speak; and he can speak and yet say nothing.
And so he roams beyond the limits of this dusty world. These,' added
Confucius, 'are wild words.'
Han Fei Tzŭ tells us that Lao Tzŭ, whose doctrines Confucius seems to
be here deriding, said exactly the opposite of this; viz: "The true
Sage is beforehand in his attention to mundane affairs," _i.e._ "takes
time by the forelock." Neither utterance, however, appears in the
_Tao-Tê-Ching_. See _The Remains of Lao Tzŭ_, p. 44.
Now to me they are the skilful embodiment of TAO. What, Sir, is your
opinion?"
"Points upon which the Yellow Emperor doubted," replied Chang Wu Tzŭ,
"how should Confucius know?
Lao Tzŭ and the Yellow Emperor have always been mixed up in the heads
of Taoist writers, albeit separated by a chasm of some two thousand
years. Confucius is here evidently dealing with the actual doctrines
of Lao Tzŭ.
You are going too fast. You see your egg, and expect to hear it crow.
You look at your cross-bow, and expect to have broiled duck before you.
I will say a few words to you at random, and do you listen at random.
"How does the Sage seat himself by the sun and moon, and hold the
universe in his grasp? He blends everything into one harmonious whole,
rejecting the confusion of this and that. Rank and precedence, which
the vulgar prize, the Sage stolidly ignores. The revolutions of ten
thousand years leave his Unity unscathed. The universe itself may pass
away, but he will flourish still.
"How do I know that love of life is not a delusion after all? How do I
know but that he who dreads to die is not as a child who has lost the
way and cannot find his home?
"The lady Li Chi was the daughter of Ai Fêng.
A border chieftain.
When the Duke of Chin first got her, she wept until the bosom of
her dress was drenched with tears. But when she came to the royal
residence, and lived with the Duke, and ate rich food, she repented
of having wept. How then do I know but that the dead repent of having
previously clung to life?
"Those who dream of the banquet, wake to lamentation and sorrow. Those
who dream of lamentation and sorrow wake to join the hunt. While they
dream, they do not know that they dream. Some will even interpret the
very dream they are dreaming; and only when they awake do they know
it was a dream. By and by comes the Great Awakening, and then we find
out that this life is really a great dream. Fools think they are awake
now, and flatter themselves they know if they are really princes or
peasants. Confucius and you are both dreams; and I who say you are
dreams,--I am but a dream myself. This is a paradox. Tomorrow a sage
may arise to explain it; but that tomorrow will not be until ten
thousand generations have gone by.
"Granting that you and I argue. If you beat me, and not I you, are you
necessarily right and I wrong? Or if I beat you and not you me, am I
necessarily right and you wrong? Or are we both partly right and partly
wrong? Or are we both wholly right and wholly wrong? You and I cannot
know this, and consequently the world will be in ignorance of the truth.
"Who shall I employ as arbiter between us? If I employ some one who
takes your view, he will side with you. How can such a one arbitrate
between us? If I employ some one who takes my view, he will side with
me. How can such a one arbitrate between us? And if I employ some one
who either differs from, or agrees with, both of us, he will be equally
unable to decide between us. Since then you, and I, and man, cannot
decide, must we not depend upon Another?
Upon God, in whose infinity all contraries blend indistinguishably
into ONE.
Such dependence is as though it were not dependence. We are embraced in
the obliterating unity of God. There is perfect adaptation to whatever
may eventuate; and so we complete our allotted span.
"But what is it to be embraced in the obliterating unity of God? It
is this. With reference to positive and negative, to that which is
so and that which is not so,--if the positive is really positive, it
must necessarily be different from its negative: there is no room for
argument. And if that which is so really is so, it must necessarily be
different from that which is not so: there is no room for argument.
"Take no heed of time, nor of right and wrong. But passing into the
realm of the Infinite, take your final rest therein."
Our refuge is in God alone, the Infinite Absolute. Contraries cannot
but exist, but they should exist independently of each other without
antagonism. Such a condition is found only in the all-embracing unity
of God, wherein all distinctions of positive and negative, of right
and wrong, of this and of that, are obliterated and merged in ONE.
Herbert Spencer says, "The antithesis of subject and object, never
to be transcended while consciousness lasts, renders impossible all
knowledge of the Ultimate Reality in which subject and object are
united." _Principles of Psychology_, i. p. 272.
The Penumbra said to the Umbra, "At one moment you move: at another
you are at rest. At one moment you sit down: at another you get up.
Why this instability of purpose?" "I depend," replied the Umbra, "upon
something which causes me to do as I do; and that something depends
in turn upon something else which causes it to do as it does. My
dependence is like that of a snake's scales or of a cicada's wings.
Which do not move of their own accord.
How can I tell why I do one thing, or why I do not do another?"
Showing how two or more may be the phenomena of one.
Once upon a time, I, Chuang Tzŭ, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering
hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was
conscious only of following my fancies as a butterfly, and was
unconscious of my individuality as a man. Suddenly, I awaked, and
there I lay, myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man
dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I
am a man. Between a man and a butterfly there is necessarily a barrier.
The transition is called _Metempsychosis_.
Showing how one may appear to be either of two.