Book VI (part 10)

The Shwo Wän dictionary defines the name by , 'a recluse of the mountain, whose bodily form has been changed, and who ascends to heaven;' but when this account was made, Tâoism had entered into a new phase, different from what it had in the time of our author. 237:2 In this description of 'the True Man,' and in what follows, there is what is grotesque and what is exaggerated (see note on the title of the first Book, p. 127). The most prominent characteristic of him was his perfect comprehension of the Tâo and participation of it. 237:3 has here the sense of . 238:1 Was not this the state of non-existence? We cannot say of Pantâoism. However we may describe that, the Tâo operates in nature, but is not identical with it. 238:2 appears in the common editions as , which must have got into the text at a very early time. 'The mind forgetting,' or 'free from all thought and purpose,' appears everywhere p. 239 in the Book as a characteristic of the True Man. Not a few critics contend that it was this, and not the Tâo of which it is a quality, that Kwang-dze intended by the 'Master' in the title. 239:1 Such antithetic statements are startling, but they are common with both Lâo-dze and our author. 239:2 The seven men mentioned here are all adduced, I must suppose, as instances of good and worthy men, but still inferior to the True Man. Of Hû Pû-kieh all that we are told is that he was 'an ancient worthy.' One account of Wû Kwang is that he p. 240 was of the time of Hwang-Tî, with ears seven inches long; another, that he was of the time of Thang, of the Shang dynasty. Po-î and Shû-khî are known to us from the Analects; and also the count of Khî, whose name, it is said, was Hsü-yü. I can find nothing about Kî Thâ;--his name in Ziâo Hung's text is Shän-thû Tî was of the Yin dynasty, a contemporary of Thang. He drowned himself in the Ho. Most of these are referred to in other places. 241:1 All this paragraph is taken as illustrative of the True man's freedom from thought or purpose in his course. 241:2 See note 3 on par. 1, p. 236. 241:3 Love is due to a parent, and so such persons should love Heaven. There is in the text here, I think, an unconscious reference to the earliest time, before the views of the earliest Chinese diverged to Theism and Tâoism. We cannot translate the here. 242:1 The great and most honoured Master,--the Tâo. 242:2 This sentence contrasts the cramping effect on the mind of Confucianism with the freedom given by the doctrine of the Tâo. 242:3 The Tâo does this. The whole paragraph is an amplification of the view given in the preceding note. 242:4 The Tâo cannot be taken away. It is with its possessor, an ever-during thing.' 243:1 See p. 242, note 4. 243:2 Adopting the reading of for , supplied by Hwâi-nan dze. 243:3 Our author has done with 'the True Man,' and now brings in the Tâo itself as his subject. Compare the predicates of It here with Bk. II, par. 2. But there are other, and perhaps higher, things said of it here.