their theory a little farther on are of incomparable beauty.
The spiritual or essential part of man's nature pertains to Heaven; his bony framework to the Earth. That which belongs to Heaven is pure and tenuous; that which belongs to the Earth is turbid and dense; and when the spiritual part of a man leaves the form in which it has resided, each reverts to where it first came from. Wherefore the disembodied spirit is called a kuei [or ghost], which is something that "reverts" [kuei]; for it reverts to its original dwelling-place.
The Yellow Emperor said, "The spiritual part enters the gate [it emerged from], the body returns to that from which it sprang; and then what becomes of Me? Between the birth of a man and his death there are four great transformations: from infancy to childhood, from youth to prime, from age to decrepitude, and from the last agonies to annihilation. . . . On reaching this last stage the man finds himself at rest, and thus returns to the point from which he started."
It is this idea of death as rest, as a cessation of all worry, fatigue, and strife, that is so touchingly brought out in the stories we are about to give. First, however, there is a charming little anecdote illustrative of a lesson previously given by our philosopher that we must not overlook. We will call it
The Secret of Contentment.
As Confucius was on a journey to the Great Mountain, he fell in with a man named Jung Ch'i-ch'i, walking in a country place at Ch'êng. He was dressed in deerskin, with a girdle of cord; and he was playing a lute and singing.
"May I ask what makes you so happy, sir?" said Confucius.
"There are many things that make me happy," replied the other. "Of all created beings, human beings are the noblest; it has fallen to my lot to be a human being, and that is one
