Page:Zhuang Zi - translation Giles 1889.djvu/102

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CHAPTER VI.

The Great Supreme.

Argument:—The human and the divine—The pure men of old—Their qualifications—Their self-abstraction—All things as one—The known and the unknown—Life a boon—Death a transition—Life eternal open to all—The way thither—Illustrations.

HE who knows what God is, and who knows what Man is, has attained. Knowing what God is, he knows that he himself proceeded therefrom. Knowing what Man is, he rests in the knowledge of the known, waiting for the knowledge of the unknown. Working out one's allotted span, and not perishing in mid career,—this is the fulness of knowledge.

God is a principle which exists by virtue of its own intrinsicality, and operates spontaneously, without self-manifestation.

It is in the human that the divine finds expression. Man emanates from God, and should therefore be on earth, in this brief life of ours, what God is for all eternity in the universe.

Herein, however, there is a flaw. Knowledge is dependent upon fulfilment. And as this fulfilment is uncertain, how can it be known that my divine is not really human, my human really divine?

Not until death lifts the veil can we truly know