and forethought. Past and future will cease to exist for him, in his then neutral condition.
"Move when pushed, come when dragged. Be like a whirling gale, like a feather in the wind, like a mill-stone going round. The mill-stone as an existence is perfectly harmless. In motion or at rest it does no more than is required, and cannot therefore incur blame.
"Why? Because it is simply an inanimate thing. It has no anxieties about itself. It is never entangled in the trammels of knowledge. In motion or at rest it is always governed by fixed laws, and therefore it never becomes open to praise. Hence it has been said, 'Be as though an inanimate thing, and there will be no use for Sages.'
"For a clod cannot be without Tao,"—at which some full-blooded young buck covered the argument with ridicule by crying out, "Shên Tao's Tao is not for the living, but for the dead!"
It was the same with T'ien P'ien. He studied under P'êng Mêng; with the result that he learnt nothing.
- Tao cannot be learnt.
P'êng Meng's tutor said, "Those of old who knew Tao, reached the point where positive and negative ceased to exist. That was all."
Now the bent of these men is one of opposition, which it is difficult to discuss. They act in every way differently from other people, but cannot escape the imputation of purpose.
- Which takes the place of spontaneity.
