moving nor at rest; that if you took a
stick a foot long, and cut it in half every day, you would never come to
the end of it; and that a bay horse and a dun cow were three, because
taken separately they were two, and taken together they were one, and one
and two made up three. 'He was like a man running a race with his own
shadow, and making a noise in order to drown the echo. He was a clever
gadfly, that was all. What was the use of him?'

Morality is, of course, a different thing. It went out of fashion, says
Chuang Tzu, when people began to moralise. Men ceased then to be
spontaneous and to act on intuition. They became priggish and
artificial, and were so blind as to have a definite purpose in life. Then
came Governments and Philanthropists, those two pests of the age. The
former tried to coerce people into being good, and so destroyed the
natural goodness of man. The latter were a set of aggressive busybodies
who caused confusion wherever they went. They were stupid enough to have
principles, and unfortunate enough to act up to them. They all came to
bad ends, and showed that universal altruism is as bad in its results as
universal egotism. They 'tripped people up over charity, and fettered
them with duties to their neighbours.' They gushed over music, and
fussed over ceremonies. As a consequence of all this, the world lost its
equilibrium, and has been staggering ever since.

Who, then, according to Chuang Tzu, is the perfect man? And what is his
manner of life? The perfect man does nothing beyond gazing at the
universe. He adopts no absolute position. 'In motion, he is like water.
At rest, he is like a mirror. And, like Echo, he answers only when he is
called upon.' He lets externals take care of themselves. Nothing
material injures him; nothing spiritual punishes him. His mental
equilibrium gives him the empire of the world. He is never the slave of
objective existences. He knows that, 'just as the best language is that
which is never spoken, so the best action is that which is never done.'
He is passive, and accepts the laws of life. He rests in inactivity, and
sees the world become virtuous of itself. He does not try to 'bring
about his own good deeds.' He never wastes himself on effort. He is not
troubled about moral distinctions. He knows that things are what they
are, and that their consequences will be what they will be. His mind is
the 'speculum of creation,' and he is ever