nd oh,
Heavens, the Whither." He said that to emerge was life, and to return
was death. Chuang Tzu makes it clear that what man emerges from is some
transcendental state in the Infinite; and that to the Infinite he may
ultimately return.

"How," he asks, "do I know that love of life is not a delusion after
all? How do I know that he who dreads to die is not like a child who has
lost the way, and cannot find his home?

"Those who dream of the banquet wake to lamentation and sorrow. Those
who dream of lamentation and sorrow wake to join the hunt. While they
dream, they do not know that they dream. Some will even interpret the
very dream they are dreaming; and only when they awake do they know it
was a dream. By and by comes the Great Awakening, and then we find out
that this life is really a great dream. Fools think they are awake now,
and flatter themselves they know if they are really princes or peasants.
Confucius and you are both mere dreams; and I, who say you are dreams,--I
am but a dream myself.

"Take no heed," he adds, "of time, nor of right and wrong; but passing
into the realm of the Infinite, find your final rest therein."

An abstract Infinite, however, soon ceased to satisfy the natural
cravings of the great body of Taoist followers. Chuang Tzu had already
placed the source of human life beyond the limits of our visible
universe; and in order to secure a return thither, it was only necessary
to refine away the grossness of our material selves according to the
doctrine of the Way. It thus came about that the One, in whose
obliterating unity all seemingly opposed conditions were to be
indistinguishably blended, began to be regarded as a fixed point of
dazzling intellectual luminosity, in remote ether, around which circled
for ever and ever, in the supremest glory of motion, the souls of those
who had successfully passed through the ordeal of life, and who had left
the slough of humanity behind them.

Let me quote some lines from a great Taoist poet, Ssu-k'ung T'u, written
to support this view. His poem consists of twenty-four stanzas, each
twelve lines in length, and each dealing with some well-known phase of
Taoist doctrine.

"Expenditure of force leads to outward decay,
Spiritual existence means inward fulness.
Let us revert to Nothing and enter the Absolute,
Hoarding up strength for Energy.
Freighted with eternal principles,
Athwart the mighty void,
Where cloud-masses darken,