186 JESSAYS SCIENTIFIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL. 



confident follower who wanted to "be of use." 

 " Cultivate fasting ; not bodily fasting, but the 

 fasting of the heart." TAO can only abide in the 

 life which has got rid of self. So the Duke of 

 She is reminded that there is something higher 

 than duty, 1 viz. destiny the state, that is, in which 

 conscious obedience has given way to that which 

 is instinctive and automatic. The parable of the 

 trees (pp. 50-53), with its result in the survival of 

 the good-for-nothing, is again a reversal of popular 

 outside judgments. For as the first part of the 

 chapter had taught the uselessness of trying to be 

 useful, so the last part teaches the usefulness of 

 being useless. And the same thought is carried on 

 in the next chapter, which deals with the reversal 

 of common opinion as to persons. Its motto is : 

 Judge not by the appearance. Virtue must pre-' 

 vail and outward form be forgotten. The loath- 

 some leper Ai T'ai To is made Prime Minister by 

 the wise Duke Ai. The mutilated criminal is 

 judged by Lao-Tzu to be a greater man than Con- 

 fucius. For the criminal is mutilated in body by 

 man, while Confucius, though men know it not, by 

 the judgment of God is 7r7D)jOo^ufvoe TT/OOC ajoerrjv. 



This protest of Chuang-Tzu against externality, 

 and judging only by the outward appearance, is 



1 Cf. Herbert Spencer's well-known paradox, "The sense of 

 duty or moral obligation is transitory, and will diminish as fast as 

 moralization increases" (Data of Ethics, p. 127). 



