“Then what is the use of mentioning it?” tartly added Hang, a devoted admirer of the Tau theory. At this arose an admirable wrangle over the question of use and beauty, in that happy style of wit which only the great Hi-Tea school of wisdom could boast. Its upshot was that matter resolved itself into the final irresponsibility of all things.
“But woe to that mortal,” said Tung, “who carries not about him the talisman of wisdom which imparts [pg 571] to everything its infinite magic, and who, groaning in the prison-house of the senses, sees not the eternal day-beam in all things. With eyes he sees not; with life he lives not. He hath the six becloudings of Kungfootse.”
“The wise man,” said Bang, “fears no fate. Torrents, tempests, earthquakes, are but blustering fictions; nothing is true but his courage. Fixed in his will, his condition is victory; and if he falls, he finds in the elements his kindred, and in nature his home.”
Here the countenance of the philosopher Tung was observed to change from yellow to pale green, with signs of great agony caused by unknown interior workings; for, it was afterward told, his morning repast had been poisoned by an ignorant cook and a bad doctor. Lost in their thoughts, the sages heeded not his groans.
“Always should the sage rejoice,” said Sing. “His spirit should take part in the feast of events, the sublime comedy of life. Does fortune desert him? Let him be glad that it seeks another. Is his friend dead? Let him be glad that he is gone to joy. In every event we can as easily discover reason for cheer as for despair.”
Ere Sing had finished speaking, an ornamented tile from the roof of the Dragon's Bower, loosened by one of those disturbances of the earth not unknown to the learned men of the East, fell upon the bare head of the philosopher Bang, who, after experience of a severe fright, was borne away helpless from the scene. Wing smiled, Sing laughed, and a perceptible scorn was on the lips of Hang.
Thus said Lung, he who had been called the gaunt thinker: “What think you? Is there anything better than life, friends? Here we live, responsible neither to be nor to do nor to die; life and fate stand pledged for us. Do we fall out of the charmed circle? We are caught up into another. Do we die? Then we live again; or, if we do not,” continued Lung, gasping, “so much the better. What so excellent as life; what so merciful as death?” Here a painful fit of coughing compelled the philosopher to pause.
But what now most drew the attention of the company was the entrance of the statesman Kung, who, in a voice of dignified emotion, informed the wise Sing that his brother had been suddenly seized and decapitated on a charge of conspiracy, and all his immense fortune confiscated to the state, save a portion awarded to his betrayer. Pangs and groans shook the bosom of the sage, as he left the tea-table; for his brother's bounty had been the mainstay of his life.
“O friends!” cried Kung, “the law is inexorable; it kills its child and devours its mother, and swallows the substance of its benefactors; but the state reigns and the king lives, and the land is happy. Praised be the king!”
“Praised be justice!” echoed Hang, who had counselled the astute Kung in the preparation of his criminal code. “Justice reigns in King, and acts through Kung. What is nature but justice, and what are her thousand-fold accidents but executioners? Every man gravitates to his fate, and every fate is a judgment. The king makes death: he can do no wrong; let no man mourn.” Long after the piercing mind of Hang had perished under the terrors of that great instrument which his genius invented for the reform of mankind; long after the astute [pg 572] Kung had yielded up his life to the demands of state (for he had put to death by mistake the favorite dog of his imperial master), these sentences, which seem to tear to pieces the leading tenet of the Lo-Tea doctrines as the dragon tears the bull, were remembered in the realm of King.