"How is it," inquired Ts'ui Lü, "that these lotus flowers have not yet opened?"
"The proper season hasn't yet arrived," rejoined Shih Hsiang-yün.
"They too," continued Ts'ui Lü, "resemble those in our pond; they are double flowers."
"These here," remarked Hsiang-yün, "are not however up to ours."
"They have over there," observed Ts'ui Lü, "a pomegranate tree, with four or five branches joined one to another, just like one storey raised above another storey. What trouble it must have cost them to rear!"
"Flowers and plants," suggested Shih Hsiang-yün, "are precisely like the human race. With sufficient vitality, they grow up in a healthy condition."
"I can't credit these words," replied Ts'ui Lü, twisting her face round. "If you maintain that they are like human beings, how is it that I haven't seen any person, with one head growing over another."
This rejoinder evoked a smile from Hsiang-yün. "I tell you not to talk," she cried, "but you will insist upon talking! How do you expect people to be able to answer every thing you say! All things, whether in heaven or on earth come into existence by the co-operation of the dual powers, the male and female. So all things, whether good or bad, novel or strange, and all those manifold changes and transformations arise entirely from the favourable or adverse influence exercised by the male and female powers. And though some things seldom seen by mankind might come to life, the principle at work is, after all, the same."
"In the face of these arguments," laughed Ts'ui Lü, "everything, from old till now, from the very creation itself, embodies a certain proportion of the Yin and Yang principles."
"You stupid thing!" exclaimed Hsiang-yün smiling, "the more you talk, the more stuff and nonsense falls from your lips! What about everything embodying a certain proportion of the principles Yin and Yang! Besides, the two words Yin and Yang are really one word; for when the Yang principle is exhausted, it becomes the Yin; and when the Yin is exhausted, it becomes Yang. And it isn't that, at the exhaustion of the Yin, another Yang comes into existence; and that, at the exhaustion of the Yang, a second Yin arises."