flung down his hammer and chisel, and mounting the steps said, "What words may your Highness be studying?"
"I am studying the words of the Sages," replied the Duke.
"Are the Sages alive?" asked the wheelwright.
"No," answered the Duke; "they are dead."
"Then the words your Highness is studying," rejoined the wheelwright, "are only the dregs of the ancients."
"What do you mean, sirrah!" cried the Duke, "by interfering with what I read? Explain yourself, or you shall die."
"Let me take an illustration," said the wheelwright, "from my own trade. In making a wheel, if you work too slowly, you can't make it firm; if you work too fast, the spokes won't fit in. You must go neither too slowly nor too fast. There must be co-ordination of mind and hand. Words cannot explain what it is, but there is some mysterious art herein. I cannot teach it to my son; nor can he learn it from me. Consequently, though seventy years of age, I am still making wheels in my old age. If the ancients, together with what they could not impart, are dead and gone, then what your Highness is studying must be the dregs."
This episode of the wheelwright is to be found in the works of Huai Nan Tzŭ, of the 2nd century B.C. He used it to illustrate the opening words of the Tao-Tê-Ching; and in The Remains of Lao Tzŭ, p. 6, it is stated that he stole it from Chuang Tzŭ without acknowledgment.
When that statement was made I had not come to the conclusion, now forced upon me, that the above chapter is not from the hand of Chuang Tzŭ. As one critic remarks, the style is generally admirable; but it is not the style of Chuang Tzŭ.