"A battering-ram can knock down a wall, but it cannot repair the breach.
This sentence has sorely puzzled all commentators.
Different things are differently applied.
"Ch'ih-Chi and Hua Liu could travel 1,000 li in one day, but for catching rats they were not equal to a wild cat.
Two of the eight famous steeds of Muh Wang, a semi-historical ruler of old.
Different animals possess different aptitudes.
"An owl can catch fleas at night, and see the tip of a hair, but if it comes out in the daytime its eyes are so dazzled it cannot see a mountain. Different creatures are differently constituted.
"Thus, as has been said, those who would have right without its correlative, wrong; or good government without its correlative, misrule,—they do not apprehend the great principles of the universe nor the conditions to which all creation is subject. One might as well talk of the existence of heaven without that of earth, or of the negative principle without the positive, which is clearly absurd. Such people, if they do not yield to argument, must be either fools or knaves.
"Rulers have abdicated under different conditions, dynasties have been continued under different conditions. Those who did not hit off a favourable time and were in opposition to their age,—they were called usurpers. Those who did hit off the right time and were in harmony with their age,—they were called patriots. Fair and softly, my River friend; what should you know of value and worthlessness, of great and small?"
It is therefore quite unnecessary to teach you where to fix the limits of that of which you know nothing.