spoke to him as follows:—
"Hui! it is easy to escape injury from God; it is difficult to avoid the benefits of man. There is no beginning and there is no end. Man and God are ONE. Who then was singing just now?"
"Pray, Sir, what do you mean," asked Yen Hui, "by saying that it is easy to escape injury from God?"
"Hunger, thirst, cold, and heat," replied Confucius, "are but as fetters in the path of life. They belong to the natural laws which govern the universe; and in obedience thereto I pass on my allotted course. The subject dares not disregard the mandates of his prince. And if this is man's duty to man, how much more shall it be his duty to God?"
"What is the meaning of difficult to avoid the benefits of man?" asked Yen Hui.
"If one begins," replied Confucius, "by adaptation to surroundings, rank and power follow without cease. Such advantages are external; they are not derived from oneself. And my life is more or less dependent upon the external. The superior man does not steal these; nor does the good man pilfer them. What then do I but take them as they come?
"Therefore it has been said that no bird is so wise as the swallow. If it sees a place unfit to dwell in, it will not bestow a glance thereon; and even though it should drop food there, it will leave the food and fly away. Now swallows fear man. Yet they dwell among men. Because there they find their natural abode."
In the same way, man should adapt himself to the conditions which surround him.
"And what is the meaning," enquired Yen Hui, "of no beginning and no end?"
"The work goes on," replied Confucius, "and no man knoweth the cause. How then shall he know the end, or the beginning? There is nothing left to us but to wait."