by Zhuangzi (translated by Herbert A. Giles) · 1889
Classics
Herbert Giles's English translation of the writings of Zhuangzi (Chuang Tzu), the ancient Chinese Daoist thinker, full of parables, dialogues and arguments about freedom, change, life and death. It includes the famous passage in which Chuang Tzu dreams he is a butterfly.
Content note: A nineteenth-century translation: Giles's introduction and notes reflect the views of his time about Chinese religion.
Transcendental Bliss.
Argument:—Space infinite—Time infinite—Relativity of magnitudes, physical and moral—The magnitude absolute—Usefulness as a test of value—The usefulness of the useless.
In the northern ocean there is a fish, called the Leviathan, many thousand li in size. This leviathan changes into a bird, called the Rukh, whose back is many thousand li in breadth. With a mighty effort it rises, and its wings obscure the sky like clouds.
At the equinox, this bird prepares to start for the southern ocean, the Celestial Lake. And in the Record of Marvels we read that when the rukh flies southwards, the water is smitten for a space of three thousand li around, while the bird itself mounts upon a typhoon to a height of ninety thousand li, for a flight of six months' duration.
Just so are the motes in a sunbeam blown aloft by God. For whether the blue of the sky is its real colour, or only the result of distance without end, the effect to the bird looking down would be just the same as to the motes.
Distance being relative. The rukh at an altitude of 90,000 li (three li to a mile) is no more than a mote in a sunbeam a few feet from the ground.
