Great knowledge is wide and comprehensive; small knowledge is partial and restricted. Great speech is exact and complete; small speech is merely so much talk. When we sleep, the soul communicates with what is external to us; when we awake, the body is set free. Our intercourse with others then leads to various activity, and daily there is the striving of mind with mind. There are hesitancies; deep difficulties; reservations; small apprehensions causing restless distress, and great apprehensions producing endless fears.
Where their utterances are like arrows from a bow, we have those who feel it their charge to pronounce what is right and what is wrong; where they are given out like the conditions of a covenant, we have those who maintain their views, determined to overcome. The weakness of their arguments, like the decay of things in autumn and winter, shows the failing of the minds of some from day to day; or it is like their water which, once voided, cannot be gathered up again. Then their ideas seem as if fast bound with cords, showing that the mind is become like an old and dry moat, and that it is nigh to death, and cannot be restored to vigor and brightness.
Joy and anger, sadness and pleasure, anticipation and regret, fickleness and fixedness, vehemence and indolence, eagerness and tardiness—all these moods, like music from an empty tube, or mushrooms from the warm moisture, day and night succeed to one another and come before us, and we do not know whence they sprout. Let us stop! Let us stop! Can we expect to find out suddenly how they are produced?
If there were not the views of another, I should not have mine; if there were not I with my views, his would be uncalled for—this is nearly a true statement of the case, but we do not know what it is that makes it be so. It might seem as if there would be a true Governor concerned in it, but we do not find any trace of his presence and acting. That such an One could act so I believe; but we do not see His form. He has affections, but He has no form.
Given the body, with its hundred parts, its nine openings, and its six viscera, all complete in their places, which do I love the most? Do you love them all equally? Or do you love some more than others? Is it not the case that they all perform the part of your servants and waiting women? All of them being such, are they not incompetent to rule one another? Or do they take it in turns to be now ruler and now servants?
There must be a true Ruler among them, whether by searching you can find out His character or not, there is neither advantage nor hurt, so far as the truth of His operation is concerned. When once we have received the bodily form complete, its parts do not fail to perform their functions till the end comes. In conflict with things or in harmony with them, they pursue their course to the end, with the speed of a galloping horse which cannot be stopped—is it not sad? To be constantly toiling all one's lifetime, without seeing the fruit of one's labor, and to be weary and worn out with his labor, without knowing where he is going to—is it not a deplorable case?
Men may say, "But it is not death," yet of what advantage is this? When the body is decomposed, the mind will be the same along with it—must not the case be pronounced very deplorable? Is the life of man indeed enveloped in such darkness? Is it I alone to whom it appears so? And does it not appear to be so to other men?
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