I do not know where there is a more pregnant passage than this following,—­a better acid (of words) to corrode the desperate metal of selfhood; listen well, for each clause is a volume.  “Can one get Tao to possess it for one’s own?” asks Chwangtse; and answers himself thus:  “Your very body is not your own; how then should Tao be?—­If my body is not my own, whose is it, pray?—­It is the delegated image of God.  Your posterity is not your own; it is the delegated exuviae of God.  You move, but know not how; you are at rest, but know not why; you taste, but know not the cause; these are the operations of universal law.  How then should you get Tao so as to possess it for your own?”

Now then, I want to take one of those clauses, and try to see what Chwangtse really meant by it.  “Your individuality is not your own, but the delegated adaptability of God.”—­There is a certain position in the Scheme of Things Entire,—­a point, with a relation of its own to the rest of the Scheme, to the Universe;—­ as the red line has a relation of its own to the rest of the spectrum and the ray of light as a whole.....  From that point, from that position, there is a work to be done, which can be done from no other.  The Lonely Eternal looks out through these eyes, because it must see all things; and there are things no eyes can see but these, no other hands do.  This point is an infinitesimal part of the whole; but without its full and proper functioning, the Whole falls short in that much:—­because of your or my petty omissions, the Universe limps and goes lame.—­Into this position, as into all others impartially, the One Life which is Tao flows, adapting itself through aeons to the relations which that point bears to the Whole:  and the result and the process of this adaptation is—­your individuality or mine.

You are not the point, the position:  because it is merely that which you hold and through which you function; it is yours, but not you.  What then are you? That which occupies and adapts itself to the point?  But that is Tao, the Universal.  You can only say it is you, if from you you subtract all you-ness.  Your individuality, then, is a temporary aspect of Tao in a certain relation to the totality of Tao, the One Thing which is the No Thing:—­or it is the “delegated adaptability of God.”

How and wherein adaptable?—­The Infinite, occupying this position, has formed therein all sorts of attachments and dislikes; and each one of them hinders it adaptability.  Your surroundings have reflected themselves on you:  and the sum of the reflexions is your personality,—­the little cage of I-am-ness from which it is so hard to escape.  Every reflected image engraves itself on the stuff of yourself by the sensation of attachment or repulsion which it arouses.  When it says, “The One becomes the Two”—­which is the way in one form or another all ancient philosophy sums up the beginning of things;—­this is