“Nothing” was rather a favourite term with Chuang Tzu for the exercise of his wit.  Light asked Nothing, saying:  “Do you, sir, exist, or do you not exist?” But getting no answer to his question, Light set to work to watch for the appearance of Nothing.  Hidden, vacuous—­all day long he looked but could not see it, listened but could not hear it, grasped at but could not seize it.  “Bravo!” cried Light; “who can equal this?  I can get to be nothing [meaning darkness], but I can’t get to be not nothing.”

Confucius would have nothing to say on the subject of death and a future state; his theme was consistently this life and its obligations, and he regarded speculation on the unknown as sheer waste of time.  When one of three friends died and Confucius sent a disciple to condole with the other two, the disciple found them sitting by the side of the corpse, merrily singing and playing on the lute.  They professed the then comparatively new faith which taught that life was a dream and death the awakening.  They believed that at death the pure man “mounts to heaven, and roaming through the clouds, passes beyond the limits of space, oblivious of existence, for ever and ever without end.”  When the shocked disciple reported what he had seen, Confucius said, “These men travel beyond the rule of life; I travel within it.  Consequently, our paths do not meet; and I was wrong in sending you to mourn.  They look on life as a huge tumour from which death sets them free.  All the same they know not where they were before birth, nor where they will be after death.  They ignore their passions.  They take no account of their ears and eyes.  Backwards and forwards through all eternity, they do not admit a beginning or an end.  They stroll beyond the dust and dirt of mortality, to wander in the realms of inaction.  How should such men trouble themselves with the conventionalities of this world, or care what people may think of them?”

Life comes, says Chuang Tzu, and cannot be declined; it goes, and cannot be stopped.  But alas, the world thinks that to nourish the physical frame is enough to preserve life.  Although not enough, it must still be done; this cannot be neglected.  For if one is to neglect the physical frame, better far to retire at once from the world, since by renouncing the world one gets rid of the cares of the world.  There is, however, the vitality which informs the physical frame; that must be equally an object of incessant care.  Then he whose physical frame is perfect and whose vitality remains in its original purity—­he is one with God.  Man passes through this sublunary life as a sunbeam passes through a crack; here one moment, and gone the next.  Neither are there any not equally subject to the ingress and egress of mortality.  One modification brings life; then comes another, and there is death.  Living creatures cry out; human beings feel sorrow.  The bow-case is slipped off; the clothes’-bag is dropped; and in the confusion the soul wings its flight, and the body follows, on the great journey home.