beyond the limits of mortality. Exempt from the changes of life and death, how much more is he beyond the reach of physical injury. The perfect man can walk under water without difficulty; he can touch fire without being burnt.[1]
DRUNKENNESS.
A drunken man who falls out of a cart, though he may suffer, yet will not die. His bones are jointed like those of other people, but he meets the accident under different conditions. His mental equilibrium is undisturbed. Unconscious of riding in the cart, he is equally unconscious of falling out of it. The ordinary ideas of life, death, and fear, find no place in his breast; consequently, when thrown into collision with matter, he is not afraid. And if a man can thus get perfect mental equilibrium out of wine, how much more should he do so out of the resources of his own nature? It is there that the wise man takes refuge; and there no one can injure him. To those who would wreak vengeance upon him, he opposes neither spear nor shield; nor does he heed the brick which some spiteful enemy may hurl at his head.
ARCHERY.
Lieh Yü-k'ou instructed Poh-hun Wu-jên in archery. Drawing the bow to its full, he [the teacher] placed a cup of water on his elbow and began to let fly. Hardly was one arrow out of sight ere another was on the string, the archer all the time standing like a statue. Poh-hun Wu-jên cried out, “This is shooting under ordinary conditions; it is not shooting under extraordinary conditions. Now I will ascend a high mountain with you, and stand on the edge of a precipice a thousand feet in depth, and see if you can shoot like this then.” Thereupon Wu-jên went with his teacher up a high mountain,
- ↑ Compare the foolish taunts of Reid and Beattie, who asked Bishop Berkeley why “he did not run his head against a post, walk over precipices, etc.; as, in accordance with his theory, no pain, no broken limbs could result.”―Lewes' Hist. of Philos. II., p. 287.
