Chuang Tzu · 50 of 137

44.

44. 1. Or fame or life,

Insight

Legge versifies the opening: 'Or fame or life, which do you hold more dear? Or life or wealth, to which would you adhere?' Two questions back to back, both arranged so the answer is obvious only on a long enough timeline. Most lives are organized around the surface answer rather than the obvious one — people give up health for promotion, give up presence for reputation, and only register the trade when the fame or money turns out not to spend in the currencies that mattered. Augustine made the same observation in Confessions about himself: he had spent his early life chasing things that satisfied him less than the boredom he was trying to escape.名與身孰親, 身與貨孰多. Augustine, Confessions Book VI on the inversion of priorities. Standard TTC/Augustinian comparative on disordered loves.

Which do you hold more dear?

Or life or wealth,

To which would you adhere?

Keep life and lose those other things;

Keep them and lose your life:--which brings

Sorrow and pain more near?

2. Thus we may see,

Who cleaves to fame

Rejects what is more great;

Who loves large stores

Gives up the richer state.

3. Who is content

Needs fear no shame.

Who knows to stop

Incurs no blame.

From danger free

Long live shall he.

, 'Cautions.' The chapter warns men to let nothing come into competition with the value which they set on the Tâo. The Tâo is not named, indeed, but the idea of it was evidently in the writer's mind.

The whole chapter rhymes after a somewhat peculiar fashion; familiar enough, however, to one who is acquainted with the old rhymes of the Book of Poetry.