Volume 19 / Part 3 — Odd Stories. VII. The Philosophers Of The Dragon's Bower.

In the reign of King, and in the Dragon's Bower of the beautiful tea-garden of the statesman Kung, had assembled the philosophers Tung, Bang, Sing, Lung, Wing, Hang, with the rich mandarins Bo and Sho. Sipping that exquisite beverage which, as yielded by a choice herb grown only in the flower-sprinkled garden of Kung, has imparted to the Hi-Tea philosophy the peculiar intellectual flavor which distinguishes it from the Lo-Tea doctrine, they discussed the problems of existence. Only a vague, brief record has been preserved of that eventful meeting, so well called by Yung Sing, the poet, “the shock of minds,” and which, it was long maintained by the Hi-Tea school, had solved the mysteries of preordained genesis and circumstantial fixture. The dialogue turned upon that profound saying of the old man of Chow, the wise Lautze—“The Tau which can be tau-ed is not the eternal Tau.” Vainly having sought in his own poor wit the meaning of this sublime sentence, the mandarin Sho begged the six sages, in the grace of their princely hearts, and with the light of their shining minds, to make it clear to his benighted intelligence.

Tung: Tau is the unbounded entity.

Bang: Thunder without sound.

Sing: Unsung music of all things.

Lung: Breath of life without life.

Hang: Justice of accidents.

Wing: Eternal entity of non-entity.

“In short,” added Tung, “the supreme principle Tau is the uncircumscribed limit of universes; the order of disorder; the contradiction which reconciles; the peace into which all storms subside; the mother and father of action; the source of the unworshipped unworshipping worship, and of power beyond dominion.”

The mandarin Sho acknowledged this to be a grand definition of Tau; but, being a collector of the imperial revenues, prayed to be informed of the use and value of Tau in the practical administration of the affairs of men; for to save his worthless life he could not see (begging the favor of the assembled wisdom) how Tau was of any use whatever. “It's of no use,” said Wing; “and there's the beauty of it.”

“Then what is the use of mentioning it?” tartly added Hang, a devoted admirer of the Tau theory. At this arose an admirable wrangle over the question of use and beauty, in that happy style of wit which only the great Hi-Tea school of wisdom could boast. Its upshot was that matter resolved itself into the final irresponsibility of all things.

“But woe to that mortal,” said Tung, “who carries not about him the talisman of wisdom which imparts [pg 571] to everything its infinite magic, and who, groaning in the prison-house of the senses, sees not the eternal day-beam in all things. With eyes he sees not; with life he lives not. He hath the six becloudings of Kungfootse.”

“The wise man,” said Bang, “fears no fate. Torrents, tempests, earthquakes, are but blustering fictions; nothing is true but his courage. Fixed in his will, his condition is victory; and if he falls, he finds in the elements his kindred, and in nature his home.”

Here the countenance of the philosopher Tung was observed to change from yellow to pale green, with signs of great agony caused by unknown interior workings; for, it was afterward told, his morning repast had been poisoned by an ignorant cook and a bad doctor. Lost in their thoughts, the sages heeded not his groans.

“Always should the sage rejoice,” said Sing. “His spirit should take part in the feast of events, the sublime comedy of life. Does fortune desert him? Let him be glad that it seeks another. Is his friend dead? Let him be glad that he is gone to joy. In every event we can as easily discover reason for cheer as for despair.”

Ere Sing had finished speaking, an ornamented tile from the roof of the Dragon's Bower, loosened by one of those disturbances of the earth not unknown to the learned men of the East, fell upon the bare head of the philosopher Bang, who, after experience of a severe fright, was borne away helpless from the scene. Wing smiled, Sing laughed, and a perceptible scorn was on the lips of Hang.

Thus said Lung, he who had been called the gaunt thinker: “What think you? Is there anything better than life, friends? Here we live, responsible neither to be nor to do nor to die; life and fate stand pledged for us. Do we fall out of the charmed circle? We are caught up into another. Do we die? Then we live again; or, if we do not,” continued Lung, gasping, “so much the better. What so excellent as life; what so merciful as death?” Here a painful fit of coughing compelled the philosopher to pause.

But what now most drew the attention of the company was the entrance of the statesman Kung, who, in a voice of dignified emotion, informed the wise Sing that his brother had been suddenly seized and decapitated on a charge of conspiracy, and all his immense fortune confiscated to the state, save a portion awarded to his betrayer. Pangs and groans shook the bosom of the sage, as he left the tea-table; for his brother's bounty had been the mainstay of his life.

“O friends!” cried Kung, “the law is inexorable; it kills its child and devours its mother, and swallows the substance of its benefactors; but the state reigns and the king lives, and the land is happy. Praised be the king!”

“Praised be justice!” echoed Hang, who had counselled the astute Kung in the preparation of his criminal code. “Justice reigns in King, and acts through Kung. What is nature but justice, and what are her thousand-fold accidents but executioners? Every man gravitates to his fate, and every fate is a judgment. The king makes death: he can do no wrong; let no man mourn.” Long after the piercing mind of Hang had perished under the terrors of that great instrument which his genius invented for the reform of mankind; long after the astute [pg 572] Kung had yielded up his life to the demands of state (for he had put to death by mistake the favorite dog of his imperial master), these sentences, which seem to tear to pieces the leading tenet of the Lo-Tea doctrines as the dragon tears the bull, were remembered in the realm of King.

Spake at last that strange sage whose eyes are as starlight to the darkness of common minds, and whose vision seeks the abode of Tau. “Since we but dream we live,” said Wing, “let us live to dream well. In reason are the pillars of our temple; in imagination is its worship. Happy are ye who, out of the toils of vain science and hard action, take rest in the bower of fancy, the pavilion of dreams, the garden of poetry, or roam the royal hunting-grounds of imagination to capture logic in the chase of pleasure, and find wisdom by seeking delight. Thrice fortunate ye,” continued the star-eyed Wing, taking another whiff from his pipe of opium, “who, when the caprices of power have driven you from doctrine, can retreat upon your dreams. Life is a fiction; let us dream that it is the truth.” Such was the curious doctrine of that wonderful man, whose visions of demons and the powers of the air have so often filled the imperial stage, and who died in the frenzy of his powerful mind.

The refined mandarin Bo—he who, for his reticence, had been entrusted with so many affairs of state—heard all these words of the learned, and spoke not. “All men and things,” he said to himself, “serve him who listens, and resist him who talks. Shrewd is he who gains without giving.” Immersed in these thoughts, the silent mandarin could only nod his head to a remark of the mandarin Sho, that life was a business of profit and loss, and the best speculations were always practical. What man can foretell his fate? The frank and candid Sho, whose manners concealed his purpose, lost his head for speculating with the king's money. The secret Bo, through his love of silence, forgot to send his kinsman Bang a physician who would have saved his life, and so was disinherited, and died a beggar.

The thinkers of Lo-Tea, having taken the measure of these and other events subsequent to the great dialogue of the Dragon's Bower, could not avoid the boast that their humble philosophy was better than a proud one; whereupon the infuriated statesman Kung sent a number of them into exile.

When the old philosopher of Chow heard of these sayings and doings, he murmured: “Half-truths are contradicted, whole truths are verified. There is no courage without right fear; no good silence without true speech; no aspiration without reverence; no dignity without humility; no good without affection; and philosophy has no room for a cold heart and a vain mind. But life is not contradicted, though lives are slain. Tau reigns.”

O sages! how by thinking shall ye add a foot to your stature? And how shall it avail ye when a brick, as it were, dropped down by a tornado centre-wise, so to speak, on a shaven head, shall fracture your systems of philosophy? What withstands the accidents of fate save the divine Truth, which is no accident?

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