swimmer may be hooked, and the flyer may be shot by the arrow.
But there is the dragon. I cannot tell how he mounts on the wind
through the clouds, and rises to heaven. Today I have seen Lao-
tsze, and can only compare him to the dragon [3].'
While at Lo, Confucius walked over the grounds set apart for
the great sacrifices to Heaven and Earth; inspected the pattern of
the Hall of Light, built to give audience in to the princes of the
kingdom; and examined all the arrangements of the ancestral
temple and the court. From the whole he received a profound

1 According to Sze-ma Ch'ien, Tan was the posthumous epithet of
this individual, whose surname was Li (§õ), name R (¦Õ), and
designation Po-yang (§B¶§).
2 ¶hºA»P²]§Ó.
3 See the ¥v°O, ¦C¶Ç²Ä¤T, and compare the remarks attributed to
Lao-tsze in the account of the K'ung family near the beginning.


impression. 'Now,' said he with a sigh, 'I know the sage wisdom of
the duke of Chau, and how the House of Chau attained to the royal
sway [1].' On the walls of the Hall of Light were paintings of the
ancient sovereigns from Yao and Shun downwards, their
characters appearing in the representations of them, and words of
praise or warning being appended. There was also a picture of the
duke of Chau sitting with his infant nephew, the king Ch'ang, upon
his knees, to give audience to all the princes. Confucius surveyed
the scene with silent delight, and then said to his followers,
'Here you see how Chau became so great. As we use a glass to
examine the forms of things, so must we study antiquity in order
to understand the present time [2].' In the hall of the ancestral