He is thus prevented from trying to walk through walls, etc., as later Taoists have professed themselves able to do, of course with a view to gull the public and enrich themselves. "God," says Locke, "when he makes the prophet, does not unmake the man."
So Carlyle in his essay on Novalis:—"To a Transcendentalist, matter has an existence but only as a Phenomenon.... It is a mere relation, or rather the result of a relation between our living souls and the great First Cause."
"The knowledge of the men of old had a limit. It extended back to a period when matter did not exist. That was the extreme point to which their knowledge reached.
"The second period was that of matter, but of matter unconditioned.
By time or space. "Being, in itself," says Herbert Spencer, "out of relation, is itself unthinkable." Principles of Psychology, iii. p. 258.
"The third epoch saw matter conditioned, but contraries were still unknown. When these appeared, Tao began to decline. And with the decline of Tao, individual bias arose.
"Have then these states of falling and rising real existences? Surely…
Chuang Tzu traces how knowledge itself becomes a problem. The ancients knew matter without needing to name or divide it. But the moment contraries appeared—this versus that, self versus other—the unified Tao began to fracture. The Tao declined not because reality changed, but because we started *thinking* about it in categories. Even our spiritual ambitions can become a way of grasping rather than belonging.
Lord, remember David, and all his afflictions:
How he sware unto the LORD, and vowed unto the mighty God of Jacob;
Surely I will not come into the tabernacle of my house, nor go up into my bed;
I will not give sleep to mine eyes, or slumber to mine eyelids,
Until I find out a place for the LORD, an habitation for the mighty God of Jacob.
Lo, we heard of it at Ephratah: we found it in the fields of the wood.
We will go into his tabernacles: we will worship at his footstool.
Arise, O LORD, into thy rest; thou, and the ark of thy strength.
Let thy priests be clothed with righteousness; and let thy saints shout for joy.
For thy servant David’s sake turn not away the face of thine anointed.
The LORD hath sworn in truth unto David; he will not turn from it; Of the fruit of thy body will I set upon thy throne.
If thy children will keep my covenant and my testimony that I shall teach them, their children shall also sit upon thy throne for evermore.
For the LORD hath chosen Zion; he hath desired it for his habitation.
The Psalmist makes no such distance. David doesn't philosophize about God's presence; he *searches for a place* for the Lord with his whole body and will, sleepless and restless. He vows, he acts, he inhabits grief and longing without dissolving them. Prayer here is not transcending contraries but living faithfully *within* them, waiting for God to arise.
(36) God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, surfeit and hunger; but he takes various shapes, just as fire, when it is mingled with spices, is named according to the savour of each. R. P. 39 b.
Heraclitus insists that God *is* the opposites themselves—day and night, war and peace, surfeit and hunger—not a unity hiding behind them. This cuts against both Chuang Tzu's retreat into pre-division and the temptation to escape tension through spiritual knowledge.
All three see the danger of false knowledge and pretense. But they stand at different edges of the problem. Chuang Tzu invites return to simplicity before division. The Psalmist stands *in* division—longing, seeking, covenanting—and trusts God to answer. Heraclitus says the opposites themselves are divine order, not a fall from it. Together they ask: Must I choose between returning to unity, faithful action within conflict, or recognizing God *in* the tension itself?
Can I let one ordinary thing today—work, a conversation, a meal—teach me rather than be solved by what I already think?