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THE THÂI-SHANG TRACTATE OF ACTIONS AND THEIR
RETRIBUTIONS 1.
1. The Thai-Shang (Tractate) says, 'There are no special doors for calamity and happiness (in men's The Thesis.
The lot); they come as men themselves call
ce them. Their recompenses follow good and evil as the shadow follows the substance 2. 2. Accordingly, in heaven and earth 8 there are
or spirits that take account of men's transMachinery to secure gressions, and, according to the lightness retribution.
or gravity of their offences, take away from their term of life. When that term is curtailed, men become poor and reduced, and meet with many sorrows and afflictions. All (other) men hate them; punishments and calamities attend them; good luck and occasions for felicitation shun them;
1 See vol. xxxix, pp. 38-40.
% This paragraph, after the first three characters, is found in the 30 Khwan, under the tenth and eleventh notices in the twenty-third year of duke Hsiang (B.C. 549),-part of an address to a young nobleman by the officer Min 3ze-mâ. The only difference in the two texts is in one character which does not affect the meaning. Thus the text of this Taoist treatise is taken from a source which cannot be regarded as Tâoistic.
% This seems equivalent to all through space.'
• The swan in the text here seems to mean the whole of the allotted term of life.' Further on, the same character has the special meaning of a period of a hundred days.'
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