The Formative Age 17
or harder than rock, the author notes, but over time water erodes and
triumphs over rock.
A second Daoist work, the Book of Zhuangzi, is a prose collection
attributed to a philosopher of the same name (literally Master Zhuang,
the polite name for Zhuang Zhou), who also may or may not have
existed. The Book of Zhuangzi is the most original and inventive book
in all of Chinese thought and literature. Full of satirical and whimsi-
cal fl ights of fancy, the philosopher Zhuangzi appears to challenge all
assumptions of the Confucians and Legalists and all other schools of
thought as well. Zhuangzi mocks with cynicism both the serious moral
declarations of Confucian philosophers and the state-building strate-
gies of the Legalists. One saying often attributed to Zhuangzi, prob-
ably erroneously but tellingly nevertheless, captures well his cynicism
toward politics and still applies in surprising ways today: “This one
steals a buckle and he is executed, that one steals a country and he
becomes its ruler.”^11
According to the Book of Zhuangzi, all the philosophers of the
Hundred Schools period were arguing over insignifi cant matters arbi-
trarily chosen to try to prove their cleverness, to gain favor with the
powerful, or to win prestige in a shortsighted quest for fame and for-
tune. Zhuangzi told a story about a frog who lived in a well that he
believed was the most beautiful and spacious place on earth. Yet when
he invited the Giant Turtle of the Eastern Sea to join him, the turtle
could not get even one foot into the frog’s small well. For Zhuangzi,
all the Warring States philosophers were frogs in their own little wells.
They did not realize that the universe was a vast and wonderful place,
and that humans were just one tiny aspect of reality and not very con-
sequential alongside the sun, moon, and stars. He attacked everyone’s
values and arguments, but with such style, wit, and imagination that
his book has been a favorite among educated Chinese down to the
present day.
While Confucians lamented the decline of early Zhou ideals and
early Zhou power and Daoists attacked Confucians and Legalists as
self-righteous meddlers in people’s lives, the Legalists proceeded to pro-
mote the changes that would end the Warring States period. The book
that synthesized a variety of Legalist teachings into one systematic doc-
trine was the Book of Han Feizi, a chilling set of calculations of raw
power, traditionally attributed to Han Feizi (Master Han Fei), a prince
of the small state of Han in the third century bce.
In contrast to most thinkers of the day who saw wisdom in the
study of the past, Han Feizi argued that the past was dead, buried, and