-- from Chuaung Tsu --
Human nature is opposed to benevolence
and the righteousness by which kings govern.
Better that people are left to their insolence –
introduce too much change and they’ll just prove stubborn.
Human beings are provided with rules.
What appears in them bent is not bent by the hook,
and what straight, curved, or rounded not made so by tools.
Nor can their precepts be gleaned in a book.
People are led by some mysterious guidance
that allows them to attain their several ends.
Let them be somber, let them be riant.
Forsake improvement and dispense with appliance.
Let their course proceed to the place towards which it tends.
Benevolence is like Truth, only pearled:
another deception practiced upon the world.
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