[In the following essay, Clark explores the elements of Su's philosophy of art, contending that he combined aspects of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism into one unified vision of life and art.]

Outside his own country Su Tung-p'o is, perhaps, best known as a satirist whose writings were continually getting him into trouble. Chinese commentators do not agree with this interpretation of Su's writings, and it is probable that satire is the exception, rather than the rule, in the poet's intention. When he was satirical, it must be remembered that he used this most subtle of weapons with a purpose and that, behind that purpose, there stood a man who possessed a remarkable philosophy.

A Confucian in his conduct of life and political attitude, he nevertheless continually draws upon the wells of Buddhism and Taoism for inspiration in his writings and his art. An analysis of his fu, for instance, will demonstrate that he did not hesitate to quote from the works of these three doctrines; of which, in fact, he possessed an intimate knowledge. How can this apparent divergence in his creed be reconciled?

Su Shih was an artist, and in Taoism and the Mah y na system of Buddhism he undoubtedly recognized media through which he could most satisfactorily interpret the rhythm of Nature in his art. He himself has recorded, in his role as art-critic, his opinion regarding the necessity of unity between the artist-creator and nature, and it is in his writings that we may find the answer to this riddle. Referring with admiration, as he often does, to Wên Yü-k'o, he writes: "When one totally merges oneself with things, then is one always able to find delight in them." He refers again and again to this 'oneness' of the creator with that which he would recreate. Writing of Li Lung-mien, he described him as one who "lived in the mountains and did not merge himself in one thing only. Thus he combined in his spirit all things (nature) and, with the force of his intellect, penetrated several different arts." Nevertheless, to the creator or artist, the presence of Tao was as essential as the possession of talent. "When one possesses Tao and no talent, one may perhaps have the mirage of a thing in the heart, but it cannot take upon itself form under the hand." Here he followed Chuang Tzu who, "overwhelmed by the consciousness of the Infinity of Nature, reconciled all diversity in the all-pervading unity." He considered that Tao was, in fact, as necessary to the artist in his creative work as was the ability to create; for Tao inspired, and the artist gave form to that inspiration through painting or poetry.

This inspiration, which he drew from Tao, Su credited equally to Buddhism, for he has recorded the debt owed to Buddhism by Li Lung-mien in the latter's painting of Buddhist figures, which Su regarded as having been created from the Idea lying behind them. "I once saw Buddhist figures by Li Lung-mien. They are all created from the Idea behind them—Buddhism. Thus, that which the Buddha and Boddhisatva spake, and Li Lung-mien painted, are here produced in a single form." Inspiration could, in fact, emerge from actual spiritual experience.

Describing a painting of the Buddha by Wu Tao-yüan, for whom he had the greatest respect, Su wrote that "Wu's art of painting the Buddha was certainly the result of spiritual experience. In a dream he found himself transformed into a winged Buddhist Immortal; and, on awaking, his brush commenced to work without apparent control by himself. It seemed as though divine power had indeed entered into the fine hairs of the brush." The picture had been badly torn when Su first saw it. "Nevertheless," he adds, "though the material has rotted, yet is the divine afflatus still there."

Elsewhere Su explains in greater detail his theory of the co-ordination between the artist and Tao. In the Bending Bamboos of Yün-tang Valley, he quotes Wên Yü-k'o's opinion on this subject, which occupied an important place in the perception of the Bamboo-painters. "If you wish to paint bamboo, you must first visualise it in your mind's eye. With brush in hand, study for a long time your subject. Directly you see what you want to paint, quickly follow it up with strokes of the brush. Thus, by close pursuit you reach out after your conception. Just as when a hare rises, the falcon stoops; the slightest hesitation, and it has disappeared." Referring to his own inability to accomplish this—"impression and expression are not in harmony, and the mind and hand do not coordinate," Su likens the man "who fails thoroughly to grasp the vision in his mind to one who appears habitually to conceive, but at the moment of portrayal suddenly loses, that vision."

The conception of unity with Nature through Tao Su applied to all art, to poetry as well as to painting. "Surely", he continues, "this does not apply to bamboos alone? When Tzu-yu wrote a poem called Bamboos painted in ink, he presented it to Yü-k'o, saying 'The cook who carves the bullock and he who cultivates his soul both work on this principle.' … And now the Master has applied this tenet to the bamboo. Personally, I regard him as one who has found Tao" This 'nearness to nature,' which seems to be so inherent in Su Tung-p'o, has been well stated by Professor Ku Teng [in his "Su Tung-p'o als Kunstkritiker," Ostasiatische Zeitschrift (May-June, 1932)]: "Su is neither a Naturalist in the sense that the desire for physical nearness to Nature (äusserlichen Naturnähe) stifles his sensitiveness, nor an individualist for whom Nature is the means of expression. But he creates unconsciously, he creates naively, so to speak. These traits come out in his poems wherein he tells us that 'I did not search for the artistic, nor in my writing (of characters) for the strange, but I regarded primitive Naturalism as my Master'."

Su again uses this expression in another poem: "The School of subtile painting," he wrote, "first realised the simplicity of art." In the same poem, he compares poet and painter: "The painters of old, who were not conventional, agreed with the poets in their artistic expression," viz., primitive simplicity.

While he subordinated art to moral teaching, and while he regarded art as a means of learning Confucianism on the one hand, and Buddhism on the other, Su clearly intended to borrow from Taoism and Buddhism all that they could give him for the purposes of his art, for he realised also that these conceptions, and especially Taoism, would "act as a regulator which would preserve Confucianism from superficiality and utilitarianism."

As stated above, his conception of the true painter was also his opinion of the true poet. In fact, he regarded them as interchangeable terms. Referring to this opinion, he wrote that "Shao-ling's (Tu Fu) poems are paintings without form; Han Kan's paintings are poems without words. This is the summit of achievement in painting and poetry." … Elsewhere he records that "poetry and painting follow one rule only—simplicity and primitiveness." In like manner did he praise Wang Wei's poems for which he had the highest esteem. "When I study Wang Wei's poems," he writes, "I find in them something of painting. When I regard his paintings, they are like his poems."

This close comparison between the painter and poet is of great importance in an elucidation of Su Shih's philosophy of art, for the records he has left us as an art-critic leave no doubt regarding his inmost opinion of contemporary art.

He refers on many occasions to 'the School of Gentlemen-painters', an expression first used, incidentally, by the poet, and of which school he himself was a member. It is not my purpose to discuss in detail the objects or history of this branch of the Southern School which was formed in opposition to the Northern or professional school. It will suffice to mention here that, in the course of time, the gentlemen-painters turned towards naturalism for their self-expression, painting only when they felt themselves inspired to paint, and protested against the conventionalism of the professional painters. In the words of a poem by Su Shih …, "He who lays stress on 'form,' when criticising paintings, stands on the same level as a child."

Here we see Su Shih rebelling against the fetters of convention and form that had for so long bound painter and poet within certain narrow and artificial limits. He attempted to escape from those bonds by freedom of expression. "A caged bird remembers how to fly, a tethered horse to gallop," he wrote in one of his poems. But he went further, for he recognized in the rhythm of Nature to be found in Taoism that very inspiration for which he was searching. By identification of self with the subject, the painter could in truth interpret that subject. "Of Wên Yü-k'o," he wrote, "one can really say that he has succeeded in setting down the soul of bamboo, of stone, of old trees.… Thus, when a man is sensible to every characteristic, then is he in union with Nature. When he abhors artificiality, then does he dwell in the realm of the Gentlemen-painters."

In this same [piece], the poet speaks with contempt of those other schools of painting who stressed the outward form. "Craftsmen," he wrote, "can work out 'Form', can in fact achieve it. But only those possessing surpassing ability (the Gentlemen-painters) can fathom its Essence." By this latter expression Su referred to the law of its being.…

He aimed at freedom from mere objectivity in his work, a freedom which he could find only in this all-embracing unity with Nature; and he recognized in Wang Wei a man who had attained such freedom, "as that of an Immortal." Describing the terrifying effects of a typhoon, he marvels that we should be so alarmed by what is, in reality, but a transient phase of nature. "Surely," he asks, "the importance which we attach to mere volume can only be attributed to the contemptible fact that one's senses are entirely influenced by objective matter?" In another fu, Su expresses this view even more clearly, emphasising the necessity of subjectivity before Tao can be found. "You derive your knowledge from much book-learning. You search for Tao, but find it not. Instead of being subjective, you are entirely objective—the slave of circumstances. And so the gnawing of a rat disturbs you!"

Everywhere can Su find beauty, and his writings are filled with his impressions clothed in poetic language. He tells us how he saw the shadows of bamboos and cypresses floating as waterplants on the lake's surface. How, when walking through the Courtyards, with the moon as his sole companion,

incense, heavy with moisture, warns me of the
  night's
   approach,
and dancing flower-shadows seem to urge the
  coming of
   the Spring.

He describes the scenery from a favourite retreat, where

Rushes and lotus are like a vast expanse of
  ocean,
With here and there a small boat sailing.
Truly a spot remote from all the world.

Or, again, he is on a house-boat on the lake:

A gentle breeze blows softly on the rushes,
And, through the open door, I see the rain and
  moonlit-lake.
Boatman and waterfowl together sleep.
A large fish turns with sudden splash like a fox
  in flight.
When the night is deep, all nature is in harmony,
And man and beast are one.
Substance and shadow allied, alone I stand
  enchanted,
Pitying the cold worms on islets born of secret
  tides.
Framed in the sinking moon I watch a spider
  hanging from
   a willow-tree.
Suddenly the world seems filled with sorrow,
For beauty is but passing—has straightway fled.
A cock crows; a bell resounds. A flock of birds
  takes wing
And a drum replies in echo from the prow.

The spell was broken. But in that moment of time Su had captured all eternity, and in his poems we can recognize the poet's urge to become one with Nature. He could identify the shadows of the bamboos with waterplants; he could conceive the unity of all creation in the stillness of a night; he grasped greedily at a beauty which he felt was transient and yet eternal. "Birth, growth, change and decay," he wrote, "all is but a moment in time. But I know that all creation is but nothingness."

And so, as Ku Teng points out [in Ostasiatische Zeitschrift, November-December, 1932], we can imagine the mood in which he created his paintings of bamboos.

This identification of the artist with his subject, the merging of "self in "All-things," is further exemplified by Su Shih in a poem on Han Kan, who, "when he painted a horse, became, in fact, a horse. And when I write a poem (about him), I visualise him painting."

Chu Hsi, in his Philosophy of Human Nature, has recorded the saying of a friend and pupil of Su Shih, Li Fang-shu: "To be one with all things in the universe," he said, "is Love".

In Su's opinion, this unity was essential in the true poet and painter. Without it the source of his inspiration failed, for the many varied moods of nature must be reflected in his soul, even as Su himself records, "the fulness of the moon and calmness of the river" was once reflected in himself.

He likened his creative work to a spring of inexhaustible water which pours down into the plains, its course conforming to the obstacles in its path. "As to the reason that it (the river) flows over cliffs and mountains, winding in conformity with these obstacles, this may not be known. What may be known is that always it flows where it must flow, and stops where it must stop." By which analogy the poet wished to show that, while inspiration was essential to the artist, interpretation of that inspiration must conform to certain incomprehensible laws.

He again uses the parable of a stream in his fu, Rock of Yen-yü. The river

… journeys from afar, and in its course
Of many thousand li
It overflows vast deserts, meets no curb.
Boasting in its pride, no barrier avails.
And suddenly the gorge encloses it,
Swallowing its flood of water.
…;It struggles …
In deafening and clamorous convulsion,
Striving with all its raging might against the
  rock,
… With the noise and rushing of a torrent

Bursts river into gorge, and thence flows
  peacefully,
Its wrath subsiding.

Su is here clearly comparing a river with his own inspiration and to the channels through which that inspiration must express itself. He is, however, lost in speculation as to the reason behind those laws, and he closes his fu by adjuring the reader not to attempt "to analyse my chain of thought. It will suffice that you conceive the Eternal Fitness of All things."

Su Shih's associations with the Sung School of Philosophy may be recalled by the knowledge that the philosophers of this School undoubtedly were indebted to both Buddhism and Taoism. In fact, as Richard Wilhelm has pointed out, the assimilation of Buddhism in China was only made possible by amalgamation with Confucianism and Taoism, an intellectual achievement that stands to the credit of Neo-Confucianism.

It should here be mentioned that Su Shih found himself in opposition to much of the teaching of this School. Rival Schools were formed, one of which was known as the Su School, founded by Su Hsün who was joined by his two sons, Su Shih and Su Chê.

Though united in their opposition to the reforms of Wang An-shih, these schools differed fundamentally in their interpretation of the Classics. It is of interest, therefore, to note that, as stated above, the representatives of the Sung School—notably Chu Hsi himself—were at one time or another devotees of Buddhism and Taoism. "While the springs of the Sung Philosophy are to be found in the Classics, the stream was fed by affluents of widely different origin," the very metaphor employed by Su to express the sources of his inspiration—an inexhaustible spring whose waters follow many courses. Indeed, the similarity of thought inherent in Su Shih and Chu Hsi included Chuang Tzu's unity of nature, "a doctrine which constitutes the very warp and woof of Chu Hsi's philosophy and that of his school. For them man and the universe are one."

This tendency of the different Schools of thought of this period to borrow from Taoism and Buddhism may seem surprising in view of the professed orthodoxy of their teaching. When it is remembered, however, that intellectual life was then mainly concentrated in the followers of Taoism and Buddhism, it will be understood why leaders of religious thought such as Chou Tun-i, a contemporary of Su Shih, turned naturally to those other Schools for their inspiration. It was, in fact, a revolt against tradition and literary pedantry, a revolt in which Su took his full share, and which he directed not only against the School of professional painters but also against the new emphasis on technique in the poetry of the Sung dynasty, which distinguished it from the purely natural beauty of T'ang poetry.

We may here give a short description of the views held by the Sung School of philosophers, and of Su's arguments with that School as expressed through the Su School.

The dualistic conception of the world reached maturity in the Sung dynasty. In this respect, it should be noted that both the Taoist and Sung systems of philosophy agreed on the question of cosmic evolution, viz., Heaven, Earth and Man; and in both systems the terms "heaven" and "earth" were intimately associated with the terms "spirit" and "matter." There was, however, during this period a definite renaissance of philosophy and the sciences. Nevertheless, the Sung scholars cannot be said to have produced anything quite new. Rather they rejuvenated Confucianism and, in their speculations on the philosophy of Nature, they developed old ideas about the origin of the universe.

The Book of Changes played an important part in formulating and developing the ideas of the Sung Schools. The Supreme Ultimate and the Two Modes of the Sung Philosophy, for instance, had their origin in a passage from this ancient work, while the theory of the Five Elements also held a prominent place in the disquisitions of those Schools. We know, too, that the Sung philosophers believed in the destruction of the world followed by a reconstruction, a process which would be repeated at regular periods.

Now Su Shih held similar views in his conception of the universe. But he differed fundamentally from the Sung School in the interpretation of the Classics. The principle point of difference concerned the exact meaning of the terms "Nature" and "Decree". Influenced by Buddhist and Taoist theories, the Su School maintained that "Nature itself is pre-existent and eternal, an empty shell, as it were, to be received by man as the receptacle for those four ethical principles which become his own by a voluntary acceptance." The School differed, too, in the interpretation of Tzu Ssu's dictum in the Doctrine of the Mean, on which Chu Hsi's doctrine was, afterwards, largely based, viz., "the Decree of Heaven is what is termed our Nature." This term [decree], the Su School argued, "was merely a name borrowed by the sages to represent a certain phase in the Evolution of the Nature which had no substantive existence in itself."

In his work, Chu Hsi accuses the Su School of falling into the erroneous teachings of the Buddhists, and exhorts them to examine more thoroughly the Classics, including the Yi Ching, the Book of History, the Odes, the Doctrine of the Mean, and Mencius.

It is not my intention to explore more deeply the philosophical controversies of this period, the devious channels of which the student may seek for himself in the works of Chu Hsi and of the later commentators, both Chinese and foreign, of the Sung Schools of Philosophy. Suffice it to say that the zest of appreciation for study, and the zeal for the past and for new interpretations of that past, were woven into the fabric of the spirit of the time.

The interest displayed in the bronzes of antiquity was reflected in the interest of these men, like Su Shih, in painting, calligraphy, and poetry—appreciation of the accepted past tempered by an intent eagerness to interpret that past through study.

We have seen that Su was a rebel against the formal restrictions which played such an important part in the poetry of the Sung dynasty. He rebelled, too, against "form" in the art of painting, as we perceive in the theories expressed by him as an artcritic, and as an Ink-painter, the chief characteristic of which School was that it set itself above "form." "For the ink-painter, external form was an impediment to true artistic expression.… On the one hand, the ink-painter destroyed the established and usual forms, while, on the other, he built up a new and original world. He created, unusual and self-willed, and ranged himself against the phenomenal forms of the real world (Erscheinungsformen der realen Welt)." How is this revolt against convention manifested in Su's written works?

Waley has described his poetry as "almost wholly a patchwork of earlier poems," adding that "he hardly wrote a poem which does not contain a phrase (sometimes a whole line) borrowed from Po Chü-i, for whom in his critical writings he expresses boundless admiration" [in 170 Chinese Poems].

A careful examination of the works of Su Tung-p'o especially of his fu—will show that this statement is, to say the least, rather too sweeping in its condemnation. It would be idle to contend that the poet did not borrow from the Masters of the T'ang dynasty (he quotes often from the poetry of Tu Fu, Li T'ai-po and Han Yü, as well as of Po Chü-i), but should he be condemned for so doing? Rebel against convention though he was, he did not hesitate to employ the words or phrases of these poets whose works he admired. Su is too great a genius to be relegated to the position of a minor poet on this account, and his very genius prevented him from being too scrupulous in his grammar or his references, so that his quotations are not always accurate in their rendering. Nevertheless, he has created anew, and poetry becomes, in this Master's hands, a mosaic of beauty. The effect is flowing and harmonious. One is reminded of the saying of the Lord Krishna, "I am the thread that runs through all these different ideas, and each one is a pearl." The pearls were the thoughts gleaned from others; the thread the Master's touch. And the effect—a necklace of perfectly matched pearls, lovely to behold. Su Shih seems to recreate his borrowed phrases, giving them a new vitality and an added lustre.

If Su found himself fettered by convention in his poems, then perhaps he saw a means of escape in his fu, which did not bind him to so rigid a law of metre or of formal restrictions. Indeed, one feels that the poet recognized in the fu a channel through which inspiration could find its easiest expression, inspiration that welled from the spring of Nature herself.

Nor can this inspiration be said to have been derived wholly from the wine-cup. Su deliberately exaggerates the importance that wine played in his life, but he had his tongue in his cheek! The Ink-painters of the Sung dynasty were free from decadence, and Su was one of the foremost exponents of this School of painting. For, while it cannot be denied that he created when he had "taken of the wine," that state should not be confused with sordid drunkenness. "Wine," he writes, "is the Decree in the life of man." But he did not permit it to deaden his senses; always could he retain that clarity of mind that characterises all his writings. "Though inwardly I remain unblemished, outwardly I surrender to the fruit of the vine," for thus could he find Tao. He describes how that he would drink not more than five cups the whole day, how that no one drank so little as he did, but it pleased him to see others drinking. When a friend visited him, he would slowly raise his cup and drink; thus could he approach his friend in an exalted mood. He never drank to excess, though he tells how he would often set the cup to his lips. Sometimes, indeed, he fell asleep in his seat and his acquaintances imagined that he was drunk. But he emphasises the fact that his thoughts remained perfectly lucid.

"All my friends," he wrote, "encourage me to drink wine to excess, but I listen not. For who would be such a fool as to do so? Except perhaps the man who cannot realize that the attributes of a gentleman are not in keeping with a drunken stupor!" And yet Su obviously found wine an aid to his inspiration. For, like Ou-yang Hsiu, he regarded the source of his drunkenness "not in the wine that he drank, but among the mountains and streams." Wine was but the means to the attainment of joy in landscape which was the "work of the heart." Encouraged by it, he was able to soar to untold heights of poesy and imagination.

How much have I already drunk to-day?
Ah! I feel I can escape the fetters of mortality.
I fling away my staff and rise.
Away with all your cares and worries, lads!
I soar over running deer on mountain peaks,
And join the leaping monkeys on overhanging
  cliffs.
Thence do I plunge into the billowing clouds of
  a vast ocean,
Heaven in tumult!

In another fu he praises the wonderful properties of wine which could exalt him above the common-place things of the world,

For now may I wash the cup and taste the wine,
Ridding myself of the numb obstinacy
Of my loins and legs.
Forsooth! I feel I can swallow three rivers in
  one gulp,
And gobble up the spirits and demons
Of fish and dragon!
In my drunken slumber, dreams come in riotous
  confusion.

Wine he compares to "a maid unsullied by the world." It is "pure as a babe that has not yet smiled."

Like the warmth of spring is the abundance of
  its flavour,
Like the winds of autumn is the chill of its
  breadth.…
Just a little wine I sipped—only a drop,
And see how drunk I am!
I roam beyond the limits of mortality,
My eyes fixed in unseeing gaze.
To return once more to the realities of this
  world,
And lo! All things do themselves unfold!

Commenting on this trait in Su's character, Ku Teng says, "Su, where drink is concerned is no drunkard; but where enjoyment is concerned, then he is the drinker." For he recognized that through wine could perfection be attained, and therein was in agreement with Po Chü-i.

Su Shih was not merely an interested scholar searching into the truths of Buddhism and Taoism. He went further in his studies of these religions, for we know that he actually practised the art of the Taoist, and the many quotations he gives in his writings taken from Buddhist and Taoist works show a vast and intimate knowledge of those works.

In one poem he describes in beautiful language the inner contemplation as practised by a Buddhist devotee:

He closed his eyes in contemplation,
His mind becoming as a still deep pool.
And in the pool's reflection he could see
That all things were an empty dream.

His mistress, Chao Yün, a girl who was his companion for twenty-three years, died in the Buddhist faith. In a poem written on her death and that of her baby son, Su Shih refers to the Small Conveyance for her far journey across the Sānsara to the Shores of Nirvâna.

In his preface to this poem, he records her last words as she passed away, words taken from the Diamond Sûtra:

Like a dream, like a vision, like a bubble,
Like a shadow, like dew, like lightning.

Always does Su refer to the evanescence of creation, and elsewhere he asks his reader to remember that "life is but a bubble, a shadow," in which the years and scenes decay in the twinkling of an eye; fleeting "as a cherry which drops through the hand like a silken thread; or as the sun which crosses the vision like an arrow." It is transient as "the morning and evening of a day"; ephemeral as "a wave that is born only to die again."

And yet, "I believe in the Elixir of the Winged Immortals," he wrote, and he recognized that Tao could be found in all places, however strange; that, to the sincere seeker, indeed, the Truth may be near at hand, even as the Elixir of Life was found to have sprouted spontaneously within the walls of the palace of the Emperor Wu. In his poem, The Palace of the Grotto of Mists, Su reveals how he found the Secret Elixir hidden away amongst the mountains, an abode of beauty:

And yet men search the Life Elixir
To preserve with bitterness the looks of youth!

Again, in his fu, A Draught of Sesamum, the poet speaks of his search for this Elixir:

It is Immortality, the Aim of Tao.
The Divine Elixir, like the Islands of the Blest,
               Affords you shelter.…
Perfect Yang—powerfully active,
                Springing from Earth;
Perfect Yin—majestically passive,
               Ascending to Heaven.

Su Shih clearly saw that more roads than one led to his goal, and he did not hesitate to walk those roads. His comparison of himself (when exiled to Hainan in the year 1098) with an ant marooned on a grain floating in a bowl of water has been quoted in the notes to the Red Cliff in this book. Despairing of regaining dry land, he suddenly discovers that the water has dried up. "I thought," he wrote, "that I should never meet you again. How could I know that, in the winking of an eye, roads would thus open up in all directions? When I think of this, I can only laugh."

The roads he saw before him were those of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism, the three life-conceptions (Lebensauffassungen) which he made into one whole, in which he found Tao, and through which his whole idea of life was centred in one art. To such a man and philosopher, calamity or poverty were negligible, were incidents of no real importance in life.

Through them and through self-denial, he wrote, "one may attain to perfect Love." "What is Poverty?" he asks elsewhere. "Life in this world is just the bending and the straightening of an elbow!" He regarded penury, in fact, as a necessary preparation for the creation of true poetry; for, only a poor man—a man who had no need of money—could find Tao in all creation. "Poetry does not impoverish man," he wrote; "but it takes a poor man to create a finished poem." Mere worldly fame was not, he considered, a subject worthy of discussion. But the study and undersanding of Tao—this was a matter for deep satisfaction.

Su, indeed, may be called an artist in the truest sense of the word, for to him art was life and life was art. In them both was to be found the rhythm of Nature, and in Nature could be found the Truth; hidden perhaps from the dogmatist and bigot, but visible to him who sought for it "in the strange and lonely places."

"In my old age," he wrote in the year 1079, "I think I shall buy some land overlooking the waters of the river Ssu, so that I can gaze toward Ling Pi in the South and listen to the confused crowing of the cocks and the barking of the dogs. With my kerchief and my staff, and wearing my sandals, I shall visit Chang's garden at all times and seasons, and pass the hours in leisurely companionship with his children's children."

With Renan, Su Shih could say that "la Verité consiste dans les nuances."