When wood is rubbed against wood,

It begins to burn; when metal

Is subjected to fire, it melts and flows.

When the Yin and Yang act awry,

Heaven and Earth are greatly disturbed.

And on this comes the crash of thunder,

And from the rainstorm comes great fire,

Which consumes forests and fields.

The case of men is still worse:

They are troubled between two pitfalls,

From which there is no way to escape alive.

Chrysalis-like, they can accomplish nothing.

Their minds are as if hung up

Between ups and downs.

Now comforted now pitied,

People are plunged in difficulties.

The ideas of profit and of injury

Rub against each other, and

Produce in them the greatest fire.

The harmony of the mind

Is only consumed in the mass of people.

Their moonlike intelligence

Cannot overcome the inward fire.

They thereupon fall away more and more,

And the Course which they try to pursue

Is altogether lost. . .

Is there a mechanism of regulation

Between the free style and suppression?