History had never lacked eloquent people. With their silver tongues, they could call truth falsehood, then call falsehood truth. Simply put, they deliberately reversed right and wrong and muddied the waters. Their arguments sounded plentiful on the surface, but every one of them had flaws.
Eastern history had the famous "The White Horse Is Not a Horse," from Gongsun Long's White Horse Discourse. Gongsun Long was a skilled debater and had once served as a retainer to Lord Pingyuan of Zhao. He belonged to the relatively rare School of Names among the Hundred Schools of Thought.
The Dao gave birth to One, One gave birth to Two, Two gave birth to Three, and Three gave birth to all things. Connecting invisible concepts in the mind with the tangible forms of all things was what the School of Names did. Through analysis, they gave things both name and substance.
There was a story in Confucius's writings. One day, the King of Chu went hunting and lost his bow. His attendants planned to look for it, but the King of Chu said there was no need. A bow lost by a man of Chu would surely be found by another man of Chu. This was originally meant to praise the King of Chu's benevolence, yet Confucius said that although the king did not mind one of his subjects obtaining the bow and regarded both ruler and subject as "men of Chu," his mind was still not broad enough. The person who lost the bow was a person, and the person who found it was also a person. Everyone was the same as anyone else in All Under Heaven; all were equal people. Why add the word "Chu" at all?
Gongsun Long believed Confucius had separated men of Chu from people, so he