Mindful of the pernicious prophetic mysticism of the Eastern Han and the empty discourse that had brought ruin upon the Western Jin, Wang Meng had advised Fu Jian to ban Lao-Zhuang teachings and prophetic texts. Yet here was Chen Caozhi, in an Imperial Academy lecture hall thronged with Di Qin scholars, accusing Wang Shi, assistant minister of ceremonial, of indulging in Lao-Zhuang metaphysics. This was a capital offense-how could Wang Shi not be furious? But the passage Chen Caozhi had quoted from Ruan Ji's Treatise on Connecting with the Dao De Jing was indeed close in meaning to his own explanation of "the alternation of yin and yang is called the Way." Shocked, angry, and terrified, Wang Shi could think of no defense for the moment. His face flushed purple with agitation, veins bulged on his forehead, and he pointed at Chen Caozhi, stammering, "You-you deliberately distort my words and sully an innocent man's name out of thin air!"
Hearing "sully an innocent man's name out of thin air," Chen Caozhi could not help smiling brightly. He said, "Heaven and earth are supremely wondrous, difficult to describe with any fixed expression. Thus, speaking of their substance, we call them the two forms; speaking figuratively, we call them heaven and earth; speaking of their vital energies, we call them yin and yang; speaking of their nature, we call them softness and firmness; speaking of their colors, we call them black and yellow; speaking of their names, we call them heaven and earth. None of these can truly name them. We provisionally give them one name, but it cannot encompass their reality, and so we multiply their names. Yet the very multitude of names reveals their namelessness. Thus we may name them with all the names under heaven, but are those truly