There was a certain man whose nose was covered with a very hard scab, which was at the same time no thicker than a fly's wing.
He sent for a stonemason to chip it off; and the latter plied his adze with great dexterity while the patient sat absolutely rigid, without moving a muscle, and let him chip.

When the scab was all off, the nose was found to be quite uninjured.

Such skill was of course soon noised abroad, and a feudal prince, who also had a scab on his nose, sent for the mason to take it off.

The mason, however, declined to try, alleging that the success did not depend so much upon the skill of the operator as upon the mental control of the patient by which the physical frame became as it were a perfectly inanimate object.
Contemporary with Chuang Tzu, but of a very different school of thought, was the philosopher Hui Tzu (_Hooeydza_).

He was particularly fond of the quibbles which so delighted the sophists or unsound reasoners of ancient Greece.