When Zigong, Confucius’ favourite student, was travelling through the regions in south of Hanjiang River, he saw an old man working in his vegetable garden. The old man had dug a tunnel in the side hill for water. The man would descend into the tunnel, fetch up a vessel of water in his arms, and pour it out into the ditches in garden. While his efforts were tremendous, the results appeared to be very meagre.

Zigong said, “There is a way whereby you can irrigate a hundred ditches in one day, and whereby you can do much with little effort. Would you not like to hear of it?” Then the gardener stood up, looked at him, and said, “And what would that be?”

Zigong replied, “You take a wooden lever, weighted at the back and light in front. In this way you can bring up water so quickly that it just gushes out. This is called ‘Gao’, a draw-well.”

Then anger rose up in the old man’s face, and he said, “I have heard my teacher saying that whoever uses machines does all his work like a machine. He who does his work like a machine grows a heart like a machine, and he who carries the heart of a machine in his breast loses his simplicity. He who has lost his simplicity becomes unsure in the striving of his soul,

“Uncertainty in the strivings of the soul is something which does not agree with honest sense. It is not that I do not know of such things; I am ashamed to use them. “