The next passage in this book is another classic about the proverbial Man From Chu:
There once was a guy from Chu trying to vend his loot. He boasted “I have here a shield so strong that nothing can pierce it! I’m selling a spear so strong that nothing can block it!”
Someone asked: “So what happens when your spear hits your shield?”
An unbreakable shield and an unblockable spear cannot exist in the same world — that is why “shield and spear” means “contradiction.”
