What Is the Meaning of the Name Tao? And the Chief Points of the Belief in Taoism

The first translation of the Tao Te Ching into a western language was executed in Latin by some of the Roman Catholic missionaries, and a copy of it was brought to England by a Mr. Matthew Raper, F.R.S., and presented by him to the Society at a meeting on the 10th January, 1788⁠—being the gift to him of P. Jos. de Grammont, Missionarius Apostolicus, ex-Jesuita. In this version Tao is taken in the sense of “ratio,” or the “supreme reason of the divine being, the creator and governor.”

M. Abel-Rémusat, the first professor of Chinese in Paris, does not seem to have been aware of the existence of the above version in London, but his attention was attracted to Lao’s treatise about 1820, and, in 1823, he wrote of the character Tao, “Ce mot me semble ne pas pouvoir être bien traduit, si ce n’est par le mot λόγος dans le triple sense de souverain Être, de raison, et de parole.”

Rémusat’s successor in the chair of Chinese, the late Stanislas Julien, published in 1842 a translation of the whole treatise. Having concluded from an examination of it, and the earliest Taoist writers, such as Chuang-tzŭ, Ho-kuan Tzŭ, and Ho-shang Kung, that the Tao was devoid of action, of thought, of judgement, and of intelligence, he concluded that it was impossible to understand by it “the primordial reason, or the sublime intelligence which created, and which governs the world,” and to this he subjoined the following note:⁠—“Quelque étrange que puisse paraître cette idée de Laozi, elle n’est pas sans exemple dans l’histoire de la philosophie. Le mot nature n’a-t-il pas été employee par certains philosophes, que la religion et la raison condamnent, pour désigner une cause première, également dépourvue de pensée et d’intelligence?” Julien himself did not doubt that Lao’s idea of the character was that it primarily and properly meant “a way,” and hence he translated the title Tao Te Ching by Le Livre de la Voie et de la Vertu, transferring at the same time the name Tao to the text of his version.

The first English writer who endeavoured to give a distinct account of Taoism was the late Archdeacon Hardwick, while he held the office of Christian Advocate in the University of Cambridge. In his Christ and Other Masters (vol. ii p. 67), when treating of the religions of China, he says, “I feel disposed to argue that the centre of the system founded by Laozi had been awarded to some energy or power resembling the ‘nature’ of modern speculators. The indefinite expression Tao was adopted to denominate an abstract cause, or the initial principle of life and order, to which worshippers were able to assign the attributes of immateriality, eternity, immensity, invisibility.”

It was, probably, Julien’s reference in his note to the use of the term nature, which suggested to Hardwick his analogy between Laozi’s Tao, and “the nature of modern speculation.” Canon Farrar has said, “We have long personified under the name of nature the sum total of God’s laws as observed in the physical world; and now the notion of nature as a distinct, living, independent entity seems to be ineradicable alike from our literature and our systems of philosophy.”13 But it seems to me that this metaphorical or mythological use of the word nature for the cause and ruler of it, implies the previous notion of Him, that is, of God, in the mind. Does not this clearly appear in the words of Seneca?⁠—“Vis illum (h.e. Jovem Deum) naturam vocare, non peccabis:⁠—hic est ex quo nata sunt omnia, cujus spiritu vivimus.”14

In his translation of the Works of Chuang-tzŭ in 1881, Mr. Balfour adopted Nature as the ordinary rendering of the Chinese Tao. He says, “When the word is translated Way of Nature⁠—her processes, her methods, and her laws; when translated Reason, it is the same as li⁠—the power that works in all created things, producing, preserving, and life-giving⁠—the intelligent principle of the world; when translated Doctrine, it refers to the true doctrine respecting the laws the mysteries of Nature.” He calls attention also to the point that “he uses nature in the sense of Natura naturans, while the Chinese expression wan wu (= all things) denotes Natura naturata.” But this really comes to the metaphorical use of nature which has been touched upon above. It can claim as its patrons great names like those of Aquinas, Giordano Bruno, and Spinoza, but I have never been able to see that its barbarous phraseology makes it more than a figure of speech.15

The term Nature, however, is so handy, and often fits so appropriately into a version, that if Tao had ever such a signification I should not hesitate to employ it as freely as Mr. Balfour has done; but as it has not that signification, to try to put a non-natural meaning into it, only perplexes the mind, and obscures the idea of Laozi.

Mr. Balfour himself says, “The primary signification of Tao is simply ‘road.’ ” Beyond question this meaning underlies the use of it by the great master of Taoism and by Chuang-tzŭ.16 Let the reader refer to the version of the twenty-fifth chapter of Lao’s treatise, and to the notes subjoined to it. There Tao appears as the spontaneously operating cause of all movement in the phenomena of the universe; and the nearest the writer can come to a name for it is “the Great Tao.” Having established this name, he subsequently uses it repeatedly; see chh. xxxiv and liii. In the third paragraph of his twentieth chapter, Chuang-tzŭ uses a synonymous phrase instead of Lao’s “Great Tao,” calling it the “Great Tʽu,” about which there can be no dispute, as meaning “the Great Path,” “Way,” or “Course.”17 In the last paragraph his twenty-fifth book, Chuang-tzŭ again sets forth the metaphorical origin of the name Tao. “Tao,” he says, “cannot be regarded as having a positive existence; existences cannot be regarded as nonexistent. The name Tao is a metaphor used for the purpose of description. To say that it exercises some causation, or that it does nothing, is speaking of it from the phase of a thing;⁠—how can such language serve as a designation of it in its greatness? If words were sufficient for the purpose, we might in a day’s time exhaust the subject of the Tao. Words not being sufficient, we may talk about it the whole day, and the subject of discourse will only have been a thing. Tao is the extreme to which things conduct us. Neither speech nor silence is sufficient to convey the notion of it. When we neither speak nor refrain from speech, our speculations about it reach their highest point.”

The Tao therefore is a phenomenon; not a positive being, but a mode of being. Lao’s idea of it may become plainer as we proceed to other points of his system. In the meaning time, the best way of dealing with it in translating is to transfer it to the version, instead of trying to introduce an English equivalent of it.

Next in importance to Tao is the name Tʽien, meaning at first the vaulted sky or the open firmament of heaven. In the Confucian Classics, and in the speech of the Chinese people, this name is used metaphorically as it is by ourselves for the Supreme Being, with reference especially to His will and rule. So it was that the idea of God arose among the Chinese fathers; so it was that they proceeded to fashion a name for God, calling Him Ti, and Shang Ti, “the Ruler,” and “the Supreme Ruler.” The Taoist fathers found this among their people; but in their idea of the Tao they had already a supreme concept which superseded the necessity of any other. The name Ti for God only occurs once in the Tao Te Ching; in the well-known passage of the fourth chapter, where, speaking of the Tao, Laozi says, “I do not know whose son it is; it might seem to be before God.”

Nor is the name Tʽien very common. We have the phrase, “heaven and earth,” used for the two great constituents of the cosmos, owing their origin to the Tao, and also for a sort of binomial power, acting in harmony with the Tao, covering, protecting, nurturing, and maturing all things. Never once is Tʽien used in the sense of God, the Supreme Being. In its peculiarly Taoistic employment, it is more an adjective than a noun. “The Tao of heaven” means the Tao that is heavenly, the course that is quiet and undemonstrative, that is free from motive and effort, such as is seen in the processes of nature, grandly proceeding and successful without any striving or crying. The Tao of man, not dominated by this Tao, is contrary to it, and shows will, purpose, and effort, till, submitting to it, it becomes “the Tao or Way of the sages,” which in all its action has no striving.

The characteristics both of heaven and man are dealt with more fully by Chuang than by Lao. In the conclusion of his eleventh book, for instance, he says:⁠—“What do we mean by Tao? There is the Tao (or Way) of heaven, and there is the Tao of man. Acting without action, and yet attracting all honour, is the Way of heaven. Doing and being embarrassed thereby is the Way of man. The Way of heaven should play the part of lord; the Way of man, the part of minister. The two are far apart, and should be distinguished from each other.”

In his next book, (par. 2), Chuang-tzŭ tells us what he intends by “Heaven:”⁠—“Acting without action⁠—this is what is called heaven.” Heaven thus taken its law from the Tao. “The oldest sages and sovereigns attained to do the same,”⁠—it was for all men to aim at the same achievement. As they were successful, “vacancy, stillness, placidity, tastelessness, quietude, silence, and non-action” would be found to be their characteristics, and they would go on to the perfection of the Tao.18

The employment of Tʽien by the Confucianists, as of heaven by ourselves, must be distinguished therefore from the Taoistic use of the name to denote the quiet but mighty influence of the impersonal Tao; and to translate it by “God” only obscures the meaning of the Taoist writers. The has been done by Mr. Giles in his version of Chuang-tzŭ, which is otherwise for the most part so good. Everywhere on his pages there appears the great name “God;”⁠—a blot on his translation more painful to my eyes and ears than the use of “Nature” for Tao by Mr. Balfour. I know that Mr. Giles’s plan in translating is to use strictly English equivalents for all kinds of Chinese terms.19 The plan is good where there are in the two languages such strict equivalents; but in the case before us there is no ground for its application. The exact English equivalent for the Chinese tʽien is our heaven. The Confucianists often used tʽien metaphorically for the personal being whom they denominated Ti (God) and Shang Ti (the Supreme God), and a translator may occasionally, in working on books of Confucian literature, employ our name God for it. But neither Lao nor Chuang ever attached anything like our idea of God to it; and when one, in working on books of early Taoist literature, translates tʽien by God, such a rendering must fail to produce in an English reader a correct apprehension of the meaning.

There is also in Chuang-tzŭ a peculiar usage of the name Tʽien. He applies it to the being whom he introduces as masters of the Tao, generally with mystical appellations in order to set forth his own views. Two instances from book XI will suffice in illustration of this. In par. 4, Huang-ti does reverence to his instructor Kuang Chʽêng-tzŭ,20 saying, “In Kuang Chʽêng-tzŭ we have an example of what is called heaven,” which Mr. Giles renders “Kuang Chʽêng-tzŭ is surely God.” In par. 5, again, the mystical Yün-chiang is made to say to the equally fabulous and mystical Hung-mêng, “O heaven, have you forgotten me?” and, farther on, “O heaven, you have conferred on me (the knowledge of) your operation, and revealed to me the mystery of it;” in both passages Mr. Giles renders tʽien by “your holiness.”

But Mr. Giles seems to agree with me that the old Taoist had no idea of a personal God, when they wrote of Tʽien or Heaven. On his sixty-eighth page, near the beginning of book VI, we meet with the following sentence, having every appearance of being translated from the Chinese text:⁠—“God is a principle which exists by virtue of its own intrinsicality, and operates without self-manifestation.” By an inadvertence he has introduced his own definition of “God” as if it were Chuang-tzŭ’s; and though I can find no characters in the text of which I can suppose that he intends it to be the translation, it is valuable as helping us to understand the meaning to be attached to the great name in his volume.

I have referred above (par. 11) to the only passage in Lao’s treatise, where he uses the name Ti or God in its highest sense, saying that “the Tao might seem to have been before him.” He might well say so, for his first chapter he describes the Tao, “(conceived of as) having no name, as the originator of heaven and earth, and (conceived of as) having a name, as the mother of all things.” The reader will also find the same predicates of the Tao at greater length in his fifty-first chapter.

The character Ti is also of rare occurrence in Chuang-tzŭ, excepting as applied to the five ancient Tis. In bk. III par. 4, and in one other place we find it indicating the Supreme Being, but the usage is ascribed to the ancients. In bk. XV par. 3, in a description of the human spirit, its name is said to be “Tʽung Ti”, which Mr. Giles renders “Of God;” Mr. Balfour, “One with God;” while my own version is “The divinity in man.” In bk. XII par. 6, we have the expression “the place of God;” in Mr. Giles, “the kingdom of God;” in Mr. Balfour, “the home of God.” In this and the former instance, the character seems to be used with the ancient meaning which had entered into folklore of the people. But in bk. VI par. 7, there is passage which shows clearly the relative position of Tao and Ti in the Taoistic system; and having called attention to it, I will go on to other points. Let the reader mark well the following predicates of the Tao:⁠—“Before there were heaven and earth, form of old, there it was, securely existing. From it came the mysterious existence of spirits; from it the mysterious existence of Ti (God). It produced heaven, it produced earth.”21 This says more than the utterance of Lao⁠—that “the Tao seemed to be before God;”⁠—does it not say that Tao was before God, and that He was what He is by virtue of its operation?

Among the various personal names given to the Tao are those of Tsao Hua, “maker and transformer,” and Tsao Wu Chê, “maker of things.” Instances of both these names are found in bk. VI parr. 9, 10. “Creator” and “God” have both been employed for them; but there is no idea of creation in Taoism.

Again and again Chuang-tzŭ entertains the question of how it was at the first beginning of things. Different views are stated. In bk. II par. 4, he says:⁠—“Among the men of old their knowledge reached the extreme point. What was that extreme point?

“Some held that at first there was not anything. This is the extreme point⁠—the utmost limit to which nothing can be added.

“A second class held that there was something, but without any responsive recognition of it (on the part of man).

“A third class held that there was such recognition, but there had not begun to be any expression of different opinions about it. It was through the definite expression of different opinions about it that there ensued injury to the (doctrine of the) Tao.”22

The first of these three views was that which Chuang-tzŭ himself preferred. The most condensed expression of it is given in bk. XII par. 8:⁠—“In the grand beginning of all things there was nothing in all the vacancy of space; there was nothing that could be name.23 It was in this state that there arose the first existence; the first existence, but still without bodily shape. From this things could be produced, (receiving) what we call their several characters. That which had no bodily shape was divided, and then without intermission there was what we call the process of conferring. (The two processes) continued to operate, and things were produced. As they were completed, there appeared the distinguishing lines of each, which we call the bodily shape. That shape was the body preserving in it the spirit, and each had its peculiar manifestation which we call it nature.”

Such was the genesis of things; the formation of heaven and earth and all that in them is, under the guidance of the Tao. It was an evolution and not a creation. How the Tao itself came⁠—I do not say into existence, but into operation⁠—neither Lao nor Chuang ever thought of saying anything about. We have seen that it is nothing material.24 It acted spontaneously of itself. Its sudden appearance in the field of nonexistence, producer, transformer, beautifier, surpasses my comprehension. To Lao it seemed to be before God. I am compelled to accept the existence of God, as the ultimate Fact, bowing before it with reverence, and not attempting to explain it, the one mystery, the sole mystery of the universe.

“The bodily shape was the body preserving in it the spirit, and each had its peculiar manifestation which we call its nature.” So it is said in the passage quoted above Chuang-tzŭ’s twelfth book, and the language shows how Taoism, in a loose and indefinite way, considered man to be composed of body and spirit, associated together, yet not necessarily dependent on each other. Little is found bearing on his tenet in the Tao Te Ching. The concluding sentence of ch. 33, “He who dies and yet does not perish, has longevity,” is of doubtful acceptation. More pertinent is the description of life as “a coming forth,” and of death as “an entering;”25 but Chuang-tzŭ expounds more fully, though after all unsatisfactorily, the teaching of their system on the subject.

At the conclusion of his third book, writing of the death of Laozi, he says, “When the master came, it was at the proper time; when he went away, it was the simple sequence (of his coming). Quiet acquiescence in what happens at its proper time, and quietly submitting (to its sequence), afford no occasion for grief or for joy. The ancients described (death) as the loosening of the cord on which God suspended (the life). What we can point to are the faggots that have been consumed; but the fire is transmitted elsewhere, and we know not that it is over and ended.”

It is, however, in connection with the death of his own wife, as related in the eighteenth book, that his views most fully⁠—I do not say “clearly”⁠—appear. We are told that when that event took place, his friend Hui-tzŭ went to condole with him, and found him squatted on the ground, drumming on the vessel (of ice), and singing. His friend said to him, “When a wife has lived with her husband, brought up children, and then dies in her old age, not to wail for her is enough. When you go on to drum on the vessel and sing, is it not an excessive (and strange) demonstration?” Chuang-tzŭ replied, “It is not so. When she first died, was it possible for me to be singular, and not affected by the event? But I reflected on the commencement of her being, when she had not yet been born to life. Not only had she no life, but she had no bodily form. Not only had she no bodily form, but she had no breath. Suddenly in this chaotic condition there ensued a change, and there was breath; another change, and there was the bodily form; a further change, and she was born to life; a change no again, and she is dead. The relation between those changes is like the procession of the four seasons⁠—spring, autumn, winter, and summer. There she lies with her face up, sleeping in the Great Chamber;26 and if I were to fall sobbing and going on to wail for her, I should think I did not understand what was appointed for all. I therefore restrained myself.”

The next paragraph of the same book contains another story about two ancient men, both deformed, who, when looking at the graves on Kunlun, begin to feel in their own frames the symptoms of approaching dissolution. One says to the other, “Do you dread it?” and gets the reply, “No. Why should I dread it? Life is a borrowed thing. The living frame thus borrowed is but so much dust. Life and death are like day and night.”

In every birth, it would thus appear, there is, somehow, a repetition of what it is said, as we have seen, took place at “the grand beginning of all things,” when out of the primal nothingness, the Tao somehow appeared, and there was developed through its operation the world of things⁠—material things and the material body of man, which enshrines or enshrouds an immaterial spirit. This returns to the Tao that gave it, and may be regarded indeed as that Tao operating in the body during the time of life, and in due time receives a new embodiment.

In these notions of Taoism there was preparation for the appreciation by its followers of the Buddhistic system when it came to be introduced into the country, and which forms a close connection between the two at the present day, Taoism itself constantly becoming less definite and influential on the minds of the Chinese people. The book which tells us of the death of Chuang-tzŭ’s wife concludes with a narrative about Lieh-tzŭ and an old bleached skull,27 and to this is appended a passage about the metamorphoses of things, ending with the statement that “the panther produces the horse, and the horse the man, who then again enters into the great machinery (of evolution), from which all things come forth (at birth) and into which they re-enter (at death).” Such representations need not be characterised.

Chu Hsi, “the prince of literature,” described the main object of Taoism to be “the preservation of the breath of life;” and Liu Mi, probably of our thirteenth century,28 in his Dispassionate Comparison of the Three Religions, declared that “its chief achievement is the prolongation of longevity.” Such is the account of Taoism originality given by Confucian and Buddhist writers, but our authorities, Lao and Chuang, hardly bear out this representation of it as true of their time. There are chapters of the Tao Te Ching which presuppose a peculiar management of the breath, but the treatise is singularly free from anything to justify what Mr. Balfour well calls “the antics of kung-fu, or system of mystic and recondite calisthenics.” Lao insists, however, on the Tao as conducive to long life, and in Chuang-tzŭ we have references to it as discipline of longevity, though even he mentions rather with disapproval “those who kept blowing and breathing with open mouth, inhaling and exhaling the breath, expelling the old and taking in new; passing their time like the (dormant) bear, and stretching and twisting (their necks) like birds.” He says that “all this simply shows their desire for longevity, and is what the scholars who manage the breath, and men who nourish the body and wish to live as long as Pʽêng-tsu, are fond of doing.”29 My own opinion is that the methods of the Tao were first cultivated for the sake of the longevity which they were thought to promote, and that Lao, discountenancing such a use of them, endeavoured to give the doctrine a higher character; and this view is favoured by passages in Chuang-tzŭ. In the seventh paragraph, for instance, of his book VI, speaking of parties who had obtained the Tao, he begins with a prehistoric sovereign, who “got and by it adjusted heaven and earth.” Among his other instances in Pʽêng Tsu, who got it in the time of Shun, and lived on to the time of the five leading princes of Chou⁠—a longevity of more than 1,800 years, greater than that ascribed to Methuselah! In the paragraph that follows there appear a Nü Yü, who is addressed by another famous Taoist in the words, “You are old, sir, while your complexion is like that of a child;⁠—how is it so?” and the reply is, “I became acquainted with the Tao.”

I will adduce only one more passage of Chuang. In his eleventh book, and the fourth paragraph, he tells us of interviews between Huang-ti, in the nineteenth year of his reign, which would be BC 2679, and his instructor Kuang Chʽêng-tzŭ. The Taoist sage is not redily prevailed on to unfold the treasures of his knowledge to the sovereign, but at last his reluctance is overcome, and he says to him, “Come, and I will tell you about the perfect Tao. Its essence is surrounded with the deepest obscurity; its highest reach is in darkness and silence. There is nothing to be seen, nothing to be heard. When it holds the spirit in its arms in stillness, then the bodily form will of itself become correct. You must be still, you must be pure; not subjecting your body to toil, not agitating your vital force:⁠—then you may live for long. When your eyes see nothing, your ears hear nothing, and your mind knows nothing, your spirit will keep your body, and the body will live long. Watch over what is within you; shut up the avenues that connect you with what is external;⁠—much knowledge is pernicious. I will proceed with you to the summit of the Grand Brilliance, where we come to the bright and expanding (element); I will enter with you the grate of the dark and depressing element. There heaven and earth have their controllers, there the yin and yang have their repositories. Watch over and keep your body, and all things will of themselves give it vigour. I main the (original) unity (of these elements). In this way I have cultivated myself for 1,200 years, and my bodily form knows no decay.” Add 1,200 to 2,679, and we obtain 3879 as the year BC of Kuang Chʽêng-tzŭ’s birth!

Laozi describes some other and kindred results of cultivating the Tao in terms which are sufficiently startling, and which it is difficult to accept. In his fiftieth chapter he says, “He who is skilful in managing his life travels on land without having to shun rhinoceros or tiger, and enter a host without having avoid buff coat or sharp weapon. The rhinoceros finds no place in him into which to thrust its horn, nor the tiger a place in which to fix its claws, nor the weapon a place to admit its point. And for what reason? Because there is in him no place of death.” To the same effect he says in his fifty-fifth chapter, “He who has in himself abundantly the attributes (of the Tao) is like an infant. Poisonous insects will not sting him; fierce beasts will not seize him; birds of prey will not strike him.”

Such assertions startle us by their contrariety to our observation and experience, but so does most of the teaching of Taoism. What can seem more absurd than the declaration that “the Tao does nothing, and so there is nothing that it does not do?” And yet this is one of the fundamental axioms of the system. The thirty-seventh chapter, which enunciates it, goes on to say, “If princes and kings were able to maintain (the Tao), all things would of themselves be transformed by them.” This principle, if we can call it so, is generalised in the fortieth, one of the shortest chapters, and partly in rhyme:⁠—

“The movement of the Tao
By contraries proceeds;
And weakness marks the course
Of Tao’s mighty deeds

All things under heaven sprang from it as existing (and named); that existence sprang from it as nonexistent (and not named).”

Ho-shang Kung, or whoever gave their names to the chapters of the Tao Te Ching, styles this fortieth chapter “Dispensing with the use (of means).” If the wish to use means arise in the mind, the nature of the Tao as “the nameless simplicity” has been vitiated; and this nature is celebrated in lines like those just quoted:⁠—

“Simplicity without a name
Is free from all external aim.
With no desire, at rest and still,
All things go right, as of their will.”

I do not cull any passages from Chuang-tzŭ to illustrate these points. In his eleventh book his subject is government by “Let-a-be and the exercise of forbearance.”

This Tao ruled men at first, and then the world was in a paradisiacal state. Neither of our authorities tells us how long this condition lasted, but as Lao observes in his eighteenth chapter, “the Tao ceased to be observed.” Chuang-tzŭ, however, gives us more than one description of what he considered the paradisiacal state was. He calls it “the age of perfect virtue.” In the thirteenth paragraph of his twelfth book he says, “In this age, they attached no value to wisdom, nor employed men of ability. Superiors were (but) as the higher branches of a tree; and the people were like the deer of the wild. They were upright and correct, without knowing that to be so was righteousness; they loved one another, without knowing that to do so was benevolence; they were honest and leal-hearted, without knowing that it was loyalty; they fulfilled their engagements, without knowing that to do so was good faith; in their movements they employed the services of one another, without thinking that they were conferring or receiving any gift. Therefore their actions left no trace, and there was no record of their affairs.”

Again, in the fourth paragraph of his tenth book, addressing an imaginary interlocutor, he says, “Are you, Sir, unacquainted with the age of perfect virtue?” He then gives the names of twelve sovereigns who ruled in it, of the greater number of whom we have no other means of knowing anything, and goes on:⁠—“In their times the people used knotted cords in carrying on their business. They thought their (simple) food pleasant, and their (plain) clothing beautiful. They were happy in their (simple) manners, and felt at rest in their (poor) dwellings. (The people of) neighbouring states might be able to descry one another; the voices of their cocks and dogs might be heard from one to the other; they might not die till they were old; and yet all their life they would have no communication together. In those times perfect good order prevailed.”

One other description of the primeval state is still more interesting. It is in the second paragraph of bk. IX:⁠—“The people had their regular and constant nature:⁠—they wove and made themselves clothes; they tilled the ground and got food. This was their common faculty. They were all one in this, and did not for themselves into separate classes; so were they constituted and left to their natural tendencies. Therefore in the age of perfect virtue men walked along with slow and grave step, and with their looks steadily directed forwards. On the hills there were no footpaths nor exacted passages; on the lakes there were no boats nor dams. All creatures lived in companies, and their places of settlement were made near to one another. Birds and beasts multiplied to flocks and herds; the grass and trees grew luxuriant and long. The birds and beasts might be led about without feeling the constraint; the nest of the magpie might be climbed to, and peeped into. Yes, in the age of perfect virtue, men lived in common with birds and beasts, and were on terms of equality with all creatures, as forming one family;⁠—how could they know among themselves the distinctions of superior men and small men? Equally without knowledge, they did not leave the path of their natural virtue; equally free from desires, they were in the state of pure simplicity. In their pure simplicity, their nature was what it ought to be.”

Such were the earliest Chinese of whom Chuang-tzŭ could venture to give any account. If ever their ancestors had been in a ruder or savage condition, it must have been at a much antecedent time. These had long passed out of such a state; they were tillers of the ground, and acquainted with the use of the loom. They lived in happy relations with one another, and in kindly harmony with the tribes of inferior creatures. But there is not the slightest allusion to any sentiment of piety as animating them individually, or to any ceremony of religion as observed by them in common. This surely is a remarkable feature in their condition. I call attention to it, but I do not dwell upon it.

But by the time of Lao and Chuang the cultivation of the Tao had fallen into disuse. The simplicity of life which it demanded, with its freedom from all disturbing speculation and action, was no longer to be found in individual or in government. It was the general decay of manners and of social order which unsettled the mind Lao, made him resign his position as curator of the Royal Library, and determine to withdraw from China and hide himself among the rude peoples beyond it. The cause of the deterioration of the Tao and of all the evils of the nation was attributed to the ever-growing pursuit of knowledge, and of what we call the arts of culture. It had commenced very long before;⁠—in the time of Huang-ti, Chuang says in one place;30 and in another he carries it still higher to Sui-jên and Fu-hsi.31 There had been indeed, all along the line of history, a grouping for the rules of life, as indicated by the constitution of man’s nature. The results were embodied in the ancient literature which was the lifelong study of Confucius. He had gathered up that literature; he recognised the nature of man as the gift of heaven or God. The monitions of God as given in the convictions of man’s mind supplied him with a Tao or path of duty very different from the Tao or mysterious way of Lao. All this was gall and wormwood to the dreaming librarian or brooding recluse, and made him say, “If we could renounce our sageness and discard our wisdom, it would be better for the people a hundredfold. If we could renounce our benevolence and discard our righteousness, the people would again become filial and kindly. If we could renounce our artful contrivances and discard our (scheming for) gain, there would be no thieves nor robbers.”32

We can laugh at this. Taoism was wrong in its opposition to the increase of knowledge. Man exists under a law of progress. In pursuing it there are demanded discretion and justice. Moral ends must rule over material ends, and advance in virtue be ranked higher than advance in science. So have good and evil, truth and error, to fight out the battle on the field of the world, and in all the range of time; but there is no standing still for the individual or for society. Even Confucius taught his countrymen to set too high a value on the examples of antiquity. The school of Laozi fixing themselves in an unknown region beyond antiquity⁠—a prehistoric time between “the grand beginning of all things” out of nothing, and the unknown commencement of societies of men⁠—has made no advance but rather retrograded, and is represented by the still more degenerated Taoism of the present day.

There is a short parabolic story of Chuang-tzŭ, intended to represent the antagonism between Taoism and knowledge, which has always struck me as curious. The last paragraph of his seventh book is this:⁠—“The ruler (or god Ti) of the southern ocean was Shu (that is, Heedless); the ruler of the northern ocean was Hu (that is, Hasty); and the ruler of the centre was Hun-tun (that is, Chaos). Shu and Hu were continually meeting in the land of Hun-tun, who treated them very well. They consulted together how they might repay his kindness, and said, ‘Men have all seven orifices for the purposes of seeing, hearing, eating, and breathing while this (poor) ruler along has not one. Let us try and make them for him.’ Accordingly they dug one orifice in him every day; and at the end of seven days Chaos died.”

So it was that Chaos passed away before light. So did the nameless simplicity of the Tao disappear before knowledge. But it was better that the Chaos should give place to the cosmos. “Heedless” and “Hasty” did a good deed.

I have thus set forth eight characteristics of the Taoistic system, having respect mostly to what is peculiar and mystical in it. I will not conclude my exhibition of it by bringing together under one head the practical lessons of its author for men individually, and for the administration of government. The praise of whatever excellence these possess belongs to Lao himself: Chuang-tzŭ devotes himself mainly to the illustration of the abstruse and difficult points.

First, it does not surprise us that in his rules for individual man, Lao should place humility in the foremost place. A favourite illustration with him of the Tao is water. In his eighth chapter he says:⁠—“The highest excellence is like that of water. The excellence of water appears in its benefiting all things, and in its occupying, without striving to the contrary, the low ground which all men dislike. Hence (its way) is near to that of the Tao.” To the same effect in the seventy-eighth chapter:⁠—“There is nothing in the world more soft and weak than water, and yet for attacking things that are firm and strong there is nothing that can take precedence of it. Every one in the world knows that the soft overcomes the hard, and the weak the strong; but no one is able to carry it out in practice.”

In his sixty-seventh chapter Lao associates with humility two other virtues, and calls them his three Precious Things, or Jewels. They are gentleness, economy, and shrinking from taking precedence of others. “With that gentleness,” he says, “I can be bold; with that economy I can be liberal; shrinking from taking precedence of others, I can become a vessel of the highest honour.”

And in his sixty-third chapter, he rise to a still loftier height of morality. He says, “(It is the way of the Tao) to act without (thinking of) acting, to conduct affairs without (feeling) the trouble of them; to taste without discerning any flavour, to consider the small as great, and the few as many, and to recompense injury with kindness.”

Here is the grand Christian precept, “Render to no man evil for evil. If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink. Be not overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good.” We know that the maxim made some noise in its author’s lifetime; that the disciples of Confucius consulted him about it, and that he was unable to received it.33 It comes in with less important matters by virtue of the Taoistic “rule of contraries.” I have been surprised to find what little reference to it I have met with in the course of my Chinese reading. I do not think that Chuang-tzŭ takes notice of it to illustrate it after his fashion. There, however, it is in the Tao Te Ching. The fruit of it has yet to be developed.

Second, Lao laid down the same rule for the policy of the state as for the life of the individual. He says in his sixty-first chapter, “What makes a state great is its being like a low-lying, down-flowing stream;⁠—it becomes the centre to which tend all (the small states) under heaven.” He then uses an illustration which will produce a smile:⁠—“Take the case of all females. The female always overcomes the male by her stillness. Stillness may be considered (a sort of) abasement.” Resuming his subject, he adds, “Thus it is that a great state, by condescending to small states, gains them for itself; and that small states, by abasing themselves to a great state, win it over to them. In the one case the abasement tends to gaining adherents; in the other case, to procuring favour. The great state only wishes to unite men together and nourish them; a small state only wishes to be received by, and to serves, the other. Each gets what it desires, but the great state must learn to abase itself.”

“All very well in theory,” someone will exclaim, “but, the world has not seen it yet reduced to practice.” So it is. The fact is deplorable. No one saw the misery arising from it, and exposed its unreasonableness more unsparingly, than Chuang-tzŭ. But it was all in vain in his time, as it has been in all the centuries that have since rolled their course. Philosophy, philanthropy, and religion have still to toil on, “faint, yet pursuing,” believing that in the time will yet come when humility and love shall secure the reign of peace and good will among the nations of men.

While enjoining humility, Lao protested against war. In his thirty-first chapter he says, “Arms, however beautiful, are instruments of evil omen; hateful, it may be said, to all creatures. They who have the Tao do not like to employ them.” Perhaps in his sixty-ninth chapter he allows defensive war, but he adds, “There is no calamity greater than that of lightly engaging in war. To do that is near losing the gentleness which is so precious. Thus it is that when weapons are (actually) crossed, he who deplores the (situation) conquers.”

There are some other points in the practical lessons of Taoism to which I should like to call the attention of the reader, but I must refer him for them to the chapters of the Tao Te Ching, and the books of Chuang-tzŭ. Its salient features have been set forth somewhat fully. Notwithstanding the scorn poured so freely on Confucius by Chuang-tzŭ and other Taoist writers, he proved in the course of time too strong for Lao as the teacher of their people. The entrance of Buddhism, moreover, into the country in our first century, was very injurious to Taoism, which still exists, but is only the shadow of its former self. It is tolerated by the government, but not patronised as it was when emperors and empresses seemed to think more of it than of Confucianism. It is by the spread of knowledge, which it had always opposed, that its overthrow and disappearance will be brought about ere long.