Preface by James Legge

In the “Preface” to the third volume of these Sacred Books of the East (1879), I stated that I proposed giving in due course, in order to exhibit the System of Taoism, translations of the Tao Te Ching by Laozi (sixth century BC),1 the Writings of Chuang-tzŭ (between the middle of the fourth and third centuries BC), and the Treatise of “Actions and Their Retributions” (of our eleventh century); and perhaps also of one or more of the other characteristic Productions of the System.

The two volumes now submitted to the reader are a fulfilment of the promise made so long ago. They contain versions of the three works which were specified, and, in addition, as appendixes, four other shorter treatises of Taoism; analyses of several of the books of Chuang-tzŭ by Lin Hsi-chung; a list of the stories which form so important a part of those books; two essays by two of the greatest Scholars of China, written the one in AD 586 and illustrating the Taoistic beliefs of that age, and the other in AD 1078 and dealing with the four books of Chuang-tzŭ, whose genuineness is frequently called in question. The concluding index is confined very much to proper names. For subjects the reader is referred to the tables of contents, the introduction to the books of Chuang-tzŭ (vol. xxxix pp. 127⁠–⁠163), and the introductory notes to the various appendixes.2

The Treatise of Actions and Their Retributions exhibits to us the Taoism of the eleventh century in its moral or ethical aspects; in the two earlier works we see it rather as a philosophical speculation than as a religion in the ordinary sense of that term. It was not till after the introduction of Buddhism into China in our first century that Taoism began to organise itself as a religion, having its monasteries and nunneries, its images and rituals. While it did so, it maintained the superstitions peculiar to itself:⁠—some, like the cultivation of the Tao as a rule of life favourable to longevity, come down from the earliest times, and others which grew up during the decay of the Chou dynasty, and subsequently blossomed;⁠—now in mystical speculation; now in the pursuits of alchemy; now in the search for the pills of immortality and the elixir vitae; now in astrological fancies; now in visions of spirits and in magical arts to control them; and finally in the terrors of its purgatory and everlasting hell. Its phases have been continually changing, and at present it attracts our notice more as a degraded adjunct of Buddhism than as a development of the speculations of Laozi and Chuang-tzŭ. Up to its contact with Buddhism, it subsisted as an opposition to the Confucian system, which, while admitting the existence and rule of the Supreme Being, bases its teaching on the study of man’s nature and the enforcement of the duties binding on all men from the moral and social principles of their constitution.

It is only during the present century that the Texts of Taoism have begun to receive the attention which they deserve. Christianity was introduced into China by Nestorian missionaries in the seventh century; and from the Xi’an Monument, which was erected by their successors in 781, nearly 150 years after their first entrance, we perceive that they were as familiar with the books of Laozi and Chuang-tzŭ as with the Confucian literature of the empire, but that monument is the only memorial of them that remains. In the thirteenth century the Roman Catholic Church sent its earliest missionaries to China, but we hardly know anything of their literary labours.

The great Romish mission which continue to the present day began towards the end of the sixteenth century; and there exists now in the India Office a translation of the Tao Te Ching in Latin, which was brought to English by a Mr. Matthew Raper, and presented by him to the Royal Society, of which he was a Fellow, on January 10th, 1788. The manuscript is in excellent preservation, but we do not know by whom the version was made. It was presented, as stated in the “Introduction,” par. 1, to Mr. Raper by P. de Grammont, Missionarius Apostolicus, ex-Jesuita. The chief object of the translator or translators was to show that “the Mysteries of the Most Holy Trinity and of the Incarnate God were anciently known to the Chinese nation.” The version as a whole is of little value. The reader will find, in endnote 108, its explanation of Lao’s seventy-second chapter;⁠—the first morsel of it that has appeared in print.

Protestant missions to China commenced in 1807; but it was not till 1868 that the Rev. Dr. Chalmers, a member of one of them, published his Speculations on Metaphysics, Polity, and Morality of “The Old Philosopher,” Laozi. Meanwhile, Abel-Rémusat had aroused the curiosity of scholars throughout Europe, in 1823, by his Memoir on the Life and Opinions of Laozi, a Chinese Philosopher of the sixth century before our era, who professed the opinions commonly attributed to Pythagoras, to Plato, and to their disciples. Rémusat was followed by one who had received from him his first lessons in Chinese, and had become a truly great Chinese scholar⁠—the late Stanislas Julien. He published in 1842 “a complete translation for the first time of this memorable work, which is regarded with reason as the most profound, the most abstract, and the most difficult of all Chinese literature.” Dr. Chalmers’s translation was also complete, but his comments, whether original or from Chinese sources, were much fewer than those supplied by Julien. Two years later, two German versions of the treatise were published at Leipzig;⁠—by Reinhold von Plänckner and Victor von Strauss, differing much from each other, but both marked by originality and ability.

I undertook myself, as stated above, in 1879 to translate for The Sacred Books of the East the texts of Taoism which appear in these volumes; and, as I could find time from my labours on The Texts of Confucianism, I had written out more than one version of Lao’s work by the end of 1880. Though not satisfied with the result, I felt justified in exhibiting my general views of it in an article in the British Quarterly Review of July, 1883.

In 1884 Mr. F. H. Balfour published at Shanghai a version of Taoist Texts, Ethical, Political, and Speculative. His Texts were ten in all, the Tao Te Ching being the first and longest of them. His version of this differed in many points from all previous versions; and Mr. H. A. Giles, of H.M.’s Consular Service in China, vehemently assailed it and also Dr. Chalmers’s translation, in the China Review for March and April, 1886. Mr. Giles, indeed, occasionally launched a shaft also at Julien and myself; but his main object in his article was to discredit the genuineness and authenticity of the Tao Te Ching itself. “The work,” he says, “is undoubtedly a forgery. It contains, indeed, much that Laozi did say, but more that he did not.” I replied, so far as was necessary, to Mr. Giles in the same Review for January and February, 1888; and a brief summary of my reply is given in the second chapter of the “Introduction” in this volume. My confidence has never been shaken for a moment in the Tao Te Ching as genuine relic of Laozi, one of the most original minds of the Chinese race.

In preparing the version now published, I have used:⁠—

First, The Complete Works of the Ten Philosophers;⁠—a Suzhou reprint in 1804 of the best editions of the Philosophers, nearly all belonging more or less to the Taoist school, included in it. It is a fine specimen of Chinese printing, clear and accurate. The Treatise of Laozi of course occupies the first place, as edited by Kuei Yu-kuang (better known as Kuei Chên-chʽuan) of the Ming dynasty. The text and commentary are those of Ho-shang Kung (Introd., par. 7), along with the division of the whole into parts and eighty-one chapters, and the titles of the several chapters, all attributed to him. Along the top of the page, there is a large collection of notes from celebrated commentators and writers down to the editor himself.

Second, the Text and Commentary of Wang Pi (called also Fu-ssŭ), who died AD 249, at the early age of twenty-four. See “Introduction,” par. 8.

Third, Helps (lit. Wings) to Laozi; by Chiao Hung (called also Jo-hou), and prefaced by him in 1587. This is what Julien calls “the most extensive and most important contribution to the understanding of Laozi, which we yet possess.” Its contents are selected from the ablest writings on the Treatise from Han Fei (Introd., par. 3) downwards, closing in many chapters with the notes made by the compiler himself in the course of his studies. Altogether the book sets before us the substance of the views of sixty-four writers on our short Ching. Julien took the trouble to analyse the list of them, and found it composed of three emperors, twenty professed Taoists, seven Buddhists, and thirty-four Confucianists or members of the literati. He says, “These last constantly explain Laozi according to the ideas peculiar to the school of Confucius, at the risk of misrepresenting him, and with the express intention of throttling his system;” then adding, “The commentaries written in such a spirit have no interest for persons who wish to enter fully into the thought of Laozi, and obtain a just idea of his doctrine. I have thought it useless, therefore, to specify the names of such commentaries and their authors.”

I have quoted these sentences of Julien, because of a charge brought by Mr. Balfour, in a prefatory note to his own version of the Tao Te Ching, against him and other translators. “One prime defect,” he says, though with some hesitation, “lies at the root of every translation that has been published hitherto; and this is, that not one seems to have been based solely and entirely on commentaries furnished by members of the Taoist school. The Confucian element enters largely into all; and here, I think, an injustice has been done to Laozi. To a Confucianist the Taoist system is in every sense of the word a heresy, and a commentator holding his opinion is surely not the best expositor. It is as a grammarian rather than as a philosopher that a member of the Ju Chia deals with the Tao Te Ching; he gives the sense of a passage according to the syntactical construction rather than according to the genius of the philosophy itself; and in attempting to explain the text by his own canons, instead of by the canons of Taoism, he mistakes the superficial and apparently obvious meaning for the hidden and esoteric interpretation.”

Mr. Balfour will hardly repeat his charge of imperfect or erroneous interpretation against Julien; and I believe that is equally undeserved by most, if not all, of the other translators against whom it is directed. He himself adopted as his guide the Explanations of the Tao Te Ching, current as the work of Lü Yen (called also Lü Tsu, Lü Tung-pin, and Lü Chʽung-yang), a Taoist of the eighth century. Through Mr. Balfour’s kindness I have had an opportunity of examining this edition of Lao’s Treatise; and I am compelled to agree with the very unfavourable judgement on it pronounced by Mr. Giles as both “spurious” and “ridiculous.” All that we are told of Lü Yen is very suspicious; much of it evidently false. The editions of our little book ascribed to him are many. I have for more than twenty years possessed one with the title of The Meaning of the Tao Te Ching Explained by the True Man of Chʽung-yang, being a reprint of 1690, and as different as possible from the work patronised by Mr. Balfour.

Fourth, the Tʽai Shang Hsüan Yüan Tao Te Ching⁠—a work of the present dynasty, published at Shanghai, but when produced I do not know. It is certainly of the Lü Tsu type, and is worth purchasing as one of the finest specimens of block-printing. It professes to be the production of “The Immortals of the Eight Grottoes,” each of whom is styled “a Divine Ruler (Ti Chün).” The eighty-one chapters are equally divided for commentary among them, excepting that “the Divine Ruler, the Universal Refiner,” has the last eleven assigned to him. The text is everywhere broken up into short clauses, which are explained in a very few characters by “God, the True Helper,” the same, I suppose, who is also styled, “The Divine Ruler, the True Helper,” and comments at length on chapters 31 to 40. I mention these particulars as an illustration of how the ancient Taoism has become polytheistic and absurd. The name “God, the True Helper,” is a title, I imagine, given to Lü Tsu. With all this nonsense, the composite commentary is a good one, the work, evidently, of one hand. One of the several recommendatory preface is ascribed to Wên Chʽang, the god of literature; and he specially praises the work, as “explaining the meaning by examination of the text.”

Fifth, a Collection of the Most Important Treatises of the Taoist Fathers (Tao Tsu Chên Chʽuan Chi Yao). This was reprinted in 1877 at Changzhou in Jiangsu; beginning with the Tao Te Ching, and ending with the Kan Ying Pʽien. Between these there are fourteen other treatises, mostly short, five of them being among Mr. Balfour’s Taoist Texts. The collection was edited by a Lu Yü; and the commentary selected by him, in all but the last treatise, was by a Li Hsi-yüeh, who appears to have been a recluse in a monastery on a mountain in the department of Pao-ning, Sichuan, if, indeed, what is said of him be not entirely fabulous.

Sixth, the Commentary on the Tao Te Ching, by Wu Chʽêng (AD 1249⁠–⁠1333) of Lin Chʽuan. This has been of the highest service to me. Wu Chʽêng was the greatest of the Yüan scholars. He is one of the literati quoted from occasionally by Chiao Hung in his Wings; but by no means so extensively as Julien supposes (“Observations Détachées” p. xli). My own copy of his work is in the 12th section of the large Collection of the Yüeh-ya Hall, published in 1853. Writing of Wu Chʽêng in 1865 (“Proleg.” to the Shu, p. 36), I said that he was “a bold thinker and a daring critic, handling his text with a freedom which I had not seen in any other Chinese scholar.” The subsequent study of his writings has confirmed me in this opinion of him. Perhaps he might be characterised as an independent, rather than as a bold, thinking, and the daring of his criticism must not be supposed to be without caution. (See “Introd.,” p. 9.)3

I have thus set forth all that is necessary to be said here by way of preface. For various information about the treatises comprised in the appendixes,4 the reader is referred to the preliminary notes, which preceded the translation of most of them. I have often sorely missed the presence of a competent native scholar who would have assisted me in the quest of references, and in talking over difficult passages. Such a helper would have saved me much time; but the result, I think, would scarcely have appeared in any great alteration of my versions.