The honour of the first edition really belongs to a volatile spirit of the third century A.D., named Hsiang Hsiu. He was probably the founder, at any rate a member, of a small club of bibulous poets who called themselves the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove. Death, however, interrupted his labours before he had finished his work on Chuang Tzu, and the manuscript was purloined by Kuo Hsiang, a scholar who died A.D. 312, and with some additions was issued by the latter as his own.
Before attempting to illustrate by extracts the style and scope of Chuang Tzu, it will be well to collect from his work a few passages dealing with the attributes of Tao. In his most famous chapter, entitled Autumn Floods, a name by which he himself is sometimes spoken of, Chuang Tzu writes as follows :
"Tao is without beginning, without end." Elsewhere he says, "There is nowhere where it is not." "Tao can- not be heard; heard, it is not Tao. Tao cannot be seen ; seen, it is not Tao. Tao cannot be spoken; spoken, it is not Tao. That which imparts form to forms is itself formless ; therefore Tao cannot have a name (as form precedes name)."
"Tao is not too small for the greatest, nor too great for the smallest. Thus all things are embosomed therein ; wide, indeed, its boundless capacity, unfathomable its depth."
" By no thoughts, by no cogitations, Tao may be known. By resting in nothing, by according in nothing, Tao may be approached. By following nothing, by pursuing nothing, Tao may be attained."
In these and many like passages Lao Tzu would have been in full sympathy with his disciple. So far as it is possible to deduce anything definite from the scanty
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