attributes of the highest order. Thus, its Spirit is supremely trustworthy. In it is faithfulness (Ch. 21.) All beings trust to it in order to live. When a work is completed, it does not call it its own. Loving and nourishing all beings, it still does not lord it over them. It is eternally without desire. All beings turn to it, yet it does not lord it over them (Ch., 34). It is eminently straightforward. It dwells only with those who are not occupied with the luxuries of this world (Ch., 53). Nay, it is altogether perfect (Ch., 25). The last assertion is found in a chapter which, as it is probably the most important in the book for the purpose of understanding the theology of the author, deserves to be translated in full:—"There existed a Being, inconceivably perfect, before Heaven and Earth arose. So still! so supersensible! It alone remains and does not change. It pervades all and is not endangered. It may be regarded as the Mother of the World. I know not its name; if I describe it, I call it Taò. Concerned to give it a Name, I call it Great; as great, I call it Immense; as immense, I call it Distant; as distant, I call it Returning. For Taò is great; Heaven is great; the Earth is great; the King is also great. In the world there are many kinds of greatness, and the King remains one of them. The measure of Man is the earth; the measure of earth, Heaven; the measure of Heaven, Taò; Taò's measure itself."[1]
Such is the picture of Taò; but the Taò-te-king is much more than a treatise on theology; it is even more conspicuously a treatise on morals. Taò is indeed the transcendental foundation on which the ethical superstructure is raised; but the superstructure occupies a much more considerable space than the foundation, and seems to have been the main practical end for which the latter was laid down. Intermingled with the image of Taò we find the image of the good man, or, as we may call him, in Scriptural phraseology, the righteous man; an ideal of perfect virtue, whom the author holds up, not as an actual person, but as an imaginary model for the guidance of human conduct. By putting together the scattered traits of his
- ↑ Ch., 25. For the sake of enabling the reader to compare the interpretations of this important chapter given by various Sinologues, I subjoin in an appendix four other translations.
