Calmly conscious of his power, he is not quarrelsome or eager for battle, and thus possessing the virtue of peaceable and patient strength, he becomes the peer of Heaven (Ch., 68). War is altogether to be condemned, as pregnant with calamity to the state (Ch., 30). "The most beauteous weapons are instruments of misfortune; all creatures abhor them; therefore he who has Taò does not employ them." They are not the instruments of the wise man. If he must needs resort to them, yet he still values peace and quietness as the highest aims. He conquers with reluctance. "He who has killed many men, let him weep for them with grief and compassion. He who has conquered in battle, let him stand as at a funeral pomp" (Ch., 31).
Another striking characteristic of Laò-tsé's moral system is his dislike of luxury, and his earnest injunction to all men to be contented with modest circumstances. We have seen that the sage is depicted as wearing coarse clothing, and Laò-tsé considers that the very presence of considerable riches indicates the absence of Taò from the minds of their possessors. As we should express it, the devotion to worldly wealth is inconsistent with a spiritual life. "To wear fine clothes, to carry sharp swords, to be filled with drink and victuals, to have a superfluity of costly gems, this is to make a parade of robbery (Or, this is "magnificent robbery," O. P., p. 41); truly not to have Taò" (Ch., 53). Moreover, the very pomp of the palace leads to un-*cultivated fields and empty barns (Ibid). Laò-tsé therefore warns every one not to consider his abode too narrow or his life too confined. If we do not think it too confined, it will not be so (Ch., 72). Nay, he goes further, and asserts that the world is best known by staying at home. The further a man goes, the less he knows (Ch., 47). A truly virtuous and well-governed people will never care to travel beyond its own limits. To such a people its food will be so sweet, its clothing so beautiful, its dwellings so comfortable, and its customs so dear, that it will never visit the territory of its neighbors, even though that territory should lie so close that the cackling of the hens and the barking of the dogs may be heard across the boundary (Ch., 80).
It results from the above exposition of his ethical principles that Laò-tsé insists mainly upon three virtues: Modesty, Benev-
