LAOS 419 LAPIS LAZULI it until the Allied offensive in the sum- mer of 1918. Pop. about 15,000. LAOS (la'ds), a territory in the Indo- China peninsula, surrounded by the Shan states Annam, Tonking, and the Chinese province of Yunnan; area, estimated, 91,000 square miles; pop. est. 1,500,000; the soil is fertile, producing rice, cotton, tobacco, and fruits, and bearing teak forests; gold, tin, lead, and precious stones are found. Has been under French protectorate since 1892. Laos was the subject of four political agree- ments, the last in 1907 when the terri- tory on the W. side of Nuking was partly restored to Siam. LAO-TSZE (la-o-tsaO, a celebrated philosopher of China; generally reputed to have been the founder of Taoism; which at the present day shares the al- legiance of the Chinese with Confucian- ism and Buddhism under the appellation of San Chiao, born probably in 604 B. C. He was curator of the royal library in the capital city of Loh, not far from the present city of Loh-yang in Ho-nan. The designation Lao-tsze means the "old philosopher." Nothing certain can be said of the length of Lao's life. Sze- ma-Ch'ien, the historian of ancient China, tells us that he cultivated "the Tao and its characteristics," his chief aim being to keep himself unknown ; that he resided long at the capital, and then seeing the decay of the dynasty of Chau went away to the gate which led out of the royal domain toward the regions of the N. W.j that there he was recognized by Yin Hsi, the keeper of the gate, the place of which is shown in the present Shan Chau of Ho-nan, and was prevailed on to write out for him the treatise called the "Tao Teh King," which has come down to us as the only record of his teaching. It is not easy, however, to say what he meant by his Tao. "It was the origina- tor of heaven and earth : it is the mother of all things." At the same time it is not a personal being. "It might appear," he says, "to have been before God." "It gave," says Chwang-tsze, the ablest of all Lao's followers, "their mysterious ex- istence to spirits and to God (or to gods)." The character Tao properly means "path," "course," or "way"; and it is in this sense that Lao uses it. His "great way" is but a metaphorical ex- pression for the way in which things came at first into being out of the primal nothingness. Of the same kind should be the influence of the Tao in the con- duct of individuals and of government. The secret of good government is to let men alone. The appeal to arms is hate- ful. All learning is injurious. The wis- dom of men defeats its own ends. Tao works by contraries, and the secret of its strength is its weakness. In many of these teachings Lao-tsze may seem to be only a visionary dreamer, but he enun- ciates many lessons of a very high mor- ality. Its fundamental quality is humil- ity. He even rises to the greatest of all moral principles, the returning of good for evil, and enunciates "recompensing injury with kindness." He nowhere speaks clearly of the state of man after death. LA PALICE, a suburb of La Rochelle, where a new port was in recent years inaugurated with harbor works on a vast scale. It is situated on the Bay of Bis- cay midway between Nantes and Bor- deaux. LA PAZ, a department of Bolivia, bor- dering on Peru; area 171,130 square miles; pop. about 725,000. The La Paz Cordillera contains the loftiest peaks of the Bolivian Andes, but in the E. the great mountains sink to the plain, and the country is richly watered. Capital, La Paz, at the foot of a steep valley 11,- 952 feet above the sea, 42 miles S. E. of Lake Titicaca. The houses are mostly of mud; the inhabitants, principally In- dians and half-breeds, carry on an active trade in copper, alpaca wool, cinchona, etc.; pop. about 80,000. LA PEROUSE (la pa-rozO, JEAN PBANCOIS DE GALAUP, COUNT DE, a French navigator; born near Albi, Languedoc, France, Aug. 22, 1741. He distinguished himself in the naval war against England (1778-1783) , especially by destroying the forts of the Hudson's Bay Company. He sailed on an expedi- tion of discovery in August, 1785, with two ships, visited the N. W. coast of America, explored the N. E. coast of Asia, where by sailing through La Perouse Strait between Saghalien and Yezo, he discovered that each of these was a separate island. In February, 1788, he sailed from Botany Bay; and after that all trace of him was lost. In 1826 the English Captain Dillon found that both of La Perouse's ships had been wrecked on a coral reef off Vanikoro, an island lying N. of the New Hebrides. The account of the early portions of La Perouse's voyage was published under the title of "Journey Round the World." LAPIS LAZULI (la'pis lazu-li), a mineral of beautiful ultramarine or azure color, consisting chiefly of silica and alumina, with a little sulphuric acid, soda, and lime. The color varies much in its degree of intensity. Lapis lazuli
