characters composing the designation may mean either “the Old Son,” which commonly assumes with foreigners the form of “the Old Boy,” or “the Old Philosopher.” The latter significance is attached to them by Dr Chalmers in his translation of the treatise published in 1868 under the title of The Speculations on Metaphysics, Polity and Morality of “the Old Philosopher,” Lâo-tsze. The former is derived from a fabulous account of Lâo-tsze in the Shăn Hsien Chwan; “The Account of Spirits and Immortals,” of Ko Hung in the 4th century A.D. According to this, his mother, after a supernatural conception, carried him in her womb sixty-two years (or seventy-two, or eighty-one—ten years more or fewer are of little importance in such a case), so that, when he was born at last, his hair was white as with age, and people might well call him “the old boy.” The other meaning of the designation rests on better authority. We find it in the Kiâ Yü, or “Narratives of the Confucian School,” compiled in the 3rd century A.D. from documents said to have been preserved among the descendants of Confucius, and also in the brief history of Lâo-tsze given in the historical records of Sze-ma Ch’ien (about 100 B.C.). In the latter instance the designation is used by Confucius, and possibly it originated with him. It should be regarded more as an epithet of respect than of years, and is equivalent to “the Venerable Philosopher.”
All that Ch’ien tells us about Lâo-tsze goes into small compass. His surname was Lî, and his name Urh. He was a native of the state of Ch’û, and was born in a hamlet not far from the present prefectural city of Kwei-te in Ho-nan province. He was one of the recorders or historiographers at the court of Chow, his special department being the charge of the whole or a portion of the royal library. He must thus have been able to make himself acquainted with the history of his country. Ch’ien does not mention the year of his birth, which is often said, though on what Chinese authority does not appear, to have taken place in the third year of King Phing, corresponding to 604 B.C. That date cannot be far from the truth. That he was contemporary with Confucius is established by the concurrent testimony of the Lî Kî and the Kiâ Yü on the Confucian side, and of Chwang-tsze and Sze-ma Ch’ien on the Tâoist. The two men whose influence has been so great on all the subsequent generations of the Chinese people—Kung-tsze (Confucius) and Lâo-tsze—had at least one interview, in 517 B.C., when the former was in his thirty-fifth year. The conversation between them was interesting. Lâo was in a mocking mood; Kung appears to the greater advantage. If it be true that Confucius, when he was fifty-one years old, visited Lâo-tsze as Chwang-tsze says (in the Thien Yun, the fourteenth of his treatises), to ask about the Tâo, they must have had more than one interview. Dr Chalmers, however, has pointed out that both Chwang-tsze and Lieh-tsze (a still earlier Tâoist writer) produce Confucius in their writings, as the lords of the Philistines did the captive Samson on their festive occasions, “to make sport for them.” Their testimony is valueless as to any matter of fact. There may have been several meetings between the two in 517 B.C., but we have no evidence that they were together in the same place after that time. Ch’ien adds:—“Lâo-tsze cultivated the Tâo and virtue, his chief aim in his studies being how to keep himself concealed and unknown. He resided at (the capital of) Chow; but after a long time, seeing the decay of the dynasty, he left it, and went away to the Gate (leading from the royal domain into the regions beyond—at the entrance of the pass of Han-kû, in the north-west of Ho-nan). Yin Hsî, the warden of the Gate, said to him, ‘You are about to withdraw yourself out of sight; I pray you to compose for me a book (before you go).’ On this Lâo-tsze made a writing, setting forth his views on the tâo and virtue, in two sections, containing more than 5000 characters. He then went away, and it is not known where he died.” The historian then mentions the names of two other men whom some regarded as the true Lâo-tsze. One of them was a Lâo Lâi, a contemporary of Confucius, who wrote fifteen treatises (or sections) on the practices of the school of Tâo. Subjoined to the notice of him is the remark that Lâo-tsze was more than one hundred and sixty years old, or, as some say, more than two hundred, because by the cultivation of the Tâo he nourished his longevity. The other was “a grand historiographer” of Chow, called Tan, one hundred and twenty-nine (? one hundred and nineteen) years after the death of Confucius. The introduction of these disjointed notices detracts from the verisimilitude of the whole narrative in which they occur.
Finally, Ch’ien states that “Lâo-tsze was a superior man, who liked to keep in obscurity,” traces the line of his posterity down to the 2nd century B.C., and concludes with this important statement:—“Those who attach themselves to the doctrine of Lâo-tsze condemn that of the literati, and the literati on their part condemn Lâo-tsze, thus verifying the saying, ‘Parties whose principles are different cannot take counsel together.’ Lî Urh taught that transformation follows, as a matter of course, the doing nothing (to bring it about), and rectification ensues in the same way from being pure and still.”
Accepting the Tâo Teh King as the veritable work of Lâo-tsze, we may now examine its contents. Consisting of not more than between five and six thousand characters, it is but a short treatise—not half the size of the Gospel of St Mark. The nature of the subject, however, the want of any progress of thought or of logical connexion between its different parts, and the condensed style, with the mystic tendencies and poetical temperament of the author, make its meaning extraordinarily obscure. Divided at first into two parts, it has subsequently and conveniently been subdivided into chapters. One of the oldest, and the most common, of these arrangements makes the chapters eighty-two.
Some Roman Catholic missionaries, two centuries ago, fancied that they found a wonderful harmony between many passages and the teaching of the Bible. Montucci of Berlin ventured to say in 1808: “Many things about a Supposed harmony with Biblical teaching. Triune God are so clearly expressed that no one who has read this book can doubt that the mystery of the Holy Trinity was revealed to the Chinese five centuries before the coming of Jesus Christ.” Even Rémusat, the first occupant of a Chinese chair in Europe, published at Paris in 1823 his Mémoire sur la vie et les opinions de Lâo-tsze, to vindicate the view that the Hebrew name Yahweh was phonetically represented in the fourteenth chapter by Chinese characters. These fancies were exploded by Stanislas Julien, when he issued in 1842 his translation of the whole treatise as Le Livre de la voie et de la vertu.
The most important thing is to determine what we are to understand by the Tâo, for Teh is merely its outcome, especially in man, and is rightly translated by “virtue.” Julien translated Tâo by “la voie.” Chalmers leaves it untranslated. “No English word,” he says (p. xi.), “is its exact equivalent. Three terms suggest themselves—the way, reason and the word; but they are all liable to objection. Were we guided by etymology, ‘the way’ would come nearest the original, and in one or two passages the idea of a way seems to be in the term; but this is too materialistic to serve the purpose of a translation. ‘Reason,’ again, seems to be more like a quality or attribute of some conscious being than Tâo is. I would translate it by ‘the Word,’ in the sense of the Logos, but this would be like settling the question which I wish to leave open, viz. what resemblance there is between the Logos of the New Testament and this Chinese Tâo.” Later Sinologues in China have employed “nature” as our best analogue of the term. Thus Watters (Lâo-tsze, A Study in Chinese Philosophy, p. 45) says:—“In the Tâo Teh King the originator of the universe is referred to under the names Non-Existence, Existence, Nature (Tâo) and various designations—all which, however, represent one idea in various manifestations. It is in all cases Nature (Tâo) which is meant.” This view has been skilfully worked out; but it only hides the scope of “the Venerable Philosopher.” “Nature” cannot be accepted as a translation of Tâo. That character was, primarily, the symbol of a way, road or path; and then, figuratively, it was used, as we also use way, in the senses of means and method—the course that we pursue in passing from one thing or concept to another as its end or result. It is the name of a quality. Sir Robert Douglas has well said (Confucianism and Tâoism, p. 189): “If we were compelled to adopt a single word to represent the Tâo of Lâo-tsze, we should prefer the sense in which it is used by Confucius, ‘the way,’ that is, μέθοδος.”
What, then, was the quality which Lâo-tsze had in view, and which he thought of as the Tâo—there in the library of Chow, at the pass of the valley of Han, and where he met the end of his life beyond the limits of the civilized state? It was the simplicity of spontaneity, action The doctrine of “the way.” (which might be called non-action) without motive, free from all selfish purpose, resting in nothing but its own accomplishment. This is found in the phenomena of the material world. “All things spring up without a word spoken, and grow without a claim for their production. They go through their processes without any display of pride in them; and the results are realized without any assumption of ownership. It is owing to the absence of such assumption that the results and their
