A considerable portion of the following pages has already appeared in “The Chinese Recorder and Missionary Journal,” and its reappearance in its present form requires an apology. The subject of the work is one in which very few take any interest, and the author is very sensible of his numerous imperfections in attempting to deal with matters so difficult and abstruse as are treated of in the Tao-tê Ching. Having thus made confession; it only remains for him to thank Mr. Baldwin and his other fri

One of the most remarkable men in the history of China, as also in the history of philosophy, is Lao-tzŭ, the author of the Tao-tê Ching ( 道德經 ). This book deserves, and has obtained with those who know it, a high place among philosophical works, and the posthumous fortunes of its author have very rarely been surpassed. That his own followers—or at least those who professed to be and probably believed that they were his followers—should magnify his name was only what we would have expected. They

The life of Lao-tzŭ, like the book which he wrote, is enveloped in mystery; and one might almost be excused for doubting whether such a person ever actually existed. One author, indeed, has even gone the length of saying that Lao-tzŭ was made out of space or vacuity ( hung 洪 ). 1 The most reliable account of him which has come down to us is that by Szŭ Ma-chien, or Sze-ma-thsien ( 司馬遷 ), in the Shi-chi ( 史記 ), and this is very brief and unsatisfactory. We have also occasional notices of him in o

Lao-tzŭ is said to have died at the age of eighty-one years in B.C. 523, 1 though, as has been seen, nothing is known positively about the time or manner of his decease. He had, according to historical tradition, on leaving the Hanku Pass, consigned his writings on Tao and Tê to Yin-hsi, the guardian of the Pass. This latter seems to have transmitted his doctrines to others, more especially to Wên-tzŭ ( 文子 ), who probably published the first edition of this work known to the public. Some indeed

Before proceeding to examine in detail the doctrines of the Tao-tê Ching , I shall briefly indicate their general nature; and by way of preface to my own remarks, I now present to the reader the statements of two critics of different countries, and of rather widely separated dates. One of these, Chu-hsi 朱熹 , a Chinese philosopher who lived in the 12th century, says:—“Lao-tzŭ’s scheme of philosophy consists in modesty, self-emptiness, the saving of one’s powers, and the refusal in all circumstanc

What was Lao-tzŭ’s conception of the Cosmos? To this question we are unfortunately unable to give a clear and satisfactory answer. It is only occasionally, and then usually by way of illustration, that he alludes to the material world or to the physical and mental constitution of man. All that we can do, accordingly, is to examine the miscellaneous passages in which he refers to these subjects, and collect from them what information we can as to the notions which Lao-tzŭ entertained about the or

We now breathe a freer air—escaped from the trammels of Physics, and at large in the wide spaces of Politics. Here Lao-tzŭ speaks more plainly and fully, and it is easily seen that he is dealing with congenial subjects. To us also his political aphorisms will come with more freshness and delight than the speculations about things much more beyond his ken with which we were last engaged. Yet we must not expect to find in the Tao-tê Ching a treatise on Politics, or a discourse on the best form of

Lao-tzŭ’s notions on ethics are fortunately set forth with much more fulness than on any other department of knowledge, and in giving a brief account of them one is rather encumbered by the abundance of aphorisms than perplexed by their paucity. In saying this, however, I do not mean to intimate that the philosopher has elaborated a system of speculative or practical morality, or that he has given full and explicit statements about the moral sense and many other subjects familiar to the student

It is not unusual for foreigners no less than for Chinese to speak of Lao-tzŭ and Confucius as having lived on very bad terms with each other and as having been diametrically opposite in their teachings. One Chinese scholar who ought to have known much better sins very badly in this respect. The excellent little book of Mr. Edkins on the Religious Condition of the Chinese contains the following: “Contemporary with Confucius, there was an old man afterwards known as Laou-tsoo, who meditated in a

It would be a very interesting study to examine the points of similarity and difference in the writings of the early Buddhists and the teachings of Lao-tzŭ; but this cannot be attempted here. There is one circumstance, however, to which I shall allude, that is, the resemblance of the Buddhist Bodhisattva (Pʽusa) Mandjusri to Lao-tzŭ. The Nepaulese traditions about this Pʽusa also make him to be a foreigner and to have come to their country from China, though other accounts represent him as retur