west of that Eastern orbis terrarum, and welded all these states into one great despotic empire. Inflated by an insane pride which could not brook comparison with the mythic glories of the semi-fabulous hero-kings of antiquity, and irritated by the conservatism of the literati, who were to him what the French Legitimists were to Napoleon the First, he resolved to commit to the flames every memorial of the past, in order that the history of humanity might begin with his reign. The attempt failed. Literature was too widely spread, and the love of literature too deeply ingrained in the hearts of the people, for the efforts of a tyrant to exterminate it, even though the monster went to the length of burying alive four hundred and sixty learned men who resisted his decrees. But only those books which possessed the largest amount of inherent vitality could sustain so severe an assault. Among these was this work of Leih-tsze. This suggests to us a remark of some importance. Shih Hwang Te's very objectionable form of bibliomania was happily as exceptional in Chinese history as Khalif Omar's consignment of the library of the Ptolemies to heat the bath fires of Alexandria was in Western history. But apart from any special and extraordinary attacks upon literature, every generation saw multitudes of books perish in China, either through neglect, or in the catastrophes of fire, war, or civil commotion. That this particular book should have survived from the fourth century B.C. to the age of printing, of itself marks it out as worthy of attention. The preface of the earliest extant commentator, Chang Sham, who edited Leih-tsze in the fourth century A.D., gives an interesting glimpse at the process of natural selection which was always going on, preserving a few favoured volumes from the oblivion into which numbers of other works continually lapsed. Chang Sham tells us, "I have heard my father say that his father married a Miss Wong, one of three sisters. Mr. Wong belonged to an old literary family which had a passion for book-collecting, and had become possessed of a vast library. The other Misses Wong also married scholars, and the three young men vied with each other in transcribing rare books. When there ensued a time of confusion in the reign of the Emperor Wai (A.D. 310), he and one of his brothers-in-law fled southward, each one putting as many books as he could into his baggage-waggons. The road, however, was long, and frequent attacks of robbers diminished their load greatly; so he said to the other, 'We cannot save all the books, let us select the rarer ones to preserve them from extinction.' Among those which he himself chose for preservation were the writings of Leih-tsze."

The continued existence of an author through two thousand years o literary vicissitudes, the earlier millennium of which was especially fatal to literature, may not, perhaps, prove its superior fitness to survive, according to our estimate of fitness. But it indicates that the book was congenial to the tastes, and interested the minds, of its preservers. We have met with the complaint on the part of English readers of Chinese translations, that "they contain nothing new." It would be strange, indeed, if Chinese poetry, philosophy, or religion, should contain any ideas abso

lutely new to those who have inherited the wealth of Sanscrit and Semitic, of Greek and Roman literatures, with all their offspring of later date. The value of a work like this is not in the novelty of its contents, but in the light it throws upon the development of the human mind among a people entirely uninfluenced by our Western progress. We should find great light would be thrown upon many interesting but difficult questions in psychology if we could discriminate always between original and imitative thought. Much which seems to us the purely spontaneous operation of our minds is, no doubt, unconscious reproduction of what has been first put into them from outside. If, however, we could enter into communication with the inhabitants, supposing there to be such, of Venus, Jupiter, and other planets, and upon comparison of the respective conditions and developments of mind in each we should find that the same dominant ideas and principles had manifested and established them-selves in other planets as in our own, our conviction that these ideas and principles are not the artificial product of restless, baseless speculation, but the natural and necessary effect of the interaction between mind and the universe in which it works, would be greatly strengthened. The mutual comparison which is impossible for us with those star-dwelling neighbours of ours, we can obtain upon the surface of our own globe, whenever impassable mountain-ranges, and vast breadths of stormy ocean, have isolated any portion of mankind for a time sufficiently long to permit the independent evolution of thought, and its being recorded in literature. Whenever the time comes that science marks out our globe into distinct areas of independent mental evolution, China will occupy a prominent place, making one great division by itself, and affording in its ancient, vast, unbroken stream of literature the richest materials for comparison with the rest of the world. In this article we aim at nothing more than to give the reader a glimpse into the thoughts of an ancient thinker, some might say, dreamer rather, belonging to a long obsolete school of Chinese philosophy.

Conclusive proof of the mental isolation, and, therefore, independence of those old Chinese thinkers is derived from the extant literature itself. This does not militate against the theory that the black-haired race, which has almost obliterated the traces of earlier peoples in Eastern Asia, originally immigrated into the country, probably in successive waves separated by hundreds of years, from some part of Western Asia, taking its long pilgrimage across the sterile plateau of Thibet, and following the course of the Yellow River, until it founded its first permanent settlements on its banks about seven hundred miles from the sea. These immigrants may have brought with them the rudiments of writing, as they doubtless did bring many oral traditions, and habits of thought already formed, or in formation, before they bade a long farewell to the streams of humanity which tended south and west. Something, therefore, we must allow them as their original stock of mental furniture when they came into the land, at an unknown distant date, two, three, or more thousands of years

That which was strongest and most durable of this primitive floating stock of thought was crystallised in their most ancient books, called the Classics. We can see in these earliest national records that already, when they were first inscribed on the bamboo tablets, all memory of derivation from the West had died out of the minds of the people; and if a portion of their contents came into China from beyond the Western mountains, the earliest scribes had not the faintest sense of the fact. All Chinese literature after this, for about a thousand years, is beyond suspicion purely Chinese. Take our author for example; the whole known world to him extended only about three hundred miles east and west, and about half that distance north and south. All beyond this region was wrapt in Cimmerian darkness. On every hand a fringe of savage tribes surrounded the very limited area of civilisation, through which not the faintest rumour of what existed to the north and south had penetrated, while the ocean to the east was but dimly known by vague report, and the great mountain region to the west was the chosen abode of genii, deified men, and celestial spirits. Confucius, Laou-tsze, Leih-tsze, Yang-Choo, and all other leaders of thought in China for some centuries were either original thinkers, or were indebted to their own national literature only, not a trace of outside influence being discernible in their writings.

Leih-tsze is for us the name of a book rather than of a man. Unlike the great national hero Confucius, whose disciples Boswellized before Boswell, Leih-tsze's personality has left so faint an impression on his literary remains, that he has been taken by some Chinese critics for an imaginary personage. This incredulity we may comfortably waive aside on the high authority of the imperial catalogue of the reigning dynasty, which discusses the question temperately and fairly, and decides that there are no good grounds for doubting that there did live a man by name Leih Yu-kow, (or, as literature quotes him, Leih-tsze, the philosopher Leih, whose teachings were compiled into a book by his disciples, in the form in which we now have it, barring some errors and interpolations which have crept into the text. Beyond the bare fact of his existence in the kingdom of Ch'ing, nearly central among the feudal states, about four hundred years before the Christian era, we have only the most meagre information about him. Though a light of the age, a pupil of distinguished rabbis, and himself the revered master of a band of attached disciples, he was neglected by Government, and lived in obscurity and poverty. Once, indeed, he came into contact with the ruling powers, as the following anecdote shows:-" So poor was Leih-tsze, that he bore the traces of hunger in his emaciated frame. A travelling scholar drew the attention of the Prince of Ch'ing to this, saying, In your territory one of the leading teachers of the age lives in extreme poverty; is it because you, O prince, do not love learned men?' The prince immediately sent an officer to carry relief to Leih-tsze. Leih-tsze came out to receive the messenger, and with a double obeisance declined the gift. When he went inside again, his wife taunted him with the reproach, 'I was told

that a philosopher's wife and children were sure to be well off. Here we are all starving, and when the ruler sends us relief, you refuse it. This, no doubt, is an instance of the fate you are always preaching!' (Leih-tsze taught necessity and pooh-poohed free will. So his angry spouse seemed to have him on the hip.) But he quietly rejoined, 'The prince only sent his help in consequence of another man's report; he has no personal knowledge of me. Another day he will be listening to some one else's report, and finding me a criminal, that is why I declined the gift.' These philosophers were a proud, at least self-respecting, set, counting it shame to be pensioners on royal bounty, unless royalty respectfully received their admonitions. The narrative intimates that, in this case, Leih-tsze's independence of spirit saved his life during a revolution which succeeded.

We have a peep at the man inside the philosopher's cloak in this next incident. "Leih-tsze started for Tsai, went half-way, and returned. A friend asked, 'Why have you come back?' 'I was afraid,' he replied. 'What made you afraid?' 'On the road I stopped to get a meal at the sign of "The Ten Syrups," and they presented me with a grand dinner.' 'What was there in this to frighten you?' Truly it made me very uncomfortable. I thought that if my personal appearance won me such reverence from a poor innkeeper, how much more would it make an impression upon a monarch of ten thousand chariots, who would surely employ me in Government, and ascribe merit to me. On this account I was afraid.' 'Excellent,' replied his mentor, 'I see you know how to conduct yourself. You will come to honour.' The popularity from which the philosopher shrank, nevertheless, found him out and besieged him in the form of a numerous band of disciples, who showed their respect by taking off their shoes before entering his door. This, again, we are told, is an illustration of destiny. Leih-tsze was to be famous, and he became so, even against his will.

Though a few passing allusions give us all that we can glean of the personal individuality of Leih-tsze, this book, supplemented by other contemporary records, affords a very vivid picture of the state of society in which he moved. We are apt to think that times so far anterior to our own must still have retained lingering traces of primeval arcadian simplicity of thought and manners. But we are introduced by these pages to a highly artificial state of civilization, which felt itself removed by immense spaces of time from the youth of the world. Kings and nobles feasted in their halls, rode out in four-horse chariots to the chase or the battle; minstrels, jugglers, mechanicians crowded to their courts for employment and reward. Ladies sighed in the harems, or plotted with eunuchs to secure the advancement of their own children in place of the legitimate heir. Travelling statesmen and philosophers wandered from court to court with the latest recipe for establishing universal peace, and bringing mankind under one sway. Below them all was the great mass of the people engaged in trade, handicrafts, and the cultivation of the soil, but liable to be called upon for military service, and frequently

suffering the calamities of war. In this highly complex condition of society there were a few men who, instead of taking existence as they found it, laboured to discover its secret, or to amend its conditions. Some of these, by the fame of their learning or their wisdom, attracted disciples around them, and thus established informal schools, where the instruction was chiefly oral and by example, and in which keen debate upon the principles of philosophy and ethics was frequent. Among such self-constituted teachers Leih-tsze held a distinguished place, and to the admiration of his disciples we owe this record of his doctrines from which we will now present some specimens.

Mr. G. H. Lewes, after reviewing the history of philosophy from Thales to Kant and Hegel, considers that he has abundantly proved the barrenness of all metaphysics and the impossibility of ontology. These conclusions we do not venture to dispute. His numerous examples from Ancient Greece and Modern Europe might be paralleled by a third department in which the metaphysics of China should be exhibited, and India, of course, would add a crowded fourth. This agreement in prosecuting inquiries so inevitably barren seems to indicate an innate tendency in the human mind to ask these questions, unanswerable though they be. Granted that it is utterly impossible for man ever to extricate himself from the great stream of phenomena of which he is himself part, and to survey from the lofty altitude of absolute perception the realities of being, which here he knows only in its relations, will he ever learn to be contented in his necessary ignorance? A few thousands of generations more may perhaps evolve a human race which shall be incapable of curiosity about these profoundest speculations; and the man of the future, having thoroughly acquiesced in the hereditary conviction that truth is but the order of ideas corresponding to the order of phenomena, may have ceased even to scorn metaphysics as equivalent to inquiring about lunar politics, because the very memory that once such contemplations possessed irresistible fascination for the human mind shall have been long lost. If so, the future will be very unlike the past and the present, and for ourselves we acknowledge that the vista of human progress thus opening out before us does not seem attractive. Leih-tsze, however, lived in a metaphysical age, and in the very foreground of his philosophy we find abstruse speculations upon the nature of being in itself. A bare translation into English without explanatory notes would hardly be intelligible, but we may select a few sentences to show the style. "That which brings forth all things is not born; that which changes things is itself changeless. Spontaneously it lives, changes, takes form and colour, knows, is strong, decays and dies. Yet if you say that it lives and changes, has shape and hue, possesses knowledge and strength, is subject to decay and death, you err." Again: "There are living things and a cause of life; there is form, and a cause of form; there is sound and a cause of sound; there is colour and a cause of colour; there is flavour and a cause of flavour. That which life produces