the range of present vision. "Once on a journey he sat down with a group of his disciples to take a meal by the road-side. One of the company saw a skull, bleached with age, half hidden by the grass; he pulled the long grass aside and pointed to it. Leih-tsze said to his disciple Pak-fung, Only he and I know, and are independent of life and death.'' But his utterances on this are indistinct, and rather point to an absorption into an infinite substance than continued conscious individuality. "The living, according to nature, must end. The pure spirit-essence is Heaven's part, the bodily framework is Earth's part. When the spiritessence leaves the form, both return to their true state. From birth to death man has four great changes, childhood, youth, old age, and death. In childhood his physical nature is simple, and his will is not divided, which is the perfection of harmony. External things cannot injure him, and his virtue is complete. In manhood his passions change like the wind and overflow like a flood. His desires and anxieties arise in abundance. External things fight against him, therefore his virtue declines. In old age his desires and anxieties become feeble, and his body is near its rest. External things do not occupy the first place. Although it does not reach the completeness of childhood, it is superior to middle age. In death he attains to rest, and returns to its extreme limit." The Taouist philosophers are never tired of aiming a blow at Confucianism, and thus the great sage is made to figure sometimes in ridiculous situations. In the next extracts there is probably a covert attack on the melancholy which overshadowed the life of Confucius, and wrapt his end in gloom. "Confucius roaming about the Tai mountain, saw Wing K'ai Ki walking in the fields, dressed in a deer-hide, with a bit of rope for his girdle, striking his guitar and singing. He asked him, Sir, what makes you so joyful?' K'ai Ki replied, 'I have many reasons for joy. Of all things Heaven has made, human beings are most noble, and I have been made a human being; that is one reason for joy. Men are more honourable than women, and I was made a man; this is a second cause for joy. Some men are born and die before they are out of the nurse's arms, but I have gone along for ninety years; that is a third cause for joy. Scholars are always poor, and death is the end of man. Why should I regret being as others and coming to my end?' Confucius exclaimed, 'Capital! you know how to be magnanimous.' Another of these refreshingly contented spirits meets us in the following:-"Lam Lü, when a hundred years old, was gleaning in his patrimonial fields, clad only in a sheepskin, and he sang as he went along. Confucius saw him from a distance, and said to his disciples, That old man is worth speaking to, go and question him.' Tsze Kung requested leave to go. Encountering him on a hillock, he looked him in the face, sighed, and said, 'Sir, have you not yet any regrets that you go on singing as you glean?' Lam Lü neither stopped walking nor singing. Tsze Kung kept on asking, until he looked up, and replied, 'What should I regret?' Tsze Kung said, 'In youth you failed in diligence, in manhood you did not struggle with the times,

now you are old you have neither wife nor child; death's appointed day is near; what occasions for joy can you have that you should sing as you glean ? ' Lam Lü smiled and said, 'All men share in my causes for joy; but they, on the contrary, take them for sorrows; because when I was young I did not work hard, and in my manhood I did not struggle with the times, therefore I have attained to this green old age. Now I am old, because I have neither wife nor child, and death's appointed day is near, therefore I rejoice like this.' Tsze Kung replied, 'It is natural to man to love long life and to dislike death ; how is it that you take death to be a cause for joy?' Lam Lü said, 'Death and life are but a going forth and a returning, therefore when I die here, how do I know that I shall not live there? And how do I know that planning and craving for life is not a mistake? Also, how know I that for me to die now is not better than all my previous life?' Tsze Kung heard, but did not understand what he meant; so he went back and told the Master. The Master said, 'I knew he was worth speaking to, and so it has proved. But though he has got hold of the thing, he has not got to the bottom of it.''

Live without care, die without fear; such was our author's philosophy of life. When we compare his ethical teaching with that of his great predecessor Laou-tsze, five or six generations before, we are struck with the marked degeneracy of his moral tone. In his Taou Teh King, the founder of the Taouist sect, despite his sphinx-like style, impresses us with a sense of his profound moral earnestness. Though Laou-tsze dissented altogether from the Confucian system, nevertheless we see in him an eager yearning for perfection, a pensive sadness in the contemplation of human follies and crimes, a positive inculcation of personal virtue, which draw out our hearts towards "the old philosopher." Confucius was the stern practical reformer like Calvin, whom we rather admire than love; while Laou-tsze possesses the attractive power of the mystic Tauler. It would be utterly unjust to attribute to the founder of Taouism the moral aberrations of his successors, even though we can detect in his teachings the germ of the subsequent evil development. For if we can detect it, he could not, and we cannot doubt that his devotion to virtue was as sincere as his conception of it was beautiful. If called upon to express the guiding principle of his moral teachings by one word, we shall not be exalting it above its intrinsic merits by choosing that noblest of words, self-abnegation. Not that he in the dim light of heathenism could see all that that word now implies to us in the clear light of our Christianity. The passive side of self-abnegation was more evident to him than the active. But amid the confused noises of a distracted world, the shock of battles, the intrigues of courts, the restless contentions for honour and advancement of the officials and scholars, the fierce pursuit of wealth by the merchants and artizans, Laou-tsze distinctly heard a still small voice, summoning him, and through him mankind, to the calm serenity of a life freed from selfish desires, devoid of covetousness, envy, and ambiVOL. XXX, No. 175. 4.

tion, strong in acknowledged weakness, and victorious over pride and violence by the might of meekness and humility. To him the type of perfect goodness was water; "water which is good to benefit all things, while it does not strive, but runs to the place which all men disdain.” The defects of his conception are manifest to us, though while yet untested by experience he may well have failed to perceive them. He disliked political reformers, because in them self-exaltation mingled with their desire to reform the world. He disliked preachers of morality, because their labours were an indication of, in a sense, the result of, the loss of morality. He disliked an artificial state of society, because it abounded in temptations to pride, covetousness, and deceit. This antagonism to effort, led him into the extreme of depreciating even effort for self-improvement. He appeared to entertain a vague hope that if men would only let themselves alone, strive for nothing, not even for goodness, the great Taou, that ineffable, inexplicable something, too mysterious to have even a name, would itself flow through the channels of the human heart, and bear the life along in the right direction. With all this exaggeration of his favourite precept" do nothing," his own personal attachment to virtue was sincere and supreme; and doubtless, while he continued to influence his own philosophy, this loyalty to virtue endured among his followers.

Leih-tsze lived near two centuries later, and in his teachings the earnest moral purpose of Taouism has given place to a licentious indifferentism. Here and there, indeed, we come across some lingering echoes of the traditional admiration for meekness and humility, but for the most part the philosopher is so lost in contemplation of the mystery of existence that he has not a spare thought left for these particular phenomena, virtue and vice. He is much more interested in the question whether man may not, by the power of abstract contemplation, penetrate into the secret of existence, and gain a superhuman control over natural forces. He still holds theoretically that the riches, power, and fame of the world are all delusive appearances, and that to be free from appetites, and passions, and self-assertion, is "the path;" but he has ceased to entertain the slightest hope that out of this doctrine will ever come a moral renovation of the world. Indeed, he suspects now that the distinctions of virtue and vice are themselves but delusive imaginations, as much as the pomps and vanities of life which his leader eschewed. One can hardly read the following specimens of his teaching without a shudder of disgust :— "Tsze Ch'an became Prime Minister of Ch'ing, and had sole authority in the Government. Within three years he brought the whole kingdom into a state of order. The good gladly submitted to his sway, and the bad obeyed his laws from fear. But his own brothers, Ch'iu and Muk, were addicted to vicious pleasures; Ch'iu loved wine, and Muk loved women. A thousand jars of wine stood in Ch'iu's cellar, and heaps of grain in his barns. When one passed his door at the distance of a hundred paces, the smell of distillation filled the nostrils. In his drink* A disciple of Confucius, and one of his personal attendants.

*

ing bouts Ch'iu forgot politics and morals, riches and poverty, friends and relatives, care of life and fear of death. Although the house were on fire, or swords clashing in his very face, he would know nothing about it. In Muk's harem were scores of concubines, selected for their youth and beauty; and at times he would shut himself in the inner apartments for three months together, not at home to his nearest relative or dearest friend. His emissaries haunted the whole country-side in search for lovely maidens, whom gold might tempt to enter his harem. Tsze Ch'an grieved over his brothers' ill-conduct night and day, and at last secretly consulted Tang Sik about it. 'I have heard,' said he, that a man must first of all regulate himself, next his family, and then the kingdom, proceeding from the near to the distant. Now I have brought the kingdom under government, but my own family is disorderly; this is contrary to "the path." Tell me, I pray you, how I may save my brothers.' Tang Sik replied, 'I have been wondering at it for a long time, but was afraid to speak about it. Why, sir, do you not find some opportunity of instructing them in the importance of following one's (moral) nature, and according with (Heaven's) decree, and also of alluring them by setting' before them the high esteem which attends upon the practice of propriety and righteousness?'

"Tsze Ch'an took Tang Sik's advice, and went to visit his brothers; and began his instructions by saying, 'Man's superiority to the brutes consists in intelligence and forethought. Intelligence and forethought produce the rules of propriety and righteousness. Propriety and righteousness lead to fame and office. If you act upon the incentives of your passions, and abandon yourselves to wine and lust, you imperil your own lives. Listen to a brother's words, and if you repent in the morning, before night you shall receive a government appointment.' Ch'iu and Muk replied, Long ago we attained to knowledge, and made our choice; do you suppose we waited for you to come and teach us before we could understand? Life is not easy to get, but death comes of itself. Who would think of wasting a life so hard to get, by spending it in watching for a death which comes so easily? And as to caring for proprieties and righteousness, in order that we may brag over others, and doing violence to our own natures, in order to win an empty name, in our view this would be worse than death itself. All we wish is to exhaust the joys of life, and seize the pleasure of the present moment. Our only grief is that our physical capacity for pleasure is so small, we have no leisure to sorrow over loss of reputation or danger to life. If you are so puffed up by your political success, as to think of leading our minds astray by the seductions of glory and official salary, we think it mean of you and pitiable. Now we will tell you the difference. External government, however clever, is not certain of success, and inflicts suffering upon people. Internal government never leads to disorder, and men joyfully conform to nature. Your external government barely gets a temporary success in one small kingdom, and after all does not accord with the hearts of the people. Our

internal government may be applied to the whole world, and then kings and statesmen will have no more to do. We have long been wishing to teach you our doctrine, and do you on the contrary bring your doctrine to teach us!' Tsze Ch'an was dumfoundered, and departed without a word. Next day he reported the interview to Tang Sik. Tang Sik said, 'You, sir, have been living with perfect sages, and you did not know it. will say that you are wise? The good order of the kingdom is an accidental circumstance, not to be imputed as merit to you.'"

This licentious creed was the deliberate choice of Taouism; though of course Taouists used to the full our grand human liberty of inconsistency, and by no means carried out their principle either to its full logical or practical consequences. Still it remains a fact, that for a space, if only a brief space, philosophy in China rejected morality, and exalted licentiousness to the dignity of a religion. As a natural result Taouism rapidly degenerated, and at the same time lost its hold upon the people. If in their lifetime Laou-tsze held his banner of spontaneity bravely aloft, and Confucius waged a desperate but hardly equal strife under the standard of rigid self-discipline, the two teachers were in their hearts fighting on the same side, to reclaim a lost world to truth and virtue. But while the Confucianists remained staunch to this double object of pursuit, truth and virtue, the Taouists thought they perceived an inconsistency between them, and chose truth rather than virtue. The complete victory of Confucianism along the whole line is a fact worthy of our consideration. Confucius was the prophet of conscience, not only grasping tenaciously the truth of the moral supremacy of conscience, but believing most devoutly in its divine origin, and his own divine mission to defend its rights, and also that there could not be salvation for humanity except in obedience to its behests. In his lifetime he fought an Ishmaelitish conflict, a guerilla warfare for his sacred faith. Every man's hand seemed against him, and it was as much as he could do to live with his principles, though the life of a wanderer from one city to another, from one kingdom to another people. After his death his disciples fought for his truth like soldiers combating desperately over the corpse of their dead leader, and still for generations the battle seemed to hang in the balance. But at last the victory was achieved, and it was final and glorious. Conscience proved its own supremacy, by putting these doctrines of natural licence to disgraceful rout. Now, and for these thousand years and more, that bewildering attempt of Leih-tsze's to confuse the distinctions between right and wrong has seemed as strange and unnatural to the Chinese mind as it seems to our own. The sect continued, but as a small minority of the nation, a minority given over to idolatry, superstitious arts, magic, alchemy, the philosopher's stone, and the elixir of life. But the name of Taou has never lost its potency in China, and for centuries it has been united with Confucianism and Buddhism as a member of the trinity of philosophies. At the parting of the ways, where the doctrine of nature and spontaneous life diverged from the doctrine of virtue and stern self