THE CHINA REVIEW.
THE REMAINS OF LAO TZU.
RE-TRANSLATED.
Six centuries before the birth of Christ,
there lived a man whose name is even now
almost as familiar to the lips of the Chinese
people as that of Confucius himself.
The two great teachers above-mentioned
were indeed to some extent contemporaries.
Confucius was still a young man when Lao
Tzu, or the Old Philosopher, was in his
dotage. They are said to have met; and
Confucius is said to have come off second
best. But we really know next to nothing
about Lao Tzu, except that he lived, and
thought, and taught. He taught mankind
THE WAY; and he is alleged to have written
a book. And we are said to possess that
book now.
Confucius, in the canonical record of his
life and teachings, never once alludes either
to Lao Tzu or to his book.
Tso-ch'iu Ming, who wrote the famous
commentary upon Confucius' Annals of his
native State, and who was probably an im-
mediate disciple of the Sage, never men-
tions either Lao Tzu or his book.
Mencius, born one hundred years after
the death of Confucius, preserves a like
silence both as to the Old Philosopher and
as to his book.
Chuang Tzu, of the fourth century B.C.,
is the first great authority upon the doc-
trines which Lao Tzu taught. He produced
a work, illustrating the WAY of his great
master, so rich in thought and so brilliant
from a literary point of view, that, although
Lao Tzu's doctrines have long since been
condemned, the work of the disciple re-
mains, a storehouse of current quotation
and a model of composition, for all time.
To express what he meant by the WAT,
Lao Tzu had adopted the common Chinese
term for a road, viz.: Tao, He was, how-
ever, careful to explain that the eternal
WAY was not the way which could be walk-
ed upon. Hence the modern term Taoism,
so constantly occurring in works dealing
with the religions of China. This by the
way.
Chuang Tzu gives numerous conversa-
tional illustrations of Lao Tzu's teachings;
also several of his wholesome and pithy say-
ings. But he never mentions a book.
In the third century B.C. we have two
more well-known writers of this Taoist
school,—Hsun Tzu and Han Fei Tzu. The
latter devotes the best part of two whole
sections to ' explanations of Lao Tzu' and
232 THE CHINA REVIEW.
' Illustrations of Lao Tzu'; and, in two
places, writes as though he were consulting
a written document.
In the second century before Christ lived
another famous philosopher of the same
school,—Huai Nan Tzu. He devotes one
long section of his work to illustrating the
doctrines of Lao Tzu, borrowing largely—
his best illustrations—from. Chuang Tzu.
He never mentions a book.
Closely following in chronological order,
we have Ssu-ma Ch'ien, the most famous of
all China's historians. In his brief memoir
of Lao Tzu he mentions ' a book in 5,000
and odd characters'; but he mentions it in
such a way as to make it clear beyond all
doubt that he himself had never set eyes
upon the work, to say nothing of a some-
what supernatural hue with which the rest
of his account is tinged. Had this book
been in existence at the date at which Ssu-
ma Ch'ien wrote his immortal history, it is
difficult to believe that such a man would
not have made some effort to see it. But in
or about the year 212 B.C. the ' Burning of
the Books' had been perpetrated by the
' First Emperor'; and according to all ac-
counts the bulk of existing Chinese litera-
ture had been swept off the face of the
earth. My personal conviction is that this
catastrophe has been much exaggerated.
Still, in such a calculation as the present
one, it is a factor which cannot be omitted.
Several hundred years later, it is impos-
sible to say exactly when, after an ominous
interval of silence, Lao Tzu's work was
'discovered.' This may have occurred to-
wards the close of the Han dynasty, about
A.D. 200. There was then a grand literary
renaissance in China, and the Han scholars
showed themselves by no means backward
in ' discovering' lost works. But upon this
point we are left very much to our own
resources. • Chinese scholars, properly so
called, have never been divided as to the
authenticity of this work. With the rarest
exceptions, they have neve* given the
necessary attention to the subject, simply
because for them little or no interest would
attach to the result. The triumph of Con-
fucianism condemned Lao Tzu for ever to
shallows, as a heterodox thinker; and the
value or authenticity of a heterodox text
became not worth the trouble of an argu-
ment. The work in question has indeed
been edited and re-edited, even by Em-
perors. But the masses of the Chinese
people at the present day have never seen
it; 'while of their modern scholars, few know
anything either about Lao Tzu's teachings or
about the work of which he is the putative
author. At certain periods in Chinese his-
tory, a corrupt superstition, usurping the
name and the attributes of the pure doctrine
which Lao Tzu .taught, held temporary
sway over feeble minds engaged in alche-
mistic research or in compounding the
Elixir of Life. And the name still sur-
vives, in the further debased Taoism of to-
day, which divides with Buddhism the
scanty religious sympathies of the Chinese
people.
As to the book, with the meaning and
authenticity of which we are now chiefly
concerned, it is said to have been origin-
ally known as 'Lao Tzu.' At a later
period it was dubbed a Ching or canonical
text, the term by which we speak with
equal correctness of the canonical books
of Confucianism or of the various Buddhist
Sutras. Under the T'ang dynasty it was
formally christened ' The Canon of the WAy
and of the Virtue thereof,'—in Chinese, the
Tao Te Ching,
So "matters stood in China about sixty
years ago, when the work of Lao Tzu may
almost be said to have been discovered
again. This time the discoverer was a Eu-
ropean, M. Abel-Re'musat, who produced a
memoir on the life and writings of Lao Tzu,
by which he succeeded in creating a con-
siderable sensation among Oriental scholars
in the West. 'Le livre de Lao Tzu,' said
M. Abel-Remusat,' n'est pas facile a enten-
dre.' This remark was quite enough for
Stanislas Julien, who sighed only for texts
 THE REMAINS OF LAO TZU.
to conquer. He set to work, and in 1842
published a full translation; together with
copious notes, appendices, observations, in-
troduction etc. etc.,—in all, a most scholar-
ly volume.
In 1868, the Rev. J. Chalmers published
an English version, entitled ' The Specula-
tions on Metaphysics, Polity, and Morality,
of the Old Philosopher, Lao Tzu.' The au-
thor admits in his introduction that the
French translation of Julien was ' very help-
ful ' to him, and says that he has no wish
or intention to supersede Julien's more ela-
borate work. Now I make Mr. Chalmers'
version to be more or less a verbatim ren-
dering of the French, with little original
touches here and there, about seven-tenths
of which are unsuccessful. But of this,
readers can judge for themselves.
Mr. Watters, then a Junior Assistant in
H.B.M.'s Consular Service, followed in 1870
with a cleverly written monograph on Lao
Tzu and his teachings. He also borrowed
from Julien; and, like Mr. Chalmers, bor-
rowed Julien's mistakes. But Mr. Watters
was a very young sinologue in 1870, and
his work was on the whole a highly credita-
ble performance. It contains however one
curious blunder, copied from Julien, which
seems to be in a fair way of being perpetu-
ated, since Mr. Wylie has got it on p. 173
of his Notes on Chinese Literature, These
writers all speak of an edition of the Tao
Te Ching by the poet Su Tung-p'o, with
notes. Julien (p. XLII. ) confounded Su Tung-
p'o with his brother Su Tzu-yu, the author
of the work in question.
Two more full translations were publish-
ed in Germany in 1870; one by von Planck-
ner, and one by von Strauss. Dr. Legge,
in the British Quarterly Review for July
1883, says that von Planckner's 'slender ac-
quaintance with Chinese by no means fitted
him for such a task,' and that von Strauss'
knowledge of Chinese, though not equal to
Julien's, is yet very considerable.' I have
seen neither translation; but I am quite
content to accept Dr. Legge's opinion as
233
final. As I aim at showing that Julien's
version is almost wholly indefensible, I do
not anticipate much light from a sinologue
whom Dr. Legge has gauged as above.
With reference to the article in the British
Quarterly Review, which I have only seen,
within the last few months, I shall have
some sufficiently grave charges to prefer
against its author in the matter of transla-
tion. Meanwhile, I shall content myself
with quoting two rather remarkable pas-
sages from its pages. They range the learn-
ed doctor among my adversaries,—where
indeed I expect to find most of the older
sinologues; but I do not despair of ultimate-
ly gaining his approval:—
1
< But Lao Tzu did write and leave behind
him the Tao Te Ching. It is this which
makes him an object of interest to thought-
ful men even at this distance of time. . . .
All may not think of the Treatise so highly
as some do, but all must cherish it as *n/t*
I; lot.'
* While Lao Tzu was neither Atheist nor
Agnostic, his way of looking at nature was
that of an Evolutionist. If we make al-
lowance for the very different conditions of
science and philosophy in the sixth century
before our Christian era and the nineteenth
of its course, we must pronounce that his
.type of mind was very much akin to that of
. Charles Darwin.'
But what I shall have to pronounce is this:
that we must first understand a man's ut-
terances before we can classify him under
his proper school,
In 1885, Mr, Balfour ' after some years of
hesitation' came forward with another Eng-
lish version of the Tao Te Ching, He did
so because he found ' that one prime defect
lies at the root of every translation that has
been published hitherto; and this is, that
not one seems to have been based solely and
entirely on commentaries furnished by mem-
bers of the Taoist school.'
To remedy this defect, Mr. Balfour takes
as his standard a commentary not less spuri-
* ous than it is ridiculous nor less ridiculous
234 THE CHINA REVIEW.
than it is spurious, attributed to a Taoist
'patriarch' who flourished in the eighth
century, devoted most of his time to alchemy
and magic in general, until at length he
acquired immortal life and spent a few cen-
turies in ridding the world of dragons, after
which he was very properly made a god.
It has in fact much the same exegetical value
as would be enjoyed among ourselves by a
commentary on the fourth Gospel from Ma-
dame Blavatsky or Prester John. That this
work explains the Tao Te Ching in a sense
different from the accepted explanations, is
beyond all doubt; but this result is achieved
at a sacrifice not only of grammar or logic,
but also of whatever else would make the
Tao Te Ching valuable in the eyes of a sane
public. And if it was so necessary to have
a bona fide Taoist commentator, in which I
perfectly agree, why not take one of those
more distinguished and less doubtful au-
thorities who flourished some ten centuries
nearer to the age of Lao Tzu himself?
However, Mr. Balfour says plainly that
' he felt he was after all under the gui-
dance of a disciple, and not a critic, or
the master,' and ' cannot help thinking that
we have advanced a step towards the com-
prehension of the true significance of pass-
ages which before stood out distinctly
enough but are now dimmed by mysticism.'
This seems to me to be a singular recipe for
the interpretation of an ancient text. Yon
first get the meaning to stand out distinctly,
and then dim it with mysticism.
I have already had occasion, in the Chi-
nese Recorder, to protest against this com-
mentary which passes under the hand and
seal of Lu Tsu. I was noticing Mr. Bal-
four's new rendering of the Tao Te Ching,
which had just appeared; and at the same
time I ventured to point out that Mr.
Chalmers' translation was by no means free
from blemish. Mr. Chalmers, who is poe-
tically inclined, and therefore of a genus
irritabile, was apparently not satisfied
with what I wrote. He answered angrily,
but (as is usual in such cases) without. .
touching the point at issue; and he threw
down a gauntlet which it gives me great
pleasure to take up,—I trust for a friendly
if animated enquiry into the merits of the
Tao Te Ching.
Let us first recapitulate, and state the
position more fully.
Lao Tzu, lived six hundred years before
Christ. He is said to have written a book.
We are said to have that book now.
Mr. Wylie (op. cit. p. 173) says that the
Tao Te Ching 'is known to be-truly the
production of Lao Tzu.'
Mr. Faber (China Review, XIII, 241)
says that 'there is little room left for
doubts regarding the authenticity of our
Canon.'
Dr. Legge says (op. cit. p. 9), ' We know
that Lao Tzu wrote the Tao Te Ching,' and
p. II, ' The Tao Te Ching is a genuine rellc
of one of the most original minds of the
Chinese race, putting his thoughts on re-
cord 2400 years ago.'
These are foemen with whom it is well
worth while to break an idle lance. The
united testimony of three such scholars
might indeed be considered overpowering,
but that
John P.
Robinson, he
Said they didn't know everything down in
Judee—and possibly the same may be true
of the school to which these authorities be-
long.
Omitting further mention of Confucius,
Mencius, and Tso-ch'iu Ming, it must be
carefully borne in mind that Chuang Tzu,
the greatest Taoist writer of all ages, who
flourished in the fourth century B.C., never
alludes to any book from the hand of Lao
Tzu. He quotes sayings by Lao Tzu which
we now find in the Tao Te Ching; but the
wording is not the same. Other sayings
which occur in the Tao Te Ching as utter-
ances of Lao Tzu, are stated by Chuang
Tzu to have fallen from the lips of the
Yellow Emperor (B.C. 2697). Other say-
ings which we also find now in the Tao Te
 THE REMAINS OF LAO TZU.
Ching, he puts into Lao Tzu's mouth as
quotations from somebody else.
Han Fei Tzu, of the 3rd century B.C.,
quotes many sayings of Lao Tzu which are
found in the Tao Te Ching. That is, they
are meant for the same; but the wording is
different. Many of Han Fei Tzu's quota-
tions, however, make sense where the cor-
responding sentences in the Tao Te Ching
make nonsense. Han Fei Tzu also gives
quotations which are nowhere to be found
in the Tao Te Ching. Twice he mentions
'a book.' Without descending to special
pleading, this may well have been some
book dealing with the teachings of Lao
Tzu. If it must be the Tao Te Ching at all
costs, then we are upon the other horn of
dilemma,—it contained sayings of Lao Tzu
which are not in the modern Tao Te Ching,
and many other intelligible sayings which
now are unintelligible. The conclusion is
obvious.
I have not before remarked that at some
time or other the modern Tao Te Ching was
divided into chapters. Now Han Fei Tzu
observes no sequence in his two sections on
Lao Tzu. He begins with ch. xxxviii, and
continues with chs. xii, lviii, lix, Ix, xlvi,
xiv, and then with ch. i, and so on. He
further takes part of one chapter and mixes
it up with part of another; but not incon-
gruously. The incongruity is rather to be
found in the positions which such parts of
clauses now occupy in the Tao Te Ching.
Lastly, phrases are now found in the Tao
Te Ching which are part and parcel of Han
Fei Tzu's own commentary !
Of Huai Nan Tzu, who lived in the second
century B.C., the same may be said, except
that he never mentions a book. He not only
gives sayings which are not in the modern
Tao Te Ching, but his correct quotation of
other sayings often enables us to understand
the otherwise unintelligible Canon. His
commentary has also been drawn upon by
the pious artificer of the latter work.
Ssu-ma Ch'ien, the historian, who wrote
about a century before Christ, mentions a
235
work attributed to Lao Tzu. He never saw
it himself; but we may rest assured that he
would have done so had it been in existence
at the time at which he lived.
Finally, the Tao Te Ching is not without
internal evidence of the forger's bungling
art. It contains many repetitions, which
would be hardly likely to find a place in a
limited work of the kind. Several times
Lao Tzu, its reputed author, is made to quote
' Sages of old'; and in one notable instance
the keynote to all Taoism, with which Lao
Tzu himself is usually credited, is treated
by him as the utterance of some earlier
prophet:—
I do nothing, and my people become good
of their own accord.
Lastly, the modern Tao Te Ching contains
characters not to be found in the Shuo
Wen,—a dictionary supposed to embrace all
Chinese characters in use at or about the
time of the Christian era. The question
then is not—' Did Lao Tzu write a book' ?
—though considering what Chuang Tzu
says of books in his ^ $| (ad fin.), I
should be inclined to answer even that in
the negative. The question is—'Did Lao
Tzu write the work now known as the Tao
Te Ching?'
I answer, for myself, with a most un-
qualified negative. The work in question is
beyond all doubt a forgery. It contains
indeed much that Lao Tzu did say, but more
that he did not. What he did say, as found
therein, has been mostly mistranslated. The
meaning of what he did not say, if meaning
there be, may be safely relegated to the
category of things unknown.
CHAPTER I.
Han Fei Tzu, who wrote in the 3rd cen-
tury B.C., tells us that matter which is
subject to structural changes cannot be re-
garded as eternal. It came into being with
Heaven and Earth; and with Heaven and
23G THE CHINA REVIEW.
Earth it will pass away. The eternal is
unconditioned. Therefore Lao Tzu said
The way which can be walked upon is not
the eternal WAY.
Huai Nan Tzu, who wrote in the second
century B.C., supplies the following illustra-
tion, stolen from Chuang Tzu without ac-
knowledgement : —
Duke Huan was one day reading, when a
wheelwright, who happened to be working
near by, flung down his hammer and chisel
and cried out, ' what book is your Highness
studying ? ' ' I am studying the works of
the Sages,' replied the Duke. 'Where are
the writers to be found ? ' asked the wheel- ,
wright. 'They are dead,' said the Duke.
'Then what you have got is only their
dregs,' retorted the wheelwright. At this
the Duke was very angry, and said ' Sirrah,
what business is it of yours what I read ?
Explain yourself, or you shall die!' 'I
will,' replied the wheelwright. 'Suppose
I am making a wheel. If I strike too fast,
I can't fit the spokes in ; if too slowly, I
can't make them firm. There is a medium
which produces perfect results; but this
medium I can't teach to my son, and he
can't learn it from me. When he is seventy
years of age, as I am, he will be able to
make a wheel as well as I. So with the Sages.
They spoke, and the Truth was in their
hearts ; but they are dead and gone, and
only their dregs remain.'
Therefore, says Huai Nan Tzu, Lao Tzu
said
The way which can be walked upon is not the
eternal WAY; the name which can be
uttered is not its eternal NAME.
It will be noticed that only the first clause
is quoted by Han Fei Tzu, and that his text
is not the actual text of the Tao Te Ching.
The insertion of a £ might be of itself
trifling, though here it helps to clinch my
translation; but it will be seen later on that
grave textual difficulties are involved in the
theory that the modern Tao Te Ching was
the work from which the various commenta-
tors made their quotations. Disciples, deal-
ing with extracts from the written Gospel
of a revered master, would hardly like to
misquote to the extent they must have done
if Lao Tzu wrote the Tao Te Ching.
It is also curious that neither of the above
commentators treat the above saying as if it
were an opening sentence of a work. Both
of them mention it at random, as they both
do all their quotations, jumping from one
part to another and back again, as if any
prescribed sequence of clauses was qnite
unknown to them. Every sentence is al-
ways a 'saying' ^ -^ 0 : we very
rarely hear of a ' book.'
Of this famous ' saying,' Mr, Chalmers
gave the following rendering:—
'The tau (reason) which can be tau-ed.
(reasoned) is not the Eternal Tau (Reason).
The name which can be named is not the
Eternal Name.'
It would be wasting the reader's time to
show by elaborate proof that Tao has no-
thing to do with 'reasons' In these later
days, Mr. Chalmen would perhaps be the
first to admit the fact. But it would be
unjust to Julien, of whose translation Mr.
Chalmers' is for the most a mere English
version, not to mention that the French
sinologue had already come nearer the mark
with 'La voie qui pent etre exprime'e par
la parole n'est pas la voie eternelle.'
Mr. Balfour, on Lu Tsu's authority, pro-
vides the following alternative:—
1
The Tao, or Principle of Nature, may be
discussed [by all]; it is not the popular or
common Tao— [e.g., the tao-li of ethics,
dealing with the jfljfljft and the jE^.]
' Its Name may be named, [i.e. the Tao
may receive a designation, though of itself
it hag none]; but it is not an ordinary name,
[or name in the usual sense of the word,
for it is a presentment or n3»«x»» of the In-
finite].'
Such stuff as this has not imposed upon
the Chinese. Even were not Lu Tsu's com-
 THE REMAINS OF LAO TZU.
mentary known to be a spurious work, its
manifold absurdities, as will be shown here-
after, would place it beyond the pale of
serious criticism.
Dr. Legge (British Quarterly Review, July
1883) has given the true meaning:—
' The Course (Tao) that can be trodden is
not the enduring and unchanging Course.
The name that can be named is not the
enduring and unchanging name.'
But Dr. Legge goes on to translate the
rest of this chapter; and there we must part
company. For in my opinion it forms no
part of the pure teaching of Lao Tzu, but is,
in common with the bulk of the Tao Te
Ching, the invention of a later age.
CHATPER II,
This chapter of the Tao Te Ching opens as
follows :
Julien translated,— ' Dans le monde, lors-
que tous les hommes ont su appre'cier la
beaute (morale), alors la laideur (du vice) a
paru. Lorsque tous les hommes ont su ap-
pre"cier le bien, alors le mal a paru.'
It always seems unfair to criticise the
writings of Julien. He worked under most
disadvantageous conditions ; yet he achieved
results which put many of us to shame.
Besides, he is dead, and cannot defend him-
self as he was once able to do. Therefore,
only casual allusions will be made, from this
point, to his version of the Tao Te Ching ;
unless perchance it may be to note an occa-
sional triumph over the text.
Mr. Chalmers :—' When in the world beau-
ty is recognised to be beautiful, straightway
there is ugliness. When in the world good-
ness is recognised to be good, straightway
there is evil.'
237
This is at any rate intelligible; but it
disposes of the various characters in a most
arbitrary and perfectly unlawful way. Mr.
Balfour reproduces its tenor in other, and
not improved, language.
Now Huai Nan Tzu tells us that Lao Tzu
alx {ft. He omits the afjg clause altoge-
ther ; or rather, he does not record it. And
as that particular clause is not only not
recorded by Huai Nan Tzu, but palpably
weak in itself, we may safely consign it
without further ado to the region of pious
fraud. Lao Tzu's sentiment was simply
this:—
All the world knows that the goodness of
doing good is not (real) goodness.
Goodness is an abstraction, and cannot be
translated into speech ; hence, Lao Tzu goes
on to say, 9# ^3 ^ 5§ ff ^ ^ £»
those who understand it do nut speak about it,
those who speak about it do not understand it.
These last eight characters occur in the
Tao Te Ching at the beginning of ch. Ivi
(q.v.), where they stand without rhyme or
reason, having no connection either with
what follows or with what precedes. They .
seem to have constituted almost a formula
of ancient Taoism. They are quoted by
Chuang Tzu H", who, in another place
the Yellow Emperor (see ch. vi) who flourished
more than 2,000 years before Lao Tzu him-
self. And he adds to them a few characters
which we now find in ch. ii : —
Therefore the Sage follows a doctrine which
does not fold expression in words.
It is quite possible that Lao Tzu may have
enunciated this Doctrine of Silence in these
terms, though it is passing strange that his
greatest disciple should place the phrase in
the mouth of a mythical being who had
then been dead over two thousand years.
The term occurs again in ch, xliii.
238 THE CHINA REVIEW.
The chapter ends with the following
sentence, quoted by Huai Nan Tzu : —
When merit has been achieved, do not take
it to yourself ; for if you do not take it to
yourself, it shall never be taken from you.
Compare phrase in ch. Ixxvii.
CHAPTER III.
This chapter begins with two feeble at-
tempts at paradox. They are both base
imitations of the famous paradox of Lao Tzu,
which will be dealt with in its place (ch. xix),
and are here mentioned merely because the
second contains certain words belonging to
an unquestionably genuine apophthegm (ch.
lxiv). They are followed by
Not to look upon what one may covet, is the
way to keep the heart from disorder.
This is quoted by Huai Nan Tzu as a say-
ing of Lao Tzu. It offers but little scope
for mistranslation. The rest of the chapter
is gloss, or commentary, or anything rather
than the pithy utterances of Lao Tzu.
JT^ feflr *S occurs in ch. Ixiv, where it will
be discussed later on; and the last seven
characters seem to be a ' damnable iteration,'
in a degraded form, of a saying or part of a
saying which ought to be in chapter xxxviii,
but is not.
CHAPTER IV.
According to Huai Nan Tzu, Lao Tzu said
The Tao Te Ching turns this into
out of which Mr. Chalmers has extracted, —
1 lieve to be gloss, we come to
Tau is empty ; in operation exhaustless.'
Mr. Balfour has— 'The Tao is full
exhanstless and complete]; yet in operation
as though not self-elated.'
What Lao Tzu did say.seems to have been
this:—' Keep plenty of Tao ready for use,
but do not let it overflow.' Thus: jg
let your Tao *ffy be deep |jg and ffl use
^ it: T on the other hand «^ do not
let it @ overflow. Or in analogous Eng-
lish terms:—
Follow diligently the WAY in your own
heart, but make no display of it to the world.
Christ uttered words almost identical:—
' Take heed that ye do not your righteous-
ness before men, to be seen of them.'
Julien, from whom Mr. Chalmer's version,
is taken, says rightly ' le chapitre presents
de grandes difficultes.'
Dr. Legge gives ' The Course (Tao) is like
the emptiness (of a vessel); and in the use
of it we may say that we must be free from
self-sufficiency.' This translation violates
more than one canon, without even the excuse
of intelligibility to justify the means. But
all these translators have had to force a
meaning out of a meaningless text. Huai
Nan Tzu's text, though troublesome, is not
impossible, as may be gathered from the dis-
section of it given above. This question,
however, remains: How does it happen that
Huai Nan Tzu's text, presumably a quota-
tion from the Tao Te Ching, differs from
and is more intelligible than the text of the
book itself?
As to the full force of the character 2&
Huai Nan Tzu gives two illustrations:—
(1). A certain ruler whose army had just
occupied two districts belonging to the enemy,
was observed to be sad rather than elated.
He was thinking of the day when the same
reverse might overtake Mm. (2). Confucius
was possessed of great physical strength,
and could raise the portcullis at the city
gate. But he was very unwilling to let this
fact be publicly known.
Passing over a few characters which I be-
 THE REMAINS OF LAO TZU.
These words are quoted by Huai Nan Tzu,
and may be regarded as a genuine utterance
of Lao Tzu. Mr. Chalmers renders them,
' It (Tao) blunts sharp angles. It unravels
disorder. It softens the glare. It shares
the dust.'
Mr. Balfour's variety is, ' It chastens
asperity ; it unravels confusion ; it moderates
the radiance [proceeding from those in whom
Tao is embodied]; and it identifies itself
with the sordid ones of the earth [the " dust"
or common people].'
Dr. Legge has, ' We should make our
sharpness blunt, and unravel the complica-
tions of things. We should attemper our
brightness, and assimilate it to the obscurity
caused by dust.'
In two out of the four clauses, Dr. Legge
came very nearly right; which is more than
the other translators accomplished in any
one of them. For instead of any mystic
allusions to the efficacy oi Tao, we have here
four simple precepts in the ' commandment'
style, such as might not inappropriately
have been uttered some centuries later, upon
the mount.
1. Temper your sharpness.
2. Get rid of your confusion.
3. Moderate your brilliancy.
4. Live in harmony with your age.
In No. 1 we have embodied Lao Tzu's
ever-present Doctrine of Surrender, which
we shall see more fully developed by and by.
Substitute passive bluntness for active sharp-
ness, is what the Sage evidently meant to
say.
No. 2 refers to the confusion of ideas,
arising from too much planning and schem-
ing, instead of allowing the future to shape
itself.
No. 3 is a higher flight into the domain of
metaphor. It means that we must not in-
dulge in too lofty theories for the regenera-
tion of mankind, but must adapt them to
the conditions under which we have to
work.
No. 4 is too simple to require explanation.
It is only a mystery how its true meaning
239
could have escaped the practised eye of Dr.
The above twelve characters are repeated
in chapter Ivi of the Tao Te Ching, joined
with six more which contain two additional
precepts. These will be discussed in their
place. Meanwhile, it is very unlikely that
in a short work, such as the Tao Te Ching,
Lao Tzii would have repeated these four
commandments, and for no reason whatever.
The few meaning words of this chapter
are evidently the work of another hand.
Nevertheless, translators generally have laid
some stress upon their meaning, as contain-
ing a direct allusion to ' God.'
CHAPTER V.
In ch. v, we have a rigmarole of silly
words, out of which it would only be possi-
ble to extract silliness, finished off, however,
with one of Lao Tzu's pregnant sayings,—
Mr. Chalmers says, 'The man of much
talk is frequently reduced to silence (ex-
hausted). There is nothing like keeping the
inner man.'
Mr. Balfour says, ' Those who talk too
much will often come to an end of their
words. It is better to maintain rectitude
[inwardly].'
As regards the last four characters, there
is no excuse for the above mis-renderings.
Apart from the simplicity of the phrase it-
self and the obvious requirements of the text,
Julien had already provided, Il vaut mieux
observer le milieu.' Julien, however, took
Sljj as if he were translating a modern
document; whereas in ancient Chinese it
often stands, as here, for |jj§. 4jJ| JfJ >afc
^ ^jj[ *je.' Is there any trick by which
Tao may be learnt ? The saying is simply
this :—
By many words wit is exhausted: it is
better to preserve a mean. It is quoted by
Huai Nan Tzu, who supplies an inappropriate
240 THE CHINA REVIEW.
and mutilated illustration which had been
before applied by Han Fei Tzu to a part of
ch. Ixiv.
CHAPTER VI.
The absurdity of this chapter is to some
extent redeemed by its brevity. Here it is
in full: —
Mb *
The reader has a choice of renderings : —
Mr. Chalmers: — The Spirit (like perennial
spring) of the valley never dies. This (Spirit)
I call the abyss-mother. The passage of
the abyss-mother I call the root of heaven
and earth. Ceaselessly it seems to endure,
and it is employed without effort.'
Mr. Balfour:— 'The Spirit of the Depths
is immortal ; it is called the Azure [Heaven]
and the Mother [Earth]. The passage
through which these Two Influences emerge
and enter is called the root [or nidus] of the
visible creation. They are ceaseless in ac-
tion as though permanent, and may be
drawn upon [used, or laid under contribution]
without ever being exhausted.'
Dr. Legge:— 'The Spirit of the valley
does not die. This is what is called the
mysterious female. (There is) the gate by
which the mysterious female (issues forth).
This is what is called the host (or entertainer)
of heaven and earth. Long and unbroken
appears to be its continuance ; but there is
no laborious toil in the exercise of it.'
Now these words of the Tao Te Ching,
whatever they may mean, occur in the so-
called works of Lieh Tzu. I say ' so-called,'
because they are unquestionably not from
the hand of Lieh Tzu. For instance, Lieh
Tzu is in one passage made to hold a con-
versation with an individual who at that
date must have been dead at least five
hundred years ; — an anachronism which is
hardly likely to have slipped from the pen
of the author himself. In another, the
sublime WAY of Lao Tzu is lowered to the
level of mediaeval Taoism, with all its
catchpenny accompaniments of alchemy and
the Elixir of Life. For a certain man, by
practising this WAY, is said to have been
able to see with his ears and hear with his
eyes. Ugh ! it is more probable that some
one well acquainted with the works of
Chuang Tzu, wherein a great deal relating
to Lieh Tzu and his opinions may be found,
set to work to construct a companion volume,
to be passed off as the work of an earlier
sage. For the result is not a felicitous one.
The writings which now bear Lieh Tzu's
name, are at best but 'Chuang Tzu and
water,' and by no means justify the terms
of respect in which Chuang Tzu himself al-
ways speaks of ' the philosopher Lieh Yu-
k'ou.' Ssu-ma Ch'ien (B.C. 100), who ought
to have been able to form an opinion worth
consideration, haa absolutely no record of
Lieh Tzu at all. He suspected him to be
nothing more than a fictitious personage,
created by Chuang Tzu for the purposes of
his allegory. So Liu Tzu-hou, who is in
the foremost rank among Chinese critics and
who concludes his dissection of Lieh Tzu
with the following striking words:—
That is to say, in spite of a few
of thought scattered here and there, the
work, as a whole, cannot be considered a
genuine production of the age to which it is
ascribed.
Meanwhile, this oh. vi of the Tao Te Ching
is stated by Lieh Tzu to be a quotation from
the book of the Yellow Emperor (B.C. 2697);
and the commentator of the 4th century A.D.
adds,—'Formerly there was such a book,
bat now it no longer exists.' A few pages
farther on, Lieh Tzu makes other quotations
from this ancient book, which, however, are
not to be found in the Tao TS Ching. Sure-
ly, Lieh Tzu who flourished not very long
after Lao Tzu, would have been sufficiently
 THE REMAINS OF LAO TZU.
conversant with the written Gospel of his
master, not to have quoted a considerable
portion of it as the work of an Emperor who
had died more than two thousand years be-
fore ;—that is, of course, supposing always
there was a Lieh Tzu to quote, and supposing
always there was a written Gospel to quote
from. And with reference to the Yellow
Emperor, who is, in more than this one in-
stance, credited with sayings we now find
embodied in the Tao Te Ching, it is interest-
ing to note that His Majesty is mentioned
by Lao Tzu's chief disciple and commenta-
tor, [Chuang-Tzu, chapter ^g /p|], in
terms of marked disparagement.
One more instance. Lieh Tzu says Lao
Tzu said ;g f£ff £f|tfi ' Reputa-
tion is but an accompaniment of reality,'—
a grand saying which Lao Tzu might well
have uttered, but which we find in the text
of Chuang Tzu, chapter :£f=£ j^, to whom
it no doubt belongs.
I do not attempt to translate this chapter,
I have not the remotest idea what it means.
I do not believe for a moment that it was
either composed by Lao Tzu, or quoted by
Lieh Tzu from the Yellow Emperor or from
any one else. It seems to me to be a self-
evident forgery, in connection with the
mystic Taoism of later ages.
CHAPTEr vii.
Huai Nan Tzu records the following say-
ing of Lao Tzu : —
Keep behind, and you shall be put in front ;
keep out, and you shall be kept in. Is not
this to have no thought of one's own interest,
and yet one's own interest is achieved ?
I feel certain, however, that the second
clause of the above saying belongs, not to
Lao Tzu, but to Huai Nan Tzu himself,
being simply a remark with which the com-
mentator thought further to elucidate the
241
text, in reference to the illustration which
had gone before. For a similar confusion of
text and commentary, see ch. xxi.
Mr. Chalmers mistranslates (in imitation
of Julien) the words #J» 3£ If fljj Hf f|-
by ' the Sage abandons himself, and yet is
preserved ;' but that is a trifle to what Mr.
Salfour makes of the first six characters:—
' Thus, though the Sage regards cultivation
of his body as of secondary importance, his
body still progresses [of his own accord].'
See ch, xliv.
CHAPTER VIII.
Here we have a short essay on water,
which is used to illustrate ' the highest
style of goodness' and 'the goodness of
the Ruler,' by Messrs. Chalmers and Bal-
four, respectively. Why it is separated
from ch. Ixxviii and pitchforked in here,
it is impossible to say. No part of it is
mentioned by any commentator; and its
general tenor is quite enough to stamp it as
a later fraud.
A few gems from Mr. Chalmers' version
will suffice:—
Where water abides, it is good for adaptability.
In its heart, it is good for depth.
In giving, it is good for benevolence.
In speaking, it is good for fidelity, etc.
This places us on the horns of a dilemma.
Either Lao Tzu wrote unqualified nonsense,
or he did not write that. In the former
case, I think we should have heard less
about him as one of the great early teachers
of humanity.
CHAPTER IX.
Mr. Chalmers makes his unfortunate
author open his chapter with:—' It is better
to desist than go on grasping at fulness.
Handling and sharpening cannot last long,'
while oat of the ' handling and sharpening'
clause Mr. Balfour gets this still more re-
markable version:—'Research, if carried
242 THE CHINA REVIEW.
on to too keen a point, prevents the preser-
vation of the body [q.d. hastens death.]'
"What Lao Tzu said was
%fm&Z*to3(&mm
He who grasps more than he can hold, would
be better without any. He who strikes with
a sharp point, will not himself be safe for
long.
Then follow two clauses which are simply
an expansion of Lao Tzu's precept, — two
homely illustrations from every-day life, —
such as very moderate students of Chinese
would readily identify for what they are,
viz., the work of an inferior workman.
The chapter concludes with
When your work is done, and fame is won,
to keep in the background is the WA Y,
Huai Nan Tzu quotes both the above sen-
tences ; hut in different parts of his work,
and not in the same connection, as if they
had anything to do with each other.
CHAPTER X.
Huai Nan Tzu says that Lao Tzu said:—
Mr. Chalmers found that Lao Tzu would
have said in English, 'By husbanding the
animal and spiritual souls, and embracing
unity, it is possible to prevent their separa-
tion. By undivided attention to the pas-
sion-nature, and increasing tenderness, it is
possible to be as a little child.' These two
sentences are infinitely more obscure than
the original. They serve, however, as a true
index to the grasp Mr. Chalmers had of his
text.
Mr. Balfour clears the way as follows:—
' Having received, in the birth-process, a
living soul, one is able, by preserving its in-
dividuality [pure and uncorrupted], to pre-
vent disunion [with the pure original]. By
controlling the vital force, and bringing it
to the utmost degree of pliancy, one is able
to become as a little child again— [revert to
one's pristine state of innocence].' The yff
is omitted in Mr. Balfour's edition.
Dr. Legge says, ' If the intelligent and
animal souls hold unity in their embrace,
can they not be kept from separation ?
If we carefully nourish the (vital) breath
till it attains the utmost softness and
pliancy, may we not become as a tender
babe P'
Huai Nan Tzu does not tell us what the
above passage means. It was doubtless
clear enough to him ; and Chu Fu Tzu
certainly understood the second half. To
me, the sense runs as follows : —
That soul and body which are now one, —
can they not be separated ?'
By the utmost exertion to become gentle, —
can one become as gentle as a child ?
[In some editions the two >&• are omit-
ted ; but that is just where the trouble be-
gins].
Then follow three sentences constructed
on the same lines, but evidently not con-
structed by a prophet. After which we have
.
Mr. Chalmers:—' One may be bright and
transparent on all sides, and yet be un-
known.'
Mr. Balfour : — ' If one's understanding
reaches in every direction, he can disregard
knowledge [as such]; there will be no such
thing, to him, as ignorance.'
Dr. Legge : — ' When one's intelligence
reaches in every direction, may he not (ap-
pear to) have no knowledge.'
Huai Nan Tzu quotes the saying thus: —
If a man is clear-headed and intelligent,
can he be without knowledge ?
This is undoubtedly the true reading. It
is thus given in one edition ; and moreover
lends itself admirably to Lao Tzu's general
attack upon acquired knowledge. The rest
 THE REMAINS OF LAO TZU.
of the chapter is spurious; and the two
portions of it .quoted, as above, by Huai
Nan Tzu, are quoted separately and not in
the same connection.
CHAPTER XI.
This chapter is beneath contempt. It is
an illustration of the advantage of that
which is non-existent; e.g., of the poten-
tiality of ingress and egress by a win-
dow or a door, in consequence of the ab-
sence of any resisting medium. It does not
bear traces of the master's hand. It is not
quoted by any ancient authority. It is
however remarkable,—for the sense which
Julien extracted from its jumbled charac-
ters in 1842 as compared with the nonsense
which Mr. Balfour discovered in 1884.
CHAPTER XII.
This chapter ends with four famous char-
acters :—
They are quoted by Huai Nan Tzu as an
independent saying. Also by Han Fei Tzu ;
hut there in connection with the end of
ch. xxxviii (q.v.) They occur a third time
in the Tao Te Ching, ch. Ixxii.
It is obvious that these characters can
have no meaning irrespective of some refer-
ence either expressed or understood.
Reject that : take this,
which is their literal meaning, is of itself
without signification. Nor in chapter xii
of the Tao Te Ching is there any sufficient
raison d'etre for the use 6f this saying.
The last clause, the only one to which it
could refer, runs
(Chalmers) ' The sage makes provision for
the inner man, and not for the eyes. He
puts aside the one, that he may take the
2+3
other in hand.' This, because ' riding and
hunting will drive a man mad.' The whole
connection is forced.
Huai Nan Tzu, however, as above stated,
quotes these four characters as a separate
and intelligible saying. He gives in illus-
tration the story of a government so wisely
administered that the people carried out its
laws without compulsion, even going so far
as to throw back into the water of their own
accord all fishes caught which were of small
size, simply because their ruler wished it.
Confucius said this was because
m B a * m f*«
which I take to mean, ' he exhorted in the
present, and punished in the future.' But
this does not seem to help towards a trans-
lation in general terms. Perhaps Lao Tzu
meant,—at least I think so:—
Put away the objective: hold to the subjec-
tive.
CHAPTER XIII.
Huai Nan Tzu tells us that Lao Tzu said
It is difficult to see why Julien should
*j wmf
miss the Apoint here. He reads -T3
5t for TS&,
ttftf
which is probably correct.
Mr. Chalmers has : — ' So then, if, for the
sake of dignity, one seeks to make himself
ruler of the world, he may be permitted,
indeed, to rule it temporarily; but if, for
love, one seeks to make himself ruler of the
world, he may he entrusted with it (for ever,
or he may trust himself to the world for
ever).
This singular passage contains almost as
many commas and quite as much absurdity
as any page of Walks in the City of Canton.
Mr. Balfour has :— ' Wherefore, if the
honours which come upon me personally are
on account of my position as a ruler, then
the whole Empire will subject itself to me ;
244 THE CHINA REVIEW.
and those who cultivate personal benevolence
in ruling may commit themselves to the Em-
pire for ever.'
Scylla and Charybdis!—What stuff Lao
Tzu is made responsible for! I think the
harmless ' Old Philosopher' said something
as simple as this:—
He who respects the State as his own body,
is fit to support it. He who loves the State
as his own body, is fit to govern it.
The passage occurs in Chuang Tzu, chapter
ffi Jp|, but not as a question; and it is
amusing to note what Mr. Balfour then
made of it:—'Wherefore I would manage
the Empire simply by the force of my pre-
sence [that is by the force of my good exam-
ple etc.], so that the Empire would be led
to place its confidence in me.'
So much for the first clause. Now for the
second, which in the text is constructed on
identical lines of syntax. Mr. Balfour has
the following,—a near approach to the real
meaning:—' A man who manages the Empire
according to the love he bears to bis own
person may be entrusted with the Empire ['s
affairs].'
CHAPTER XIV.
The Tao Te Ching has the following:
Mr. Chalmers. ' What you cannot see by
looking at it, is called plainness. What you
oanaot hear by listening to it, is called rare-
ness. What you cannot get by grasping at
it, is called minuteness.'
For the three italicised words, Mr. Bal-
. four substituted ' the Distant, Vacancy, and
Subtle' Julien had 'incolore, aphone, and
incorporel.' The sounds of these three
words may be written down thus:—I-Hi-
Wei; and Re'musat discovered that they
stood for Jehovah! Julien rejected this
identification, and it lay perdu for many
years until V. von Strauss, ia 1870, took
upon himself to plead for it again. Mr.
Chalmers says ' the words are translatable' ;
in which case there would have been no oc-
casion for jgj.
Now in Book i. of Lien Tzu (see ch. vi)
we read : —
It eluded the senses of sight, hearing, and
touch, and teas therefore called by name I.
[The ' it ' refers to primeval matter, before
it assumed form and became dense],
The author of the earliest commentary,
written in the 4th century, A.D., adds in a
note : —
Lao Tzu said ' that which eludes the sense of
sight is called Hi.'
And he goes on to show that I jfa and
Hi ^ are interchangeable. But according
to the Tao Te Ching, as above, Lao Tzu said
neither the one nor the other. At any rate,
the rendering ' Jehovah,' goes by the board ;
besides which, the thoughtful reader will
ask why, if this commentator was familiar
with the writings (or even sayings) of Lao
Tzii, did he endorse Lieh Tzu's statement
that ch. vi was part of a lost volume by
the Yellow Emperor, when we now find it
embodied in the Tao Te Ching?
Dr. Legge, as might be supposed, is anti-
Jehovah; but I grieve to say that he speaks
of Lieh Tzu as ' possibly a young student of
our Treatise before the Old Master died.'
This same chapter also contains another
genuine saying of Lao Tzu:—
The likeness of things unseen: the form of
that which is without body.
Lao Tzu seems to have applied these words
to his WAT. They are quoted both by Han
Fei Tzu and Huai Nan Tzu, and illustrated
by them, respectively, as follows:—
(1)—A live elephant has rarely been seen;
nevertheless, by putting together the bones
of a dead elephant, one can get an idea of
 THE REMAINS OF LAO TZU.
the living animal. [Hence the word elephant
came to have the meaning of image.] So,
the WAY. cannot be either heard or seen ; but
sages, by observing its influence, can infer
its semblance.
(2)—A certain minister was telling his
Prince about the WAy. 'Tell me rather
about the art of government,' said the latter,
fearing that the WAY would be of no practi-
cal use. ' Sire,' replied the minister, ' a
tree standing in a forest is of no use, and
yet the usefulness is there, and only requires
to be brought out.' If you follow the WAY,
you need not trouble about the government
of your State.
CHAPTER XV.
According to Mr. Chalmers, this chapter
contains a great deal of nonsense. We are
told that ' the skilful philosophers that were
in the olden time. had a mystic communica-
tion with the abysses.' Who they were,
and what the sentence means, Mr. Chalmers
does not say. Mr. Balfour gives another
version which the syntactical strength of
the text is quite unable to bear. The chap-
ter ends thus :•—
Mr. Chalmers. 'Those who keep this
Tau desire not fulness. And whereas they
are empty, they may wax old, and yet not
stand in need of renewing.'
Mr. Balfour slightly improves on this, if
a mis-rendering in more plausible terms can
indeed be called an improvement; but it
would be waste of space to quote. What
the wretched Lao Tzu did say is as follows:—
Those whofollow the WAY desire not excess ;
and thus without excess they are for ever
exempt from change.
[The Tao Te Ching reads ^ for JJ|;
omits i}j}; andhas variants jjj£ and j|jijr. But
these changes amount to nothing. The text
quoted is given by Huai Nan Tzu.]
245
CHAPTER XVI.
This chapter opens with these words :—
Mr. Chalmers, who heads his version
' Going home to the Root,' translates thus : —
' Having once arrived at a state of abso-
lute vacuity, keep yourself perfectly still.'
4
All things come into active operation to-
gether ; but I observe whither they return.'
Mr. Balfour says, ' When the extreme of
emptiness is reached [as by Heaven], and
quiescence rigidly preserved [as by Earth],
then all things are simultaneously produced ;
and by this [example] I observe their revo-
lutions.'
Now Chu Hsi has designed to quote part
of the above, and not without a kind of ne-
gative approval, —which could hardly have
been the case it the quotation had contained
nothing more intelligible than the words
which Messrs. Chalmers and Balfonr have
since discovered therein. It is simple en-
ough ;—
Without distraction, quietly concentrate
yourself, and all things can be accomplished.
The remaining six characters are a differ-
ent matter altogether. I think their mean-
ing is ' For I see that they respond thereto,'
meaning, ' This I see to be the case.' It is
possible that these troublesome six may
have belonged originally to Huai Nan Tzu' s
commentary ; but the balance of evidence is
at present rather in favour of Lao Tzu, and
as his we are bound to treat them.
CHAPTEr xviii.
Chapter xvii is gibberish, and Messrs.
Chalmers and Balfour do it full justice in
their respective renderings.
Of ch. xviii, the following is quoted by
Huai Nan Tzu :—
When the State is in disorder, then loyal
men arise.
246 THE CHINA REVIEW.
The meaning of course is that, unless the
State is in danger, there can be no scope for
the exercise of loyalty. The idea has now
become proverbial with the Chinese:—
' Prosperous parents have not filial sons;
Virtuous rulers have not loyal ministers,'
The rest of this chapter may be dismissed
without comment.
CHAPTER XIX.
Chapter xix begins with what is perhaps
the most famous of all Lao Tzu's sayings.
It is certainly the one which has gained him
the scorn of Confucianists of all time ; and
which, considering its simplicity, has been
most generally misunderstood : —
Abandon wisdom and discard knowledge, and
the people will be benefited an hundred-fold.
Mr. Chalmers misrenders this, ' (if some
men would but) abandon their sageness
(holiness), and cast away their wisdom, the
people would be move benefited a hundred-
fold.' He also agrees with Mr. Balfour,
whose version reduces translation to a joke,
that these words are directed against Con-
fucianism. The real truth is that the Con-
fucianists took up arms against a phrase,
the exact import of which they misappre-
hended and were led to regard as an attack
upon their own traditions. What Lao Tzu
meant to say was that, with less wisdom and
knowledge, the world would get on better.
For instance, as Huai Nan Tzu explains the
sentence, there would be no thieves, inas-
much as successful theft implies considerable
mental power.
The saying occurs in a slightly different
form in Chuang Tzu. Some one asked Lao
Tzu how the world would go along without
government; to which Lao Tzu replied by
showing how violence and disorder had al-
ways been conspicuous during the reigns
even of the wisest emperors, and in spite of
carefully-framed codes of laws. ' Therefore
it has been said, abandon wisdom and discard
knowledge, and the empire will be at peace.'
This speech is of course apocryphal as
regards Lao Tzu. It is, however, strange
that Chuang Tzu should make Lao Tzu
himself say
as though he was quoting somebody else's
saying rather than his own. Especially if
we must believe that the Tao Te Ching as
a work was then accessible to Chuang Tzu.
The words [|£ Q would hardly stand for
'Therefore I said.'
Another instance of the misapprehension
of Lao Tzu by the Confucianists will be
found in a saying of the former, quoted by
Huai Nan Tzu, but not given in the Tao Te
Ching :—
Attach no value to excellence.
This paradox is too much for a hard-
headed practical people like the Chinese,
though of course Lao Tzu meant excellence
in the abstract, and his disciple is at some
pains to show that only relative excellence
can have intrinsic value.
CHAPTER xx.
Most of this chapter differs toto coelo from
anything in the preceding text. Near the
beginning, a sentence, which we find in
Huai Nan Tzu, is pitchforked in, without
rhyme or reason ; the consequence being
that it is qcite misunderstood by translators
who have to fit it in with an incongruous
context.
Mr. Chalmers. 'One must of course,.
dread what others dread (i.e. evil).'
Mr. Balfour. ' I cannot but fear that
which is feared by others,'
Both of these propositions are intrinsi-
cally absurd; and Mr. Chalmers' attempt
to help out the sense with ' evil ' is totally
 THE REMAINS OF LAO TZU.
unpermissible. The character -pi has other
meanings besides ' dread' and ' fear'; e.g.:—
What the world reverences, may not be
treated with disrespect.
Such was Lao Tzu's actual precept. Aa
a piece of mere worldly wisdom, it is not
unworthy of a high place among the maxims
of philosophers.
CHAPTER XXI.
This chapter, which is mostly nonsense,
contains part of a genuine saying of Lao
Tzu, having reference to the WAy : —
Mr. Chalmers. 'Profound! Dark! and
(yet) therein is .essence. This essence is
most true, and therein is faith.'
Mr, Balf our. ' Vacuous and unfathom-
able! yes within it there is Quintessential
Energy — and this is supremely real. With-
in it, too, there is Trustworthiness,'
It is difficult to put Lao Tzu's sentence
into terse idiomatic Ennglish ; but the
meaning is clear enough. The character
*|£jij signifies that the WAy is not as a dead
log, but carries within it a living and active
principle, ^f refers to its efficacy, and
fp| to the good faith between man aud
man, in which strict adherence to the WAY
must inevitably result. Huai Nan Tzu
illustrates it as follows ;—The Duke of Chin
attacked Yuan, and gave the inhabitants
three days to surrender. At the end of
that time, however, they still refused to
surrender; so the Duke issued orders to
withdraw. His lieutenants said, 'In two or
three days more they will surrender.' But
the Duke answered, * I did not know that
they would not surrender in three days.
Now that the time has elapsed and they
have not surrendered, 1 am not going to
break my word to get Yuan.' When the
Yuan people heard this, they immediately
247
surrendered, and were also followed by the
people of Wen. Therefore it was that Lao
Tzu uttered the sentence quoted above ; not
to mention the remainder of it, which is
strangely omitted here only to be inserted
somewhere else, viz., in' ch. Ixii of the Tao
Te Ching :—
So it is that good words shall gain you ho-
nour in the market-place, but good deeds
shall gain you friends among men,
CHAPTER XXII.
This chapter opens with six characters
which Huai Nan Tzu quotes as from the
mouth of Lao Tzu. They are worthy of
him,—when you get at their meaning,
which as a matter of fact lies on the sur-
face. Here they are:—
I&IN&&M1E
Out of these harmless six Mr. Balfour
extracted the following gems:—
' [In cultivating Tao] there arefirstthe
sprouts; then perfection. First, there is
•perversion; then rectification.'
It is a pleasant change to find that Mr.
Chalmers has rightly apprehended this pas-
sage, while Dr. Legge, on the other hand, is
quite wrong with his 'The partial is the
prelude to becoming complete; being crook-
ed to becoming straight.'
The meaning is simply, 'He that yields
shall be saved. He that bends shall be made
straight.' This is quite in accordance with
Lao Tzu's leading doctrine of self-abnega-
tion and surrender; in spite of which, and
in the face of Lu Tsu's unmitigated non-
sense, Mr. Balfour would have us believe
that by his version 'we have advanced a
step towards the comprehension' of the Tao
Te Ching.
At the end of the chapter we read,' That
218 THE CHINA REVIEW.
ancient saying, He that yields shall be saved,
is not then a vain saying '; from which we
can only infer that the saying is not Lao
Tzu's own, but a quotation made by him.
Of course the truth is, and can only be, that
the words in question are Lan Tzu's words,
set in a commentary by somebody else.
Towards the end of the same chapter oc-
cur these words : —
They occur again (with a ^ after W)
in chapter Ixvi, for no particular reason;
and are quoted by Huai Nan Tzu. Their
meaning is simple enough : —
If you do not quarrel, no one on earth will
be able to quarrel with you.
It is generally admitted in colloquial
English that it takes two to make a fight.
Apropos, an interesting story is here told by
Huai Nan Tzu. When a certain ruler was
besieging an enemy's town, a large part of
the wall fell down ; whereupon the former
gave orders to beat a retreat at once.
4 may well give us pause : —
For,' said he in reply to the remonstrances
of his officers, 'a gentleman never hits a
man who is down ' f£ -^ ^ *§ ^ jj$
|}gf . ' Let them rebuild their wall, and then
we will renew the attack.' This noble be-
haviour so delighted the enemy that they
tendered allegiance on the spot. .Truly the
feudal age of China was not wanting in
lessons of magnanimity and heroism.
CHAPTER XXIII.
This chapter contains a saying which is
quoted by Huai Nan Tzu : —
Mr. Chalmers. 'When a man in all
things accords with Tau, his accordance with
Tau identifies him with Tau.'
Mr. Balfour. 'Among those who order
their affairs in accordance with Tao, those
who understand the doctrine are identified
with Tao.'
Huai Nan Tzu illustrates the text (from
Chuang Tzu) as follows:—The man who
made swords for the general was eighty years
of age; yet his work was perfect. ' Is it
that you are so skilful' ? asked the general,
' or because you have a way' ? ' It is con-
centration,' replied the man. ' Ever since
twenty years of age, I have been fond of my
art, and have thought of nothing else. If a
thing was not a sword, I did not care to look
at it. Thus, if neglect of what is not useful
to you is of use, of how much more use must
be application to what is useful to you?
And what is there but helps (in one way or
the other)' ?
Therefore it was that Lao Tzu said,—
Those who work in accordance with a way,
are fellow-workers in the WAY.
CHAPTER XXIV.
This chapter contains five characters which
sAi *m
Mr, Chalmers. ' He who is self-display-
ing does not shine.'
Mr. Balfour. ' He who says himself that
he can see is not enlightened.'
The same idea, in another form, occurs in
ch. xxii : —
and in ch. Ixxii,
while in ch. xxxiii, we have
n*
So that, while IpJ may be attained by
S &l> it cannnot be attained by Q J^.
Mr. Chalmer's version is of course based
upon the hien reading of Jjj.
The absurdity of all this will be amply
manifested by the following saying of Lao
Tzu as quoted by Han Fei Tzu :—
snenw
To see oneself is to be clear of sight.
This saying strictly belongs to a companion
 THE REMAINS OF LAO TZU.
saying given in ch. xxxiii, but it is more
convenient to separate them thus. Han Fei
Tzu illustrates it by a case of a Prince who
wanted to attack another State because of
its internal disorder and military weakness,
while all the time his own State was quite
as much a prey to the same evils. ' The
hard thing to learn,' adds the commentator,
' is not to see others but to see oneself'
CHAPtEr xxv.
Here we have the following passage : —
' Heaven is a power : Earth is a power :
the WAY is a power, and the Sovereign
is also a power. In the universe, there are
four powers, and the Sovereign is one of
them.'
But the clause I have not italicised is
emphatically not part of Lao Tzu's saying.
The whole passage occurs in Huai Han Tzu,
followed by 0 fT};j£ ^| Q J| £,
' alluding to his comprehensive power,' —
which has just as much right to appear in
the Tao Te Ching as the portion to which I
now take exception. Both belong to Huai
Nan Tzu's commentary, as must otherwise
be evident to any one who will reflect that
Lao Tzu would have hardly been likely to
repeat himself in such a way. On the other
hand, Huai Nan Tzu, who gives a long
illustration of the Sovereign's proper func-
tions, would have been very likely, when
applying Lao Tzu's phrase, to repeat it un-
der a somewhat different form, and with a
final word of explanation.
CHAPTER XXVI.
Lao Tzu said:—
The heavy is the foundation of the light;
repose is the ruler of unrest.
249
The perfect man never for a moment departs
from gravity and repose.
Lightness loses men's [hearts]: unrest loses
the throne.
These somewhat obscure sentences are
thus quoted by Han Fei Tzu, with the fol-
lowing definitions:—By the 'heavy' is meant
th« self-controlled; by ' repose' is meant
not leaving one's proper place. Lightness
signifies want of influence; unrest signifies
leaving one's proper place.
Now the compiler of the Tao Te Ching
sets to work, and joins the first two sent-
ences by ^ J£j[. He then changes & •¥•
into |p| ^,—unless we believe (1) that Han
Fei Tzu miscopied, or (2) never saw the Tao
Te Ching, but only transmitted what oral
tradition could supply, and so made the
mistake himself. Then for the j|& at the
end of clause 2, we have MJ which makes
nonsense of it, and which Julien corrected,
too cautiously, in a note. Finally, between,
clauses 2 and 3, we have a jumble of some
twenty characters taken from the commen-
tary of Han Fei Tzu; and the whole is served
up as the work of Lao Tzu, and now forms
chapter xxvi of this thrice and four times
spurious text.
CHAPTER XXVII.
Passing over three unmistakeable clauses
of gloss, we read—
He who knows how to shut, has no bolts,—yet
you cannot open. He who knows how to
bind, has no ropes,—yet you cannot undo.
Mr. Balfour finds in this easy passage the
following valuable contribution to the world's
philosophy:—'When the virtuous are ob-
structed [in their policy], though there be
no bolt to the door which shuts them in, yet
250 THE CHINA REVIEW.
it cannot be opened. When the virtuous
enter into relations with others, though they
be not bound by the ties of contract, yet
they may not release themselves [from their
obligations] .' — Surely the force of absurdity
can np farther go.
It may here be mentioned that the bulk
of the glosses in the Tao Te Ching are weak
sentences, as for instance the three objected
to above, constructed upon the lines of the
sayings which are undoubtedly from Lao
Tzu himself. It would be as though some
pious Christian were to invent a dozen more
Beatitudes, similar in form to the immortal
nine, but wanting in the one essential which
makes the genuine Beatitudes what they
are.
To return to the above saying. It is
quoted by Huai Nan Tzu, (part of it in two
places), with the addition of ^ after the
second character in each clause. He shows
how the First Emperor, with his Great Wall,
still failed to 4 keep the rod of empire in his
grasp ; while the descendants of the virtuous
Wu Wang sat upon the throne of China for
the space of thirty-four generations.
We now reach a passage where the in-
trinsic absurdity of the Tao Te Ching stands
out in bold relief. The text has, —
This rigmarole, if it can mean anything,
means, 'Therefore, (i.e. because of the bolt
and rope saying above), the Sage is ever good
at saving men, and accordingly does not
reject any man ; he is ever good at saving
things, and accordingly does not reject any-
thing. This is called comprehensive intel-
ligence.'
I grieve to say that not only does Dr.
Legge admit such stuff to be the genuine
wisdom of Lao Tzu, but he goes out of his
way' to misrender the last four characters
.(correctly given in Mr. Chalmers' transla-
tion) by ' This is what is called hiding the
light of his procedure.'
Now Huai Nan Tzu tells the following
story:—Kung-sun Lung of old said to his
followers,' I will have none with me but
men of ability.' By and by a stranger of-
fered to take service with him. ' What can
you do?' asked Kung-sun Lung. 'I can
shout,' replied the man. And when Kung-
sun Lung had ascertained that there was
no one among his retainers who could
shout, he engaged the man at once.
A few days afterwards, he had occasion
to cross a river, but there was no boat at
hand; so he ordered the new recruit to
shout for one. The latter uttered a stentorian
shout, and a boat appeared at once. It was
in such a sense, adds Huai Nan Tzu, that
Lao Tzu said,—
AfclR A to
Among men reject none ; among things reject
nothing.
These characters are followed by ^ U|
§6 ^fj, which may be translated, ' This is
called apprehensive, intelligence.'
It is difficult to decide whether they be-
long to the quotation or to the commentator.
In either case the quotation remains the
same, —a pithy, lucid saying; very different
from the garbled version of the Tao Te
Ching,
We have by no means done with this
chapter yet. The very next sentence runs, —
Out of this Mr, Chalmers got, 'The good
men are the instructors of other good men ;
and the bad men are the material of the
good men (the material they have to work
upon).'
How "jfi ^ j^ could ever come to
mean • other good men,' Mr. Chalmers does
not tell us. His ' material ' was, • however,
ingenious, as an improvement On Julien's
' secours '; and as such it was adopted by
Mr. Balfour. But ingenuity is quite unne-
cessary. The first half of the above was
never uttered by Lao Tzu at all, as will be
amply seen from the real meaning of the
second half.
 THE REMAINS OF LAO TZU.
Huai Nan Tzu says, a certain general of
the Ch'u State was fond of surrounding
himself with men of ability, and once even
went so far as to engage a man who
represented himself as a master-thief. His
retainers were aghast; but shortly after-
wards their State was attacked by the Ch'i
State, and then, when fortune was adverse
and all was on the point of being lost, the
master-thief begged to be allowed to try his
skill. He west by night into the enemy's
camp, and stole their general's bed-curtain.
This was returned next morning with a
message that it had been found by one of
the soldiers who was gathering fuel. The
same night our master-thief stole the gene-
ral's pillow, which was restored with a simi-
lar message; and the following night he
stole the long pin used to secure the hair.
' Good , heavens ! ' cried the general at a
council of war, f they will have my head
next.' Upon which the army of the Ch'i
State was withdrawn. It was in this sense
that Lao Tzu said : —
Do not value the man ; value the abilities.
This chapter closes with a sentence which
is second to none in obscurity and difficulty
'
of interpretation ; —
Mr. Chalmers.' ' He, then, who honours not
his instructor, and he who loves not his ma-
terial, though accounted wise, are greatly
deluded. This is no less important than
wonderful.'
Dr. Legge, who builds upon Mr. Chal-
mers, has varied the last few words into,
1
The case may be denominated most mys-
terious '; adding that Lao Tzu might well
say so, though ' if he had been acquainted
with our Christian truth, the habit of his
mind would have made it impossible for
him to adopt anything like the Calvinistic
interpretation of its mysteries,'—which is
almost as obscure as the Tao Te Ching itself.
251
The passage in question is given by Han
Fei Tzu, and there is no need to ques-
tion its genuineness as one of Lao Tzu's ut-
terances. But it is perfectly clear from his
interpretation of it that he never came
within gunshot of its meaning. I subjoin
translation, in this case literal and word for
word:—The Chows had a jade tablet.
Chow Sin sent Chiao Koh to ask for it.
Wen Wang would not give it. Fei Chung
came to beg fur it, and he gave it to him.
This because Chiao Koh was an upright
man, while Fei Chung was unprincipled,
and the Chows would have objected to see
upright men succeeding. So he gave it to
Fei Chung. Now Wen Wang, in raising
T'ai-kung (from obscurity) on the banks of
the Wei, ' honoured ' him, and in giving the
jade tablet to Fei Chung he 'valued' it.
Therefore Lao Tzu said, &c., &c.
Being unable to make top or tail of Haa
Fei Tzu's illustration, I have ventured to
interpret the passage independently, guided
only by the simple meaning of the charac-
ters at the time when Lao Tzu employ-
ed them. For instance, 0jjj rarely if ever
meant' an instructor' in very ancient times,
but always ' a multitude,' ' an army.' And
fl^ is not necessarily ' to love,' nor jj£p
' wonderful' or ' mysterious.' I think what
Lao Tzu said was this:—
He who does not desire power nor value
wealth,—though his wisdom be as a fool's,
yet shall he be esteemed above all men.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Huai Nan Tzu tells us that Lao Tzu
said,—
He who, conscious of being strong; is content
to be weak, — he shall be a cynosure of men.
[The character ^^ means literally a point
at which mountain screams converge].
Chuang Tzu, in his chapter on ^ "T> ,
adds to the above a second and distinctly
weaker clause : —
252 THE CHINA REVIEW.
That is, for ' strong ' we have • white ' or
' pure,' and for ' weak ' we have ' shame' or
'disgrace'; meaning, 'He who, conscious
of purity, puts up with disgrace, —he shall
be the cynosure of all men.'
[The word for which I again use cynosure,
has precisely the same meaning as jSey,
but is on a larger scale],
Happily, for the reputation of Chuang
Tzu and for the uniformity of this present
investigation, that particular chapter in
which these words are found has been classed
as a forgery by all the best authorities.
Further, in another part of Huai Nan Tzu,
we find quoted as a saying of Lao Tzu these
words : —
He who, conscious of desert, is content with
shame, — he shall be the cynosure of mankind.
[Only by such verbal variations have I
been able to express the distinction, accen-
tuated by Lao Tzu, between the SS and the
;QJ. Each is a place to which streams con-
verge, but on an ascending scale. Thus
# & JH 0 ft & gg 0 £•
See K'ang Hsi, under /A*.]
Now we come to the Tao Te Ching ; and,
as might be expected, we find these two
genuine sayings expanded into three. The
third was probably suggested by the in-
accurate second clause in Chuang Tzu's
spurious chapter quoted above.. At any
rate, it runs thus:-*-
which Mr. Chalmers translates, 'He who
knows the light, and at the same time keeps
the shade, will be the whole world's model.'
Of course if it means anything, it means
that he who knows his own light, yet keeps
in the shade etc. ; but its spuriousness is
beyond all doubt. For instance the charac-
ters ||§ and J&. are used in reference to
one another, and I observed above ' in an
ascending scale.' But what can we say
about jjjf, which at once throws the meta-
phor into confusion, having no more to do
with streams and pools than with the man
in the moon, or with any personage or thing
equally remote P
After the usual allowance of balderdash,
this chapter concludes with four very re-
markable characters:—
*iU7>i>J
Mr. Chalmers says they mean, ' For large
(liberal) government is that which cuts off
or hurts no body.'
Mr. Balfour says, ' His (the Sage's) ad-
ministration is on a grand scale, and never
comes to an end.'
The four characters, however, mean
this;—
A great principle cannot be divided,
that is, a principle which applies to the
whole, applies also to a part. Because you
may divide the containing whole, you are
not at liberty to divide the principle. These
words are quoted by Huai Nan Tzu, followed
by six. (seven) others which are also part of
Lao Tzu's saying. They are :—
therefore it is that many containers cannot
contain it.
Huai Nan Tzu gives two illustrations, the
first of which applies to the first part, and
the second to the second.
(1)—A certain Prince was about to receive
instruction in the art of government. ' As
mine is but a small State,' said the Prince,
'I would learn accordingly.' 'Wu Huo,'
replied his teacher, ' could lift ten hundred-
weight—how much more a pound ?'
(2)—A Prince of the Chow State, being
similarly about to receive instruction in the
art of government, asked his teacher to con-
fine himself to such rules as would apply to
Chow. 'If what I say is generally im-
practicable,' replied the teacher, ' it will be
impracticable for Chow; and vice versa.'
The key to this last illustration lies in
the fact that the Chow State had now col-
lapsed, and bad been divided into Eastern
and Western Chow, each with its own ruler.
The curious reader, who may perhaps
think that I myself have transferred these
 THE REMAINS OF LAO TZU.
last six (seven) characters from commentary
to text, will be interested to find that they
really do occur in the Tao Te Ching, viz:
in ch. xxxix, where they are totally mis-
placed to begin with, and secondly where the
efforts of translators have been grotesque
in the extreme:—
Mr. Chalmers. 'Why, a cart taken in
pieces is no cart.'
Mr. Balfour. 'To come, then, to the
point: when patricians and plebeians....'
Mr. Chalmers translated his version from
Julien. It reminds one of another famous
rendering by Mr. Balfour, in reference to a
horse, quoted on p. 9 vol. xi of the China
Review, Truly we may say of every passage
in Chinese literature, ' Quot homines, tot
sententiae;' and the worst of it is that the
outside public becomes daily more convinced
that Chinese is an ambiguous language,
which is, as nearly as possible, in diametri-
cal opposition to the truth.
CHAPTER XXIX.
This chapter contains one passage which
commends itself to the student as a genuine
utterance of Lao Tzu : —
Julien translated it correctly forty and
more years ago. It is, in fact, an easy exer-
cise of wit. However, Mr. Chalmers was
dissatisfied with Julien's rendering, and sub-
stituted the following : — ' The spiritual ves-
sels of the world must not be made. He
that makes, mars. He that grasps, loses.'
Mr. Balfour has, ' The insignia of royalty
may not be used by such [a man as men-
tioned]. Those who make them will break
them ; those who clutch at them will lose
them.'
Of these, Mr. Chalmers' version suffi-
ciently condemns itself ; while Mr. Balfour
has kindly saved further trouble by con-
253
demning his own himself. For the passage
in question occurs in chapter i of Huai Nan
Tzu's work; which chapter Mr. Balfour has
translated and bound up with his translation
of the Tao Te Ching. There Mr. Balfour
finds that the same characters mean some-
thing quite different, viz:—'Therefore, [such
a man] is quite unfitted to use the insignia
of the Empire. If he acts, he fails; if he
grasps, he misses.'
The words, by the way, occur in Huai
Nan Tzu's own text. He does not give them
as a quotation from Lao Tzu, though the
careful reader would infer such to be the
case. They mean, literally, that the empire
is like some divine utensil which may on no
account be manipulated; signifying that the
empire may not be actively ruled, lest it
should slip from the grasp, just as the divine
utensil would perish under the grip of the
hand. There is a play upon the character
j^j which it is impossible to reproduce in
translation; but we may rest satisfied that
the sense of what Lao Tzu really said, was
this :—
The Empire is a divine (rust, and may not
be ruled. He who rules, ruins. He who
holds it by force, loses it.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
Chapters xxx, xxxi, and xxxii, are
blanks. I can find no trace in any of the
early Taoist writers of the rhapsodies which
there pass under the hand and seal of Lao
Tzu.
In chapter xxxiv, we have one short say-
ing which has been quoted by Han Fei
Tzu:—
Mighty is he who conquers himself,
with its companion saying, already dis-
cussed in ch. xxiv ; the two being in the form
of the latter, and not as here given from
the Tao Te Ching. The meaning is the
same in each case; but if Han Fei Tzu
254 THE CHINA REVIEW.
quoted from the work itself, why did he not
give the ipsissima verba ?
Both sayings'are simple enough to defy
mistranslation. Han Fei Tzu's illustration
is, however, quaint enough to be repro-
duced :—
One day Tzu Hsia and Tseng Tzu met.
The latter said ' Ha ! how fat you have
grown.' ' Yes,' replied the former, ' I have
lately won a battle.' ' What do you mean ?'
said Tseng Tzu. ' Why you see,' answered
Tzu Hsia, 'when at home 1 used to admire
the virtue of our ancient rulers; but as
soon as I got out of doors, I was attracted
by the charms of preferment and wealth.
The two attractions waged as it were a war
within me, and there was no telling which
would win. So I lost flesh. But now the
former has conquered, and 1 am fat.'
CHAPTER xxxvi.
Chapters xxxiv and xxxv may be dis-
missed without remark, as containing no-
thing from the Sage.
The whole of oh. xxxvi, with the excep-
tion of one clause expanded and another
inserted mal a propos, is quoted by Han Fei
Tzu, and partly by Huai Nan Tzu. The
former quotes the first half in connection
with part of chapter Ixiii ; and the second,
as if it had nothing whatever to do with
the first; certainly not as if the two pas-
sages both came from the same book where
they stood in juxta-position. And in so
doing, be is right.
According to Han Fei Tzu, Lao Tzu
said: —
If you would contract, you must first ex-
pand, If you would weaken, you must first
strengthen. If you would take, you must
first give.
Between the second and third clauses the
Tao Te Ching has ' If you would ruin, you
must first make prosperous.' The question
arises why Han Fei Tzu should have omit-
ted this clause.
Mr. Chalmers makes 'nature,' under-
stood, the nominative to these four sen-
tences ; but he might as well have under-
stood the Prince of Darkness, and perhaps
even better, considering the diabolical in-
terpretation of these clauses afforded by
Han Fei Tzu, who shows that, if we want to
weaken another State, we must begin by
treacherously pretending to strengthen it,
—which Lao Tzu never meant.
Omitting the inserted paragraph — ' the
soft and the weak overcome the hard and
the strong,' —we come to
[Han Fei Tzu has a |gg before ^, which,
is a rhythmical improvement ; and he reads
3$Mr.for Chalmers.
BH * As the fish cannot leave
the deep (and live), so the warlike weapons
of a nation cannot be displayed before the
people (without deadly peril).'
There is no meaning in this. The reader
asks ' deadly peril' of what ? And the one
word ' warlike ' shows that Mr. Chalmers
completely misunderstood his text. The
character for which this stands is ffl
sharp, sc. effective. Mr, Balfour says
' warlike weapons ' should be ' treasures '
and that they ' should not be employed to
influence the people,' and quotes a sentence
of Mencius which only serves to make con-
fusion worse confounded.
Now the whole sentence is clearly figura-
tive, and jjtlj T^jf means not ' warlike wea-
pons,' still less 'treasures,' but 'instruments
of government.' These are 'rewards and
punishments,' which should not be trusted
out of the hands of the Sovereign. Such is the
view of Han Fei Tzu and of Huai Nan. Tzu,
and there is no reason to question their
judgment. Han Fei Tzu goes still farther.
 THE REMAINS OF LAO TZU.
He considers that |fjjf the deep has refer-
ence to the personal influence of the So-
vereign, which once lost can never be
regained; but this seems altogether too
strained.
Huai Nan Tzu says that a certain Mini-
ster in the State of Sung, descanting to his
Sovereign on the importance of rewards and
punishments in the administration, offered
to undertake himself the infliction of the
latter, so that the Prince, being associated
in the minds of his people only with the
distribution of honours, might gain a firmer
hold upon their affections. The Prince was
charmed; but from that moment the mini-
ster became the chief object of popular
veneration, and before the year was out, he
was sitting upon the throne of his beaten
and exiled master. Therefore Lao Tzu
said:—
Fishes cannot be taken away from water ;
the instruments of government cannot be de-
legated to others.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
This chapter contains a difficult sentence
which is quoted and illustrated by Huai
Nan Tzu.
Mr. Chalmers. ' If during the process of
transformation (of all things to the likeness
of a prince who can keep Tau), there should
be any manifestation of desire, I would re-
strain it by the nameless simplicity.'
So Mr. Balfour, with a few word changes
and omission of 'the likeness of the prince.'
But all this is very unsatisfactory to the
reader who searches beneath mere words
for something worthy to be called a thought.
Huai Nan Tzu's illustration is curious ; —
Wu Wang said to T'ai-kung, ' My wresting
255
the empire from Chow Sin was an act of
regicide and insubordination. I fear lest
coming ages should see the same strife
renewed without end. What am I to do ?'
' A good question, your Highness,' replied
T'ai-kung. 'As long as you had not se-
cured your quarry, you were afraid only
lest you should not strike hard enough.
Now that you have got it, you are anxious
that the carcass should not have suffered
too much injury. If you wish to keep the
empire, then gratify the sensual inclinations
of your people; attract them towards use-
less occupations and idle disputations, in
which they will all join with avidity, sacri-
ficing nobler for baser aims. Make them
discard their lances to plant trees; ungird,
their swords to carry Court regalia; strictly
enforce three years' mourning and so repress
over-population; cause the high and the low
to make mutual concessions, and thus keep
them from quarrelling ; give them banquets
to rejoice them, music to charm them, and
religion to frighten them ; indulge in show
and ceremony in order to cramp them; in
expensive funeral rites, in order to impo-
verish them; in grand Court dresses, in
order to dissipate their wealth; and in vast
engineering works, in order to exhaust their
strength. Thus, with poor subjects and
few, your Highness' anxieties will be also
few; and you may hold the empire for ever.'
Therefore, Huai Nan Tzu tells us, Lao Tzu
said:—
Smouldering ambition I would repress by
extreme simplicity.
This appears to be a piece of political ad-
vice. Let the ruler who would keep his
throne divert the minds of his subjects from
matters of serious contemplation, as specified
in Huai Nan Tzu's illustration above. Let
them have all the show and ceremonial,
while he himself disarms the ambition of
others by making his own position apparent-
ly not worth striving for. But I am by no
means confident of this interpretation, and
will gladly surrender it for a better.
256 THE CHINA REVIEW.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
As it stands in the Tao Te Ching, this >-?
chapter is simply hopeless nonsense; and
inasmuch as its various translators have
kept closely to an occasionally corrupt text,
it follows that their several renderings, il-
lumined by no ray of personal inspiration,
can scarcely be considered representative of
the wisdom of a great teacher. Speaking
broadly, it may be affirmed that neither
Julien, nor Chalmers, nor Balfour, have
rightly interpreted one single clause in the
whole of this chapter. Of the very first,
Mr. Chalmers makes, 'The superior virtue
is not (distinguished) virtue, and therefore
it has (the essence of) virtue,' —which may
mean anything. Mr. Balfour,' with Lu Tsu's
key in Ms hand, says, ' Virtue, in those of
supreme authority, does not itself claim to
be virtue ; and that is why [virtuous rulers]
are possessed of [true] virtue.'
The text in this instance is not corrupt : —
Perfect virtue acquires nothing ; therefore it
obtains everything.
The secret of this is simple enough. In
archaic Chinese fijj. often stands for ^j|.
It does so here in reference to Nos. 4 and 8.
Also in oh. xlix. (q.v.). Lao Tzu's next
sentence clinches it : —
Perfect virtue does nothing, but there is noth-
ing which it does not do.
Here we have two of a set of sayings,
which fulfil all conditions of sense and syn-
tax, while they are moreover precisely such
as we should have expected Lao Tzu to ut-
ter. Yet the Tao Te Ching not only inserts
a ridiculously weak clause about K iffi,
but further changes $jfc 3f£ £} into $$
fiX jsl, which is actually wanted farther
on but makes nonsense here. For Lao Tzu
continues : —
Perfect charity operates, but without a cause :
Perfect duly to one's neighbour operates, but
with a cause.
'Charity,' to be understood of course in
its grandest sense, unlike ' virtue ' is active ;
still it is not evoked, it is spontaneous.
' Duty ' carries us a round lower down. It
is evoked by the social relationships which
obtain between man and man.
This is intelligible enough. Yet Mr.
Chalmers says the last two clauses mean,
' The superior benevolence does act, but it
does not make pretensions. The superior
justice both acts and makes pretensions.'
We now come ' to a more difficult sen-
tence : —
The Tao Te Ching reads TL Tfi Jj|, and
Mr. Chalmers tries his readers' patience with
the following rhodomontade : — ' The superior
propriety acts a part, and nobody responds
to it (nobody respects it as genuine) ; so it
bares its arm and enacts itself by main
force.'
Pursuing Lao Tzu's line of thought we
find that the above words mean : —
Perfect ceremony operates, but there is no
response thereto. It is acknowledged by a
motion of the arm.
Lao Tzu's ' ceremony,' be it observed, was
the ceremony of the heart, performed as a
matter rather of self-respect than of respect
for others. To this there can of course be
no response, beyond the outward and visible
sign of bows and scrapes. Han Fei Tzu,
who quotes the above chapter, has here in-
serted as a saying by Lao Tzu
Ceremonies are the outward expression of
inward feelings. "Why this should be omit-.
ted from ch. xxxviii of the Tao Te Ching,
supporters of the integrity of the text will
find it difficult to say.
As to |H fjj£, which K'ang Hsi identi-
fies with ^ |^, it is not thefirsttime
that ' bare the arm ' has been dragged out
 THE REMAINS OF LAO TZU,
of this recalcitrant combination. The phrase
occurs in Chuang Tzu, chapter ^ 5j*, and
was there explained by Mr. Balfour to
mean 'turning back the sleeves so as to
allow free play with the hands, as a man
does who is haranguing a multitude.' Re-
ference, however, will show that the passage
is wrongly rendered. Meanwhile, Mr. Bal-
four now says that ||| ^^ jjfj 'flfj ^*
means 'bare the arm and submit to the
guidance [of their rulers]'; while in ch.
Ixix, the same phrase, in a negative form, is
translated by ' appropriating [the enemy's]
possessions without infringing propriety.'
Proceeding with this chapter, we read : —
If the WA T perishes, then the virtue will
perish. 'If charity perishes, then duty to-
one's neighbour will perish. If duty to one's
neighbour perishes, then ceremonies will
perish,
The Tao Te Ching omits -ffc in each case
after :$£. Consequently, even Dr. Legge
mistranslates, 'when the Tao was lost,
goodness appeared. When goodness was
lost, benevolence appeared etc.'; and talks
about Lau Tzu wanting to trace the gradual
steps of human degeneracy. But Han Fei
Tzu supplies the true text, and his exegesis
makes it clear : —
Virtue f is the "j achievement of
Charity . yt glory „ |H
Duty ^ translation «-•
| ment of the WAY, while oft-times the source
' ™ into action" V-
.j*. ornamental ^g
Ceremony jjj
Messrs. Chalmers and Balfour have also
confined themselves to the received text of
the Tao Te Ching, with equally unfortunate
results. The curious reader will find the
passage quoted by Chuang Tzu, chapter ^f
4B j^' without the four ^ 's; but then
it is not there given as a quotation from
Lao Tzu, only as a saying, quoted together
with more stray sentences from this and
257
other chapters by the Yellow Emperor of
old!-
The Tao Te Ching continues :—
m m z "t &
Dr. Legge (based on Chalmers) : — ' Now
propriety is the attenuated form of leal-
heartedness and sincerity, and the com-
mencement of disorder. Swift apprehension
is (but) a flower of the Course, and the be-
ginning of stupidity.'
After this it is easy to understand why,
as he himself tells us, Dr. Legge has several
times made versions of the Tao Te Ching,
but has never published one. Dr. Legge is
perhaps the greatest living scholar of class-
ical Chinese, and he has always felt that
there was a great gulf between himself and
the meaning even of Lao Tzu's genuine
text, to say nothing of the gibberish which
does duty as padding for the Tao Te Ching.
It would have been better had he stayed
his hand in the British Quarterly Review.
By such translation he levels himself down
to Mr. Balfour and Lu Tsu, who render the
' Swift apprehension ' clause by, 'Those who
are in advance of others in knowledge con-
stitute the outward glory of Tao ; and from
such comes the beginning of folly.'
The sentence means :—
Ceremonies are but the veneer of loyalty
and good faith, while oft-times the source of
trouble. Foreknowledge is but a showy orna-
of folly.
That is to say, loyalty and truth can
stand of their own strength. The presence
or absence of ceremonies affects their value
but little. At the same time, ceremonies
cannot be altogether neglected, or they will
prove a source of trouble.
As to ' foreknowledge,' the term is more
or less beyond the reach of translation.
Those who were supposed to understand the
classification of things under their, proper
258 THE CHINA REVIEW.
elements, and the various laws by which
such things were governed, —these men were
said to ' foreknow ;' and it is at this form of
quackery that Lao Tzu aims his shaft.
Han Fei Tzu gives us a good illustration : —
Yen Ho was sitting with his disciples
when a cow was heard to low outside. One
of the latter said, ' I make that out to be a
black cow with white forehead.' 'No,' re-
plied Ten Ho; ''tis a black eow, but the
white is on its horn.' So they sent out to
see ; and lo ! it was a black cow with a cloth
tied round its born. Such was the specious
skill of Yen Ho. Wherefore Lao Tzu said
that such skill was but a sbowy ornament of
the WAy. For an ignorant child of five
could have run out and have found out all
about it as well as Yen Ho, after all the
labour spent in acquiring the art which
would thus he placed on a par with the
ignorance of a little boy.
I have among my notes a similar story told
of the great Chu Hsi. He was sitting one
evening with Shao K'ang-chieh, when sud-
denly a knock was heard at the door. ' Ah ! '
said Shao, here is a man who wants iron and
wood. He has come to borrow your hoe.'
' Not so,' replied Chu Hsi ; ' you have omit-
ted the element of time from your calcula-
tion. It is already dark. He would not go
hoeing at this hour. He wants the meat-
chopper,' And so he did.
The rest of this chapter is quite simple :—
1
Therefore the wise man takes his stand
upon what is substantial, and not upon what
is superficial; upon what is real, and not
upon what is showy. He rejects the latter ;
he takes the former,
CHAPTER XXXIX.
Two genuine sayings, or parts of sayings,
of Lao Tzu are, found in this chapter. The
second has already been discussed in ch.
xxviii. ,The first runs thus in the text : —
f*#f$ 13*15
Mr. Chalmers. ' Nobility is rooted in (and
entirely dependent upon) what is ignoble ;
and highness is founded and supported upon
what is low.'
The first half of this is unintelligible,
and the second paltry. Lao Tzu might have
said that the top of a hill is founded and
supported upon the bottom of a hill ; but
twenty-five centuries of thinking beings
would hardly have handed it down from one
to another as the golden saying of a sage.
Mr. Balfour, ' The ruling classes regard
the commonalty as the foundation [of their
power] and those in high position neaessarily
regard the proletariat as that upon which
they rest.'
Now this was precisely not the case. It
was Lao Tzu's ideal of what should be. It
was what he fought for ; but it was the op-
posite of the fact.
Huai Nan Tzu quotes the saying, adding
a ;Wk after ~B' and jj£. This makes clear
what Lao Tzu really said : —
He who is great must make humility his
base ; He who is high must make lowliness
CHAPTER XLI.
Chapter xl., consisting of 21 characters,
might have been passed over in silence, but
for the fact that Dr. Legge has added him-
self a third to the would-be interpreters of
nonsense. Omitting, therefore, all mention
of the versions of Messrs. Chalmers and
Balfour, the reader will be amused to hear
that the following is Dr. Legge's notion of
the wisdom of a sage, ' whose way of look-
ing at nature,' as Dr. Legge himself says,
'was that of an evolutionist,' and whose
 THE REMAINS OF LAO TZU.
' type of mind was very much akin to that
of Charles Darwin':—
All things to contraries proceed—
Such is the course at Tao's call;
Its .movement weak and hard to read,
How it goes on is hid from all.
I cannot think that Lao Tzu ever spoke
or wrote as above. The Tao Te Ching
bursts out occasionally into song; but none
of the unquestionably genuine sayings of
Lao Tzu betray any tendency to rhyme, so
that rhyme is, if anything, rather adverse
than otherwise to the genuineness of a given
passage.
We may safely leave ch. xl. to the intel- •
ligence of each individual reader, and trans-
fer our attention to ch. xli, where there is a
wider and more profitable field for investi-
gation. Skipping three sentences which
clearly belong to the days of apostolic Tao-
ism, we come to
Mr. Chalmers. ' Therefore those who have
spoken (before me) have said,'—by which of
course we understand that Lao Tzu, the re-
puted author of the Tao Te Ching, is quoting
some earlier prophet. And this is the first
of a number of sentences the earlier pro-
phet said:—
Mr. Chalmers. ' The bright in Tau are as
darkness black; The advanced in Tau are
as going back.'
Now it must be carefully noted that here
we have Lao Tzu, the founder of Taoism, the
discoverer of Tao, calmly quoting some more
ancient exponent of the WAy. I have failed
to find these words in any of the voluminous
authorities I have waded through. They
are framed upon the lines of a sentence
which occurs lower down, and which is given
by Lieh Tzii not as a quotation by Lao Tzu
from anybody else, but as one of his own
utterances ! So that either Lieh Tzu or the
Tao Te Ching, from which we are to be-
lieve he got his information, must be utterly
259
at sea as to the authorship of the saying.
The Tao Te Ching reads thus : —
Mr. Chalmers. ' The greatest pureness (is)
like the vile canaille ; The vastest talents,
those that seem to fail.'
Lieh Tzu says that Lao Tzu was rebuking
Yang Chu, and cried out
Which if it means anything means this : —
He who is truly pure behaves as though he
were sullied; He who has virtue in abun-
dance behaves as though it were not enough.
I print this saying in italics, though not
prepared to defend it as a genuine saying of
Lao Tzu. Of one thing I feel absolutely
certain, — that it was never quoted by Lao
Tzu as the utterance of an earlier sage.
A little farther on, we read in the Tao
Te Ching :—
Mr. Chalmers. ' The largest vessel takea
long to make ; The loudest voice is what
never spake.'
In the second clause, Mr. Chalmers has
totally sacrificed the sense to what was
scarcely worth it —his verse. The meaning
is:—
A great thing takes long to complete,
A great sound is seldom heard,
Han Fei Tzu quotes the saying, with the
following illustration. : —The king of Ch'u
did nothing for the first three years of his
reign. His Prime Minister then observed,.
' There has been a bird sitting for three
years quite still, without wings, without
flying, and without uttering a sound. How
can your Majesty explain that ?' 'It was
probably letting its wings grow,' replied the
king, ' and occupied itself meanwhile in
watching the people. When it does fiy, it
will soar to heaven. When it does cry,
there will be consternation among men. Be
not afraid. I understand you.' Six months
afterwards the king took the reins of gov-
ernment into his own hands, and ruled with
unparalleled success.
260 THE CHINA REVIEW.
CHAPTER XLII.
Chapter xlii. contains nothing genuine.
It is the ' Trinity ' chapter, i.e. the chapter
out of which certain missionaries, not con-
tent with the Jehovah fiasco of ch, xiv.,
managed to extract the doctrine of the Trini-
ty in full. The words are :—
* self bad there rendered what is practically
Legge. ' The Tao produced the One ; the
One produced the Two ; the Two produced
the Three; and the Three produced all
things.'
Dr. Legge rightly condemns the alleged
discovery of the Trinity in this text ; add-
ing, with equal force, that it is difficult to
say what we do find in it. After which
Dr. Legge himself runs off the rails, and
rambles on through a page and more of
'God in the Tao Te Ching:
Mr. Balfour says that Tao produced
Heaven, Heaven produced Earth, and the
Heavenly and Earthly Afflati (sic) produced
the Six Kua.
The whole passage reminds me of a
numerical proverb which I used to hear
quoted by my great-grandmother ; —
One fool makes many,
And so the world do continny.
CHAPTER XLIII.
This chapter affords a striking example of
the absurdity of the Tao Te Ching and of
the facility with which translators descend
to Avernus. The text runs thus : —
=& m fin w ,A in mi
and Julien very ingeniously rendered it by
' Les choses les plus molles du monde sub-
juguent les choses les plus dures du monde.
Le non-tire traverse les choses impene'tra-
bles.' He was aided of course by his com-
mentaries which suggested water understood.
Still, it was a clever translation, and Mr.
Chalmers wisely copied it.
Mr. Balfour alters ft into ^, and trans-
lates the second clause by 'There are no
men who persevere uninterruptedly [in the
culture of Tao].'
But if Mr. Balfour will turn to page 84
of his own work, he will find that he him-
the same phrase in a totally different way ;
viz., by, ' Issuing from nothingness it re-
turns to nowhere.'
The fact is that the isolated and unintel-
ligible passage of the Tao Te Ching has been
preserved for us illustrated and applied in
the writings of Huai Nan Tzu. In Bk. I.,
a rendering of which is bound up with Mr.
Balfour's Tao Te Ching, we read:
Therefore Lao Tzu said, 'The softest
things in the world override the hardest. It
issues from where there is no fissure, and
enters where there is no crevice.'
The it of the above is water, as the reader
will see by referring back a few columns in
Huai Nan Tzu's essay, where he says : —
1
There is nothing in the world softer than
water.' And it is in illustration of this
very unscientific remark of his own that
he quotes and applies Lao Tzu's famous say-
ing. [Meanwhile, the compiler of the Tao
Te Ching has transferred this last sentence
bodily, from the text of Huai Nan Tzu, to
ch. Ixxviii. of his own patched-up work !].
From the above quotation of Lao Tzu by
Huai Nan Tzu, a wrong inference would be
drawn. It would appear as though the |Jj£
?& A fj$| |f§ of the Tao Te Ching was
a mutilated form of a fuller expression. It
appears to me, however, that Huai Nan
Tzu here expanded Lao Tzu's real saying so
as to apply it more effectively to the imme-
diate subject of his theme, —water. I think
 THE REMAINS OF LAO TZU.
so, because in quite another part of Huai
Nan Tzu's writings, I find these words,
which I take to be the actual saying of
Lao Tzu;—
The softest things in the world override the
hardest ; That which has no substance enters
where there is no crevice,
Referring to the second of these lines,
Huai Nan Tzu gives a curious illustration :
—Light asked Nothing if it really existed
or not. Nothing did not answer, so Light
set to work to watch it. All of a sudden he
could not see it, or hear it, or touch it.
' Bravol' cried Light; 'who is equal to
that ? I can be nothing myself; but 1 can't
not be nothing.'
The whole saying of Lao Tzu ends thus : —
And so I know that there is advantage in
inaction,
CHAPTER XLIV.
Passing over the usual quota of absurdi-
ties, we here find :—
He who knows when he has enough will not
be put to shame ; He who knows when to
stop will not come to harm.
These words are quoted by Han Fei Tzu
as a saying of Lao Tzu. The first four are
also found in Huai Nan Tzu, in connection
with part of ch. vii. Happily, it is impos-
sible to misrender them.
CHAPTEr xlv.
In this short chapter we find eight cha-
racters which are given by Huai Nan Tzu
as a fragment of Lao Tzu's wisdom : —
Extreme straightness is at (bad as) crooked-
ness; Extreme cleverness is as (bad as) folly,
261
The rest of the chapter contains nothing
worthy of notice.
CHAPTER
The whole of this chapter will be found in,
Han Fei Tzu, with slight modifications. It
may conveniently be taken clause by
clause : —
Mr. Chalmers. ' 'When the world has
Tau, horses are used only for purposes of
agriculture. When the world has not Tau,
war-horses are bred on the waste common.'
Mr. Balfour. ' When the world is under
the influence of Tao [q.d, at peace], swift
horses are discarded as so much ordure.
When the world is without Tao, war-horses
are born even in remote wilds; [they are
bred everywhere].
Mr. Chalmers is right enough ag regards
the first half. Mr. Balfour is wrong in
both. What Lao Tzii said was this :—
If the WAY prevails on earth, horses
will be used for purposes of agriculture. If
the Way does not prevail, war-horses will
breed in camp,
In the former case, says Han Fei Tzu,
there will be no work for soldiers. In the
latter, lice will swarm in the amour, and
swallows build their nests in the tents,—
of soldiers who return home no more.
This is followed by :—
There is no sin greater than ambition ; no
calamity greater than discontent ; no vice
more sickening than covetousness.
Both Messrs. Chalmers and Balfour mis-
translate the first ^Jj by ' desire.' Han
Fei Tzu, however, instances the ambition of
certain famous historical personages, and so
settles the point.
262 THE CHINA REVIEW.
The chapter ends with
Mr. Chalmers (appropriated by Mr. Bal-
four) : —
' Therefore the sufficiency of contentment
is an everlasting sufficiency.'
But Han Fei Tzu tells us that Lao Tzu
said : —•
*n£2S&£
He who is content, has enough.
I have observed above that Han Fei Tzu
gives us this chapter of the Tao Te Ching,
with slight modifications. Not only is this
the case, but having occasion to give all the
chapter (except the last sentence) twice
over, he actually employs different charac-
ters. That is to say, in one place he uses
^p, in another j|j§ ; in one place $R ^S,
in another ^jj jjjjj. These modifications
make no difference to the sense. It is pos-
sible that in one place or the other his own
text may have become corrupt. It is also
possible that he may not have copied ver-
batim from a ' book.'
CHAPter XLVII.
The whole of this chapter, with the ex-
ception of four characters inserted by the
compiler as a ligature, are quoted (with
improvements) by Han Fei Tzu. The first
half is also to be found in Hnai Nan Tzu.
Han Fei Tzu says that Lao Tzu said : —
Without going out of doors, one can know the
whole world. Without looking out of win-
dow, one can know the divine WAY.
The farther one goes, the less one knows,
It almost goes without saying that Mr.
Balfour and Lu Tsu make nonsense of this.
All translators are equally at fault in
taking the words literally. For Lao Tzu's
words are figurative. He was speaking of
the doors and windows of the wind. Mr.
Chalmers, whose version is otherwise irre-
proachable, came very near apprehending
this fact. He renders the last sentence,
• The further one goes away (from himself
.... if he had only stopped there 1 But
he adds .... and from home) the less he
knows.'
The two commentators both give the same
illustration. Perhaps the younger stole it
from the elder: — When Poh Kung was
about to avenge his father, his mind was so
pre-occupied that he actually stabbed him-
self through the cheek with his spear so
severely that blood flowed freely on the
ground, without ever noticing that he had
done so. The by-standers said, ' Well, if
he forgets his own cheek, what will he not
forget'?
The chapter continues as follows :—
Without moving, you shall know; without
looking, you shall see; without doing, you
shall achieve.
It may seem incredible, but it is none the
less true, that f.or tjj as given above, the
Tao Te Ching goes out of its way to read
'j£ ; .and into this pitfall all translators
have plunged without a thought. Julien,
on the authority of certain editors, reads
35 for ^|}, which is just the very blunder
a blundering Chinese editor would be likely
to commit. Luckily) we can correct our
text by Han Fei Tzu ; though if so, where
is the authority of the Tao Te Ching ?
CHAPTEr xlviii.
This chapter ought to prove rather a
'floorer' for the genuineness of the Tao Te
Ching. It opens thus :—
These very words (minus the first four which
are a palpable gloss) will be found in Chuang
 THE REMAINS OF LAO TZU.
Tzu, chapter. $jfl jfc ^5. But not as an
extract from the work of Lao Tzu. Chuang
Tzu puts them (with others, see ch. xxxviii)
into the mouth of the Yellow Emperor, who
quotes them as an old saying. It strikes
me they are in reality Chuang Tzu's own
expansion of Lao Tzu's ^Jjf "Jjji doctrine of
inaction. At any rate, they have a clear
meaning, which Mr. Chalmers has wholly
failed to grasp. Omitting the first four
characters, Mr. Chalmers translates as fol-
lows. ' Activity (an unhealthy and in-
jurious activity) is daily diminished by Tau.
Diminish it, and again diminish it, till there
come to be absolutely none of it left. By
non-action there is nothing that may not be
done.'
What Chuang Tzu said was this:—To
practise the WAY brings about daily loss.
If that loss proceeds until inaction ensues,
then by that very inaction there is nothing
which cannot be done.
It was necessary to explain that, although
according to Lao Tzu one should ' do' no-
thing, yet one might make an exception in
favour of the WAY itself; .since the more
done, the nearer to inaction which accom-
plishes all things.
CHAPTER XLIX.
This chapter contains one very remarka-
ble saying which I have no hesitation in at-
tributing to Lao Tzu, although I have so
far failed to discover it in any of his disci-
ples' works.
Julien having failed, Mr. Chalmers also
failed, as follows :—' The good I would meet
with goodness. The not-good I would also
meet with good. Virtue is good.' — So near,
and yet so far.
Mr. Balfour. ' The virtuous I encourage
or approve ; the unvirtuous I would incite to
263
virtue. The virtue [of the Sage] makes
others virtuous.'
Dr. Legge. 'The sage ruler accepts the
good a"s good, and accepts as good also those
who are not good ; and (all thus) get to be
good.'
' Curiouser and curiouser,' as mused the
immortal Alice ; and yet the meaning lies on
the surface:—
To the good I would be good. To the not-
good 1 would also be good, in order to make
them good.
The use of TO!,
i/u*» for 5jl
i^r is common enough
in archaic Chinese. See ch. xxxviii. A.
second and similar clause, with •jpf substi-
tuted for ^, is given in the Tao Te Ching.
This is probably the work of later hands.
CHAPTER L.
Han Fei Tzu gives us this chapter almost
en bloc, with certain important and redeem-
ing modifications:—
To begin, is Life ; to end, is Death.
Such, according to Han Fei Tzu, is the
meaning of |Jj and ^.. Mr. Chalmers
says, ' Men go out of life and into death;'
but that means next to nothing. Lao Tzu
was here defining terms.
There are thirteen attendants upon life, and
thirteen attendants upon death.
For ' attendants,' Julien says ' causes.'
Mr. Chalmers gives a choice between ' mini-
sters ' and ' followers.' Mr. Balfour says
' organs' for thefirstclause, ' causes' for
the second. Han Fei Tzu says that the
thirteen in question are the four limbs,
mouth, eyes, nose etc., which are used in
life and yet bring us towards death. I give
it up. There is more about these ^ in
ch. Ixxvi., to which the reader is referred
The next sentence in the Tao Te Ching is
264 THE CHINA REVIEW.
evidently corrupt. Han Fei Tzu corrects
When people produce offspring, the off~
spring moves : and by moving brings itself
within reach of death from thirteen points.
' Movement ' was Lao Tzu's bete noire, and
it was apparently in this direction that he
was aiming; though, until we can say for
certain what the 'thirteen' refers to, we
may safely relegate the whole passage to
the category of the unknown.
We are now on somewhat firmer ground : —
Be who knows how to take care of his life,
when travelling by road never meets rhino-
ceroses, when going into a camp never pro-
vides himself with arms,
The Tao Te Ching reads *^ f or IS
•*iiJU Vfn
consequence being that we have the follow-
ing versions of the last clause : —
Mr. Chalmers, ' . . may enter an armed
host without fearing their steel.'
Mr, Balfonr, ' , . . will not shrink from
the weapons of the enemy.'
Dr. Legge, ' . . . without having to turn
aside from mail c o a l or sharp weapon.'
Julien translated the clause rightly enough;
hut he has a third reading . his weakness is called resolute, or strong
The rhinoceros has nowhere to insert its horn,
nor the tiger its claws, nor the enemy his
blade.
Han Fei Tzu says that the individual in
question avoids the haunts of wild animals
when travelling, and when entering a camp
is careful not to lay himself open to attack.
Jj^ is ' weapon ' in the preceding clause,
out ' soldier ' in this last.
The chapter ends t—
There is no exposure to death.
In conclusion, I may gay thai I consider
the whole chapter eminently unsatisfactory.
The key is missing; and it would be idle
to pretend that we have fairly grasped
whatever may lie hidden in the text.
CHAPTER LII.
Chapter li. contains nothing which we can
write down as an utterance of Lao Tzu him-
self. It is clearly the work of a disciple or
commentator, expounding the doctrine of a
master. It could never have fallen from
the lips of a man whose wisdom was given
to the world in the pithy and pregnant
maxims of which we. have already seen so
many striking and genuine examples.
In ch. lii. we read': —
; the To see the small (beginnings of things) is
clearness of sight. To rest in weakness is
strength.
Mr, Chalmers here makes one slip. He
pats ' tenderness' for ' weakness.' The idea
is of course that he who keeps his strength
in reserve, using as it were only his weak-
ness, will turn out to be the strong man in
the long run.
Mr. Balfour's version, ' He who husbands
minded,' is not only wrong in every detail,
but unintelligible into the bargain.
Han Fei Tzu, who quotes the above, illu-
strates the ' seeing small beginnings ' by the
case of Chi Tzu ^£-?-, who foresaw, when
the tyrant Chow Sin took to ivory chop-
sticks, that the tide of luxury had set in, to
bring with it licentiousness and cruelty in
its train, and to end in downfall and death.
These eight characters are followed in the
Tao Te Ching by seven more :—
Mr. Chalmers. 'Use the light to (guide
you) home to its own brightness.'
This is hopeless. Mr, Balfour,
 THE REMAINS OF LAO TZU.
(O si sic omnia!) by a sudden inspiration
managed to hit on the true meaning. But
inasmuch as the sentence in question does
not belong here at all, but to part of ch, lv.,
in connection with which it ia rightly quoted
by Huai Nan Tzu, we shall do well to re-
serve further discussion.
CHAPTER LIII.
This chapter is partly constructed out of
stray phrases gathered from Han Fei Tzu's
commentary, and partly from genuine phra-
ses of Lao Tzu's own utterance. Han Fei
Tzu's commentary here becomes of para-
mount importance. For we read
' What the book calls the Great Way, is the
WAY.'
' What it calls mao-shih (?) is a false way.'
0f •**•&*£»&
' What is called ching ta (?) is the Beautiful'
—which, Han Fei Tzu adds, is but an off-
shoot of the false way.
1 might have seen some written record of Lao
The Court being very ch'u (?), means abun-
dance of litigation'—in which case, says
Han Fei Tsu, gj ffi the fields fall out of
cultivation, the granaries in consequence be-
come empty, the State poor, the people vici-
ous, and subsequently full of guile, clothing
themselves in speciousness. This, he goes
on to explain, is what Lao Tzu meant when
he said
Carrying a sharp sword.
It is by such unlawful means that the
nobles become rich ; and it was to this that
Lao Tzu alluded when he said
Superabundance of property.
And if accumulation of property, con-
tinues Han Fei Tzu, prevails in a State, the
265
ignorant masses will naturally take to chi-
canery in imitation of their betters, and
thieving will come into vogue. The lower
classes respond to the higher precisely as the
lesser musical instruments of a band follow
the leading instrument.
'-Therefore, wearing the garb of specious-
ness, carrying sharp swords, daintiness in
food, and superabundance property,—these
are the leading instruments to robbers.'
The whole of the above is extracted from
Han Fei Tz'u's commentary. It will be
seen that there are only two sentences quot-
ed in the usual form, {Wj- Q, as direct say-
ings of Lao Tzu. The first words, however,
of the commentary mention a book, and
bring us face to face with this question:
Did Lao Tzu commit his teaching to writing?
Ssu-ma Ch'ien, who never speaks lightly,
says that Lao Tzu left a book in 5,000 and
odd characters; but that the historian had
never seen it goes without saying. Chuang
Tza, who preceded Han Fei Tzu by nearly a
century, never alludes to it, though his •
quotations of Lao Tzu, apocryphal and other-
wise, are numerous. Still, Han Fei Tzu
Tzu's. sayings, from which he copied in the
present instance. But that it could not
have been the modern Tao Te Ching, will
be evident in two words. For instance,
apart from Han Fei Tzu's other quotations
which disagree very materially from the
text of the Tao Te Ching, we have here
phrases, such as |Ej| ^ and $| J^, which
do not occur anywhere in the Tao Te Ching,
though curiously enough the characters Ijjji
and '^ do occur in this very chapter, but
in quite a different connection. The phrase
^ rg is here, and so is |Q || ggs, the
latter followed immediately by JJJ |j£ 3@|,
—a phrase which makes it clear to me that
it was- mostly from Han Fei Tzu's commen-
tary that this fifty-third chapter of the Tao
Te Ching was fraudulently pieced together;
2GC THE CHINA REVIEW.
A rather difficult point arises with regard
to the sentence ' Therefore, wearing the garb
etc.' Is it all Lao Tzu's ? Or is it an ex-
pansion of Lao Tzu's two genuine sayings
therein contained, used to explain an ob-
scure phrase j^g ^ which Lao Tzu had
uttered in that connection ? The paragraph
is not preceded by j^ Q as usual, but
only by j££. On the other hand, ^ "$F
^& is undoubtedly treated by Han Fei Tzu
as a saying of Lao Tzu, though this is rather
implied than expressed. Altogether, we are
justified in believing that Lao Tzu said
(mutatis mutandis):—
Speciousness, and oppression, and luxury,
and accumulation of property,—these are the
sources of crime.
CHAPTER LIV.
The whole of this long chapter is given
by Han Fei Tzu as utterances —not one con-
secutive utterance —of Lao Tzu. Huai Nan
Tzu quotes seven characters from it. We
may proceed by clauses : —
So far the Tao Te Ching, translated by
Mr. Chalmers : — ' The good planter (he who
plants virtue) never uproots. The good em-
bracer never lets go. His sons and grand-
sons will offer sacrifice to him without ceas-
ing.'
Mr. Balfour would have been right had
he not persisted in making ' virtue ' the sub-
ject of the first two clauses, and had he
omitted the third clause altogether.
Han Fei Tzu tells us that of old, when
lands were granted to deserving nobles, these
lands reverted to the crown after two genera-
tions. A famous general, Sun Shu-ao, chose
some desert land on the borders of the Hun
country as his reward, the result being that
his posterity were never called upon to res-
tore it. This, says Han Fei Tzu, is what
Lao Tzu meant by his saying,
He who knows how to plant, shall not have
{his plant) rooted up ; He who knows how to
hold (anything), shall not have it taken away.
Then Han Fei Tzu adds—
' Sons and grandsons will worship at his
shrine which shall endure from generation
to generation, as in the case of Sun Shu-ao.'
Of course it is quite possible that Lao
Tzu's saying extends to ^ ; but I think
not. In that case, we should still have a
difficulty on hand, — the discrepancy between
Han Fei Tzu's quotation and the text of the
Tao Te Ching, Meanwhile, in another pas-
sage, flan Fei Tzu gives a metaphysical in-
terpretation to J$" and jjj^, while leaving
the ^j£ ipJJ question undecided. To pro-
ceed : —
If a man well governs himself, his excellence
shall be real,
If he well governs his family, its resources
shall be more than enough.
If he well governs his village, its population
shall increase.
If he well governs his State, its population
shall abound.
If he well governs the Empire, its population
shall be without end,
Messrs Chalmers and Balfour have in each
case translated ^ by ' virtue,' and have
referred it to the individual who ' cultivates'
rap. But only in the first instance does ifjt
refer thus to the individual in question ; and
then only because it refers to Ijj^, which of
course refers to him. Thus Mr. Chalmers
has for No. 1, ' Whoever cultivates this in
his person, his virtue will be true ;' and by
 THE REMAINS OF LAO TZU.
1 of heaven, as the Chinese phrase has it?
this ' he means what has gone before, viz.,
good planting and good embracing. Mr.
Balfour does better with 'The virtue of him
who cultivates Tao in his own person is
genuine.' But both are wrong. Han Fei
Tzu says : —
which, on the si quid novisti principle, I
.have adopted.
Huai Nan Tzti quotes the first of the five,
with this illustration :—The Prince of Ch'u
asked Ten Ho how to govern his kingdom.
' I understand how to govern the body,'replied
Yen Ho, ' but not how to govern a king-
dom." ' But I have just established myself
on the throne,' urged the prince, ' and I
would gladly learn how to keep it.' ' Well,'
said Yen Ho, ' I have never heard of a case
in which the body was governed and the
kingdom was in disorder; nor of a case
where the body was in disorder and the
kindom was governed.'
The above scale, continues Han Fei Tzu,
may be used as a test of good report; where-
fore Lao Tzu said :—
Let every man be his own criterion ; every
family, village, and State, its own criterion ;
and the Empire its own criterion.
Mr. Chalmers, followed by Mr. Baifour,
says, ' By observing myself I know others,
etc.' But here we have a mistake in limine.
J|p is always specially used for ' self ' (ego)
in Chinese metaphysics.
The chapter concludes thus : —
For by what other criterion could I thus test
the Empire ?
It might be all very well perhaps to judge
one man or one State by another ; but how
about the Empire—all beneath the canopy
267
There would be no test for that, nothing
with which to compare the only thing of its
kind.
This last sentence is rendered by Mr.
Chalmers as follows :—' How do I know the
natural course of events in the world, but
in this way ?' Upon which the reader will
fairly ask, in what way ? And what has
this last clause got to do with those which
have gone before ?
Mr. Baifour says, ' How do I know the
acquiescence of the world [in the cultiva-
tion of Tao] ? By this method.' In which
case, we are left stranded with a ' method,'
which comes from nothing and leads to no-
where.
CHAPTER LV.
As the descent from one of Dante's horrid
bolgie to the next, so is the passage from one
obscure utterance of Lao Tzu to another ob-
scurer still.
Omitting certain spurious stuff, e.g. (Bai-
four) ' To cry all day, and yet not become
hoarse ; this comes from the completion of
the harmony,' we reach one genuine say-
ing:—
Bn&na s &
Some remarkable results have been ob-
tained from the above.
Mr. Chalmers. ' The knowledge of har-
mony is called everlasting. The knowledge
of the everlasting is called brightness. Fast
living daily grows upon a man, and as his
mind keeps in exercise the animal spirits,
they daily become stronger.'
This is a good specimen of what may fair-
ly be called impudent translation. The first
two sentences mean absolutely nothing as
they stand. Any ordinary reader, who might
light upon ' knowledge of harmony,' would
instinctively fly off at a mental tangent to
counterpoint and thorough bass. Mr. Bal-
2G8 THE CHINA REVIEW,
four does better with 'this harmony,' in al-
lusion to preceding clauses; but that in-
volves a mixture of the true and the false,
the spurious and the genuine, which cannot
be allowed to pass. Then we have the * Fast
living' paragraph, to arrive at which Q
has twice been altered to jj , an alteration
which emanated from the translator himself,
backed up possibly by an ill-printed edition.
But it is absolutely incorrect, even though
Lu Tsu and Mr. Balfour throw a sword into
the scales, with the following variety of the
'Fast living' paragraph:—'When [Tao]
is augmented, it will produce daily omens
of good. When the heart dominates the
vital energy, or breath, the man becomes
daily stronger.'
What Lao Tzu said has been already
quoted. It can hardly be rendered into in-
telligible English, though itself intelligible
enough by the light of correct exegesis.
Knowledge in harmony is called constant.
Constant knowledge is called wisdom. In~
crease of life is called felicity. The mind
directing the body is called strength.
Now the first line as it stands means of
course nothing, until we have set before us
the meaning of the term ' in harmony,' It
may be explained thus. For all practical
purposes there must always be a due har-
mony between mind and body. One must
not be allowed to outstrip the other. Under
such circumstances, the mental powers will
be constant, invariable, always equally ready
for use when called upon. And such a men-
tal condition is clearness of perception, sc.
wisdom. The third line amounts to simply
this, that if you take care of your life you
will enjoy what the world calls happiness.
And the fourth signifies that brute force is
not real force, but that force is force only
when under the guiding influence of mind.
Huai Nan Tzu gives a curious illustration
of the mutual dependence subsisting be-
tween body and mind:—Kung Tzu Mou
said to Yen Tzu, ' My body is abroad, but
my heart is at home in the metropolis.
What am I to do'? ' Let your life be your
first thought,' replied Yen Tzu, ' and then
you will care little for your mere interests.'
' I know that,' continued Kung Tzu Mou ;
' but I am nnable to force myself to act in
accordance therewith.' ' In that case,' said
Yen Tzu, ' do not try to force yourself, but
yield to your inclinations, and your mind at
any rate will not suffer. On the other
hand, to force yourself contrary to your in-
clinations would be to inflict a serious in-
jury upon your vitality. People who do
this do not live long.'
Huai Nan Tzu continues his quotation
with the words already quoted in ch. lii. of
the Tao Te Ching.-—
Wherefore use the light that is in you to re-
vert to your natural clearness of light.
CHAPTER LVI.
Those who know do not speak „• those who
speak do not know.
These words, with which this chapter .opens,
are found in Chuang Tzu, chapter ^ j|| ,
at the close of one of Lao Tzu'a short ser-
mons. In Ma version of Chuang Tzu, Mr.
Balfour says, ' The object the author has in
view in placing such words as these in the
mouth of Confucius, is certainly, obscure
enough'; —i.e. would he obscure, if true.
Chuang Tzu merely headed a paragraph
5^ -¥• Q, and Mr. Balfour led astray
by a Confucian commentator, probably a
* teacher,' penned the above mistake.
The bearing of this sentence, and its con-
nection in the Tao Te Ching, have already
been discussed in ch. ii. It is here fol-
lowed by: —
n n & $1 nFT
Huai Nan Tzu, who quotes these words,
adds, as if part of Lao Tzu's saying,
****»
and there are not sufficient grounds for
 THE REMAINS OF LAO TZU.
making these last four words' part of the
commentary. The general flow of the para-
graph is against it; and the ending would
be a forced one.
Mr. Chalmers says, the first six characters
mean, 'To shut the lips, .and close the por-
tals (of the eyes and ears).'
Mr. Balfour says, ' To repress voluptuous
desires, to close one's door.'
It is strange that no translator hitherto
should have considered the antiquity of the
text he was dealing with, and the conse-
quent values of characters, and occasional
want of syntactical exactness. It would
have stood in good stead when dealing as
here with the genuine sayings of Lao Tzu.
Thus ^ is of course fjjlj, and j3^ is fjjlj ;
and we at once have intelligibility where all
was just now obscure:—
Gratify people's wishes, and prevent
heart-longings, and your days shall end in
Huai Nan Tzu gives the following illus-
tration :—When the Princess of Ch'i died,
the Prince referred the selection of a new
consort to his ministers. One of them, de-
sirous of gratifying the wishes of his so-
vereign, presented to him (for distribution
among the Ladies of the Court), ten sets of
earrings, a particular set of which was in-
finitely more handsome than the rest. The
following day, he found-out who among the
Prince's Ladies was the fair recipient of the
handsome set, and at once recommended her
for the vacant throne; the result being that
for the future he himself occupied a high
place in his Prince's favour.
The chapter continues, with words also
quoted by Huai Nan Tzu, but in quite a
different place and in quite a different con-
nection :—
Mr. Chalmers. 'To blunt the sharp
angles, to unravel disorder, to soften the
glare, to share the dust '
Mr. Balfour. 'To chasten asperity, to
unravel confusion, to moderate one's [inter-
269
nal] radiance, to identify oneself with the
lowly.'
The above attempts do not amount to
translation. They are the efforts of men
who struggle with an admittedly obscure
text which has no meaning for them, but
out of which something has to be extracted
at all costs. See ch. iv., where the question
is also discussed.
What Lao Tzu said was as follows:—
Temper your sharpness.
Get rid of confusion (of ideas).
Moderate your brilliancy.-
Live in harmony with your age.
If these four clauses actually followed the
two previous clauses, as they are made to
do in the Tao Te Ching, then the sudden
transition from objective to subjective in
the rendering of ^ would be open to grave
objection. But this objection vanishes be-
fore the fact that Huai Nan Tzu deals with
the two paragraphs in separate parts of his
commentary, as if they had nothing to do
with each other. His illustration of the
last four clauses is characteristic:—A
newly-appointed Minister of State was sub-
mitting his intended policy to the considera-
tion of a friend. ' I intend,' said the for-
mer, ' to abolish the Lords and to equalize
salaries; to take from those who have too
much and give to those who have not
enough; to put the army in fighting order
and to try to hold my own against the rest
of the empire.' ' Well,' said the friend, ' I
have heard that the successful rulers of old
made no radical changes; but this is what
you would do. Beware how you rouse
man's natural and earliest instinct,—com-
bativeness, while you place deadly weapons
in his hand, etc., etc.' And it was in such
connection, adds Huai Nan Tzu, that Lao
Tzu uttered the four sentences I have at-
tempted to place before the reader.
CHAPTER LVII.
Passing over several invertebrate clauses,
270 THE CHINA REVIEW.
we reach a genuine saying of Lao Tzu, as
quoted by Huai Nan Tzu :—
Mr. Chalmers, 'And, as works of cunning
art are more displayed, thieves multiply.'
Mr. Balfour, ' When instruments of pun-
ishment gradually come into play, robbers
increase in number.' [Mr. Balfour reads
Dr. Legge,, ' The more display there is of
legislation, the more thieves and robbers
there are.'
Mr. Chalmers is of course out of the run-
ning altogether ; and Mr. Balfour must fall
by the weight of his own emendation. Nei-
ther do I think that Dr. Legge has hit off
the exact sense with his ' display of legisla-
tion.' Huai Nan Tzu tells that when Hwei
Wang IS J was particularly delighted
with a code of laws he had caused to be
framed, he happened to show them to Ti
Chien. 'Good !' said Ti Chien, briefly,
' Then can we promulgate them ?' said Hwei
Wang. 'No,' replied Ti Chien. 'What?'
cried Hwei Wang, ' You admit they are
good, and yet you say we cannot promulgate
them. What is the meaning of that ?'
'When coolies carry a beam,' answered Ti
Chien, ' the front ones sing out A-hoo, and
the hind ones respond, this being the chaunt
of burden-carriers. They have all the mu-
sical repertoires of the empire to choose
from, and yet they neglect them for what is
more suitable to the occasion. And an em-
pire is not to be governed by words.' It
Was in this sense that Lao Tzu said : —
Over-legislation increases crime.
The above words are followed by
' Therefore the Sage said, I do nothing, and
the people reform of themselves.'
That is, we are to understand that Lao
Tzu is here quoting some Sage anterior to
himself who had already formulated the
Doctrine of Inaction in the very terms we
are accustomed to associate with the name
and fame of Lao Tzu himself. Of course
the error is to be found in the spurious cha-
racter of the Tao Te Ching. The words I
have italicized may be taken without he-
sitation as a genuine utterance of Lao Tzu.
It was reserved for the bungling compiler of
the Tao Te Ching to make their author put
them into the mouth of somebody else.
CHAPTER LVIII.
With the exception of a few inserted cha-
racters, the chapter can be entirely con-
structed out of quotations to be found in the
various writers already cited. The opening
words are found in Huai Nan Tzu:—
who reads j|{g where the Tao Te Ching has
Sip or VM.. Mr. Chalmers misses the mean-
ing, as follows : — ' When the government is
blindly liberal, the people are rich and no-
ble. When the government is pryingly
strict, the people are needy and miserable.'
Lao Tzu said : —
If the government is tolerant, the people
will be without guile. If the government is
meddling, there will be constant infraction
of the law.
Then follows a passage quoted by Han
The last four characters, however, do not
appear in the Tao Te Ching, although they
are beyond all doubt part of Lao Tzu's say-
ing, and are dealt with as such by Han Fei
Tzu. The words mean : —
Failure is the foundation of success, and
the means by which it is achieved.
Success is the lurking-place of failure. But
who can say when the climax is reached ?
Messrs Chalmers and Balfour both make
the mistake of 'happiness' for jf§, and
render Jfjjfa by ' misery ' and ' calamity,' re-
spectively. Mr, Balfour further goes 'quite
 THE REMAINS OF LAO TZU.
out of his way to translate the first clause,
' Happiness is the correlate of misery,' which
is a perfectly indefensible rendering.
ChuangTzu, in chapter ^|I ^{J jjj!, whilst
describing life and death as consecutive parts
of one great whole, with special reference to
ch. 1,, gives the last four characters above
quoted as part of his own text, in this
form : —•
Omitting a few gloss characters, we read
on in the Tao Te Ching :—
or as Han Fei Tzu has it .
and rightly rendered by Mr. Chalmers : —
Verily, mankind have been under delusion
for many a day.
Mr. Balfour has, 'When the people are
under delusion, the days [of their prince]
cannot last long.'
The Tao Te Ching here inserts a ' there-
fore' :§£ \tH and a Sage, and we continue,
with Han Fei Tzu :—
$ 95 * $j HEffi7 8 ft «
[The Tao Te Ching reads ^ or J|l] for
j|g|.] Out of this paragraph some remark-
able meanings have been dragged.
Mr. Chalmers, ' Therefore the Sage is him-
self strictly correct, but does not cut and
carve other people. He is chaste, but does
not chasten others. He is straight, but does
not straighten others. He is enlightened,
but does not dazzle others.'
Mr. Balfour follows upon similar but more
exaggerated lines. His sense, or rather
what does duty for it, is eked out by the
curse of weak and indecisive translators —
parentheses, which ought to be abolished al-
together. Sir Thomas Wade is largely res-
ponsible for their present extended use and
the consequent want of boldness and freedom
which their use entails upon translators from
Chinese into English. Parentheses are like
swimming-corks, useful enough in the ele-
271
mentary stages, but to be cast aside by
those who can keep themselves afloat.
Meanwhile, what Lao Tzu said was this :—
Be square without being angular; Be
honest without being mean ; Be upright with-
out being punctilious; Be brilliant without
being showy.
It should be noted here that Huai Nan
Tzu quotes only the first two of the above,
and reads j|!|l for Tjjfc According to him,
then, the second clause means :—
Be honest without injuring others,
Han Fei Tzu gives the four, with the read-
ing I have adopted. It matters little which
is taken.
Huai Nan Tzu's illustration is a curious
instance of the ambiguity of the Chinese
language,—when required:—Duke Ching
asked the Court Augur to what point his
skill extended. ' To earthquakes,' answer-
ed the Augur. Later on the Duke said to
one of his ministers, ' The Augur says he
can make earthquakes. Can it really be
made to quake ?' The minister shirked the
question, but when he left the Duke he went
straight to the Augur and said, ' I have no-
ticed certain astronomical phenomena. Do
they mean that the earth is about to quake?'
' They do,' replied the Augur; whereupon
the minister straightway repaired to the pa-
lace and informed the Duke, saying, ' The
Augur did not say he could make earth-
quakes, but that his skill extended to earth-
quakes. And one is calculated to take place
immediately.' He thus saved the life of an
innocent man, at the same time acting with
due loyalty to the Duke, his liege lord.
CHAPTER LIX.
The whole of this chapter, with important
. modifications, is given by Han Fei Tzu.
I shall quote his more authoritative
text:—
In governing men and in serving Heaven,
there is nothing like moderation.
272 THE CHINA REVIEW.
So Mr. Chalmers; but he did tell his
readers that ' moderation ' here implies
keeping a reserve fund to draw upon if ne-
cessary. Mr. Balfour appears to uphold
.Blue Ribbon principles by translating ^
temperance, which as ' moderation ' is only
applied to eating and drinking. Any other
meaning of ' temperance ' would be equally
out of place here.
For only by moderation can there be early
acquiescence.
That is to say, it is only one who has not
gone to extremes who can fall in readily
with any call for modification of policy.
Thus Han Fei Tzu ; or rather, thus my own
inability to extract anything more precise
out of his commentary. Mr. Chalmers has,
'This moderation, I say, is the. first thing
to be attained.' But inasmuch as the Tao
Te Ching goes on to explain his 'first thing
'to be attained ' as a technical term, we can
only conclude that Mr. Chalmers quietly
burked the difficulty in silence.
Early acquiescence is the same as a great
storage of virtue.
With a great storage of virtue, there
naught which may not be achieved.
If there is naught which may not be achieved,
then no one will know to what extent this
power reaches.
And if no one knows to what extent a man's
power reaches, then he is fit to rule.
Having the secret of rule, his rule shall en-
dure.
Mr, Chalmers translates the first four
characters by ' such an one has the mother
of the kingdom '; but he vouchsafes no ex-
planation.
Setting the taproot deep and securing the
spreading roots, is the way to ensure long life
(to the tree).
Han Fei Tzu's commentary upon this
chapter contains another allusion to the
' book,' H £ jfjff f 1 etc. Seech.liii.
CHAPTER IX.
Like the last chapter, the whole of this
one is also quoted by Han Fei Tzu, and also
with important modifications, as follows: —
Govern a great nation as you would cook a
small fish.
That is to say, don't overdo it. Mr.
Chalmers copies from Julien and wrongly
explains, 'without gutting or scraping.'
Mr. Balfour does to the sentence precisely
what the text hints he is not to do to the
fish.
If the empire is governed according to the
WA Y, evil spirits will not be worshipped as
good ones.
£ % 7 ft £ H 7 ft
If evil spirits are not worshipped as good ones,
good ones will do no injury.
Neither will the Sages injure the people.
Each will not injure the other.
And if neither injures the other, then there
will be mutual profit.
These last few sentences are eminently
unsatisfactory. It is difficult to say what
Lau Tzu is driving at. I don't think that
even Han Fei Tzu himself had the remotest
notion of the real meaning of the text be
 THE REMAINS OF LAO TZU.
professes to explain, His explanations are
forced.
CHAPTER LXII.
Chapter Ixi. may be omitted without re-
mark.
Chapter Ixii. contains a beautiful saying
which really belongs to another in eh. xxi.,
where it has already been translated.. It
will bear repetition here :—
Now the Tao Te Ching leaves out the
second g^ ; and to make sense out of the
thus mutilated passage, Mr. Chalmers (fol-
lowing Julien) puts the stop at ^T ! By
these means, rhythm to the dogs, he man-
ages to extract, ' Good words are always
marketable. Honourable conduct is always
transferable to others.' But these are mere
words ; they contain no coherent thought of
any kind. However, such as they were,
Mr. Balfour stole them, with alterations
which make them even worse.
The sentence means, as has been already
stated : —
Good words shall gain you honour in the
market place, but good deeds shall gain you
friends among men,
CHAPTER LXIII.
This chapter opens with several precepts
which undoubtedly did not fall totidem
verbis from the lips of Lao Tzu himself.
Lao Tzu taught the doctrine of $fc ^S
inaction, and urged his disciples to make an
exception from the rule of inaction in the
one case of inaction itself. Inaction might
be acted (practised) without fear. But it
was reserved for pions enthusiasts of the
Han dynasty to make Lao Tzu talk such
nonsense as \ffe ^ \jfa ' taste the taste-
less,' which Mr, Balfour vainly tries to
273
coerce into sense by first inventing a sage as
the nominative, and then heaping eternal
ridicule upon the very word he was attempt-
ing to glorify:—' He relishes that which is
insipid—the Tao.'
The last of the opening precepts above
mentioned is one which has justly been held,
to confer upon its author, the cachet of a.
great Teacher:—
Recompense injury with kindness.
Those who, wanting in the logical faculty,
have been foolish enough to say that the
Golden Rule of Confucius ranks lower than
the Golden Rule of Christ, have here had to
take their shoes from off their feet and ad-
mit that they are upon holy ground. Never-
theless, Dr. Legge, the greatest offender of
all on the Golden Eule question, because the
most competent in other respects, cannot
resist flinging one little pebble at Lao Tzu's
gigantic monolith among aphorisms :— ' There-
hardly belongs to it a moral character.'
But we may safely leave this one of Lao
Tzu's sayings to rest upon its own merits.,
There is more chaff yet to be winnowed.
away from other and less clearly spoken.
words. Han Fei Tzu tells us that Lao Tzu
said:—
The difficult things of this world must once
have been easy ; The great things of this world
must once have been small.
Set about difficult things while they are still
easy; Do great things while they are still
It is plain that the above is the natural
order of premise and conclusion. Yet the
Tao Te Ching inverts this order; which is
probably the reason why Mr. Chalmers has.
failed to bring into relief the sense of the
first clause, while Mr. Balfour has mis-
translated both.
As part and parcel of this last saying of
274 THE CHINA REVIEW.
Lao Tzu, Han Fei Tzu goes on to quote
further, as follows : —
Poh-kuei avoided floods by stopping the cracks
in his dike; Chang -jen guarded against fire
by plastering up the fissures (of his stove).
These words, however, are not in the Tao
Te Ching ; neither is Han Fei Tzu's next
quotation, which is stated with equal dis-
tinctness to be an utterance of Lao Tzu :—
The wise man takes time by the forelock.
Han Fei Tzu even takes the trouble to
give a long illustration of the above sen-
tence, though there could hardly be much
doubt as to its meaning:—
One day the Court physician said to Duke
Huan, 'Your Grace is suffering from an
affection of the muscular system. Take
care, or it may become serious.' ' Oh no,'
replied the Duke, ' I have nothing the matter
with me;' and when the physician had gone,
he observed to his courtiers, ' Doctors dearly
love to treat patients who are not ill, and
then make capital out of the cure.' Ten
days afterwards, the Court physician again
remarked, ' Your Grace has an affection of
the flesh. Take care, or it may become
serious.' The Duke took no notice of this,
but after ten days more the physician once
more observed, ' Your Grace has an affection
of the viscers. Take care, or it may be-
come serious.' Again the Duke paid no
heed; and ten days later, when the physi-
cian came, he simply looked at his royal
patient, and departed without saying any-
thing. The Duke sent some one to enquire
what was the matter, and to him the physi-
cian said, 'As long as the disease was in the
muscles, it might have been met by fomen-
tations and hot applications; when it was
in the flesh, acupuncture might have been
employed; and as long as it was in the
viscera, cauterization might have been tried;
but now it is in the bones and marrow, and
naught will avail.' Five days later, the
Duke felt pains all over his body, and sent
to summon his physician; but the physician
had fled and the Duke died. So it is that
the skilful doctor attacks disease while it is
still in the muscles and easy to deal with.
CHAPTER LXIV.
This chapter opens with words which have
a distinct bearing upon what has been quoted
under the last chapter, and which have
moreover been discussed by Han Fei Tzu in
the same connection. Yet as they now
stand in the Tao Te Ching, the two para-
graphs are separated by padding of the
usual inferior character : —
While times are quiet, it is easy to take
action ; Ere coming troubles have cast their
shadows before, it is easy to lay plans,
Mr. Chalmers is quite wrong with ' That
which is at rest is easily held ' for the first.
Mr. Balfour is hopelessly wrong with both.
The chapter continues with a third and
weak clause, framed on the lines of the
above. Then we have some platitudes about
trees growing from small beginnings, simi-
lar ones to which will be found in Han Fei
Tzii's commentary ; and then we fly off at a
tangent with the familiar
of ch. xxix, which has no earthly business
here either with what precedes or with what
follows. For now we come to another gen-
uine utterance as quoted by Han Fei Tzu:—
Desire not to desire, and you will not value
things difficult to obtain.
Learn not to learn, and you will revert to a
condition which mankind in general have lost.
That is, to a natural instead of an artifi-
cial condition. The Tao Te Ching omits §j£
altogether. The versions of Messrs. Chal-
 THE REMAINS OF LAO TZU.
mers and Balfour (the latter borrowed) evid-
ence the fact that Lao Tzu's meaning was
' to them unknown,' as witness the conclud-
ing sentence : —
The Tao Te Ching has j|j| for *$£. Mr.
Chalmers, — ' His (the sage's) aim being to
promote spontaneity in all things, while he
dares not act (upon, them).' The meaning
is: —
Leave all things to take their natural
course, and do not interfere.
Han Fei Tzu understands, or at any rate
illustrates, this passage at an unnecessarily
low level : — A man spent three years in car-
ving a leaf out of ivory, of such elegant and
detailed workmanship that it would lie un-
detected among a heap of real leaves. But
Lieh Tzu said, ' If God Almighty were to
spend three years over every leaf, the trees
would be badly off for foliage.'
CHAPTER LXV.
From beneath Pelions and Ossas of rub-
bish, we extract the following : — *
He who governs a kingdom by shrewdness, is
of that kingdom the despoiler.
Mr. Chalmers makes terrible havoc here :
— ' He who encourages this kind of policy
(or wisdom) in the government of a kingdom
is the robber of that kingdom.'
Han Fei Tzu quotes the above, and applies
it to the destructive administration of Tzu
Ch'an
CHAPTER LXVII.
Chapter Ixvi. may be passed over without
further comment. The only gem it contains
has been tested in ch. xxii.
275
Chapter Ixvii. contains a passage quite as
famous as the Recompense injury with
kindness of ch. Ixiii. Mr. Chalmers adopt-
ed it as the motto of the neatly-bound little
volume in which, now eighteen years ago,
he so seriously misled the public as to the
real teachings of Lao Tzu. This passage
runs thus : —
Mr. Chalmers, ' As for me, I have three
precious things which I hold fast and prize.
The first is called compassion, the second is
called economy, and the third is called not
daring to take precedence of the world
(humility).' So Mr. Balfour and Dr. Legge,
with unimportant word changes. And the
chapter goes on to explain the value of the
above three virtues, winding up with a state-
ment that in war it is ' compassion ' which
ensures victories, and not 'les plus gros
bataillons,' etc., etc.
Turning now to Han Fei Tzu's comment-
ary, we find the leading sentences of this
chapter duly recorded, but taken in differ-
ent order and understood in a different sense.
Han Fei Tzu says that people who love
their children are J&& ' compassionate,' as
Mr. Chalmers would say, towards them.
Also, that people who take great care of
themselves are J^ 'compassionate' towards
their bodies. Further, that people who
strive to succeed in this world are j^ ' com-
passionate ' in all they undertake.
"We need go no further to see that some
new rendering must be substituted for a
term which already lands us in absurdity.
The word ' careful ' will, I think, be found
to stand strain better than 'compassionate.'
At any rate, we can now make sense out
of the first quotation from this chapter which
.Han Fei Tzu's commentary supplies: —•
That is to say, when all possible care has
been lavished upon any undertaking, the
person concerned can afford to display a lit-
276 THE CHINA REVIEW.
tle—not bravery but—confidence. So that
what Lao Tzu said was this:—
Be careful, and you can be confident.
Be thrifty, and you can be liberal.
Avoid putting yourself before others.
For, says Lao Tzu, if you do avoid so put-
ting yourself before others : —
A* & fi £ * &
And you can become a leader among men.
By an extraordinary coincidence Mr. Bal-
four translated this last sentence right. I
say ' extraordinary coincidence,' because the
Tao Te Ching, which he is supposed to be
translating, has altered the words into
and Mr. Chalmers and Dr. Legge, sticking
more closely to the text, have, respectively :
' I can therefore become the chief of all the
perfect ones,' and ' I can make myself a ves-
sel for the most distinguished services.'
Han Fei Tzu now points out that the care
of parent for child is exemplified in the care
which a wise general takes of his men and
of his munitions of war, which well illu-
strates the further saying of Lao Tzu : —
Be careful in attacking, and you will be
victorious ; In defending, and you will be
safe.
For the above, Mr. Chalmers has ' Com-
passion is that which is victorious in the at-
tack, and secure in the defence,' the sense
of which Mr. Balfour copies without im-
proving the words. Dr. Legge is unusually
weak ;— ' Gentleness is sure to overcome in
fight, and to be firm in maintaining its
own.' Gentleness may, indeed, overcome in
the bloodless struggles of domestic and even
social life ; but Lao Tzu was speaking of
war, and in reference to the internecine
strifes of the feudal States of early China,
where gentleness would have stood a poor
chance. The same argument disposes of a
similar, but spurious, sentence at the end
of ch. Ixix.
Running on through Han Fei Tzu's com-
mentary we come upon four characters
which mean 'is fenced in by carefulness,'
These four characters appear to have been
taken out of the commentary, fitted with a
subject, and transferred to the text of the
Tao TeChing,thus :—
Dr. Legge understands them in connec-
tion with the preceding sentence : — ' Heaven
will save its possessor, by his gentleness
protecting him.'
Returning to what Han Fei Tzu records
as Lao Tzu's own utterances, we now come
to the saying
The commentator tells us that it was in
reference to what has already been quoted
above that Lao Tzu said these words:—
I have three precious things, which I hold
fast and prize.
But beyond an inference which may be
drawn from what has preceded, we are not
told in so many words what these three pre-
cious things were. The enumeration of them
in the Tao Te Ching may be correct, but
cannot be regarded as an ipse dixit of Lao
Tzu. Meanwhile, we may rest assured that
of the three precious things in question,
' compassion' was not one.
In ch. lxix., after a sentence constructed
upon the well-known lines of ch. xlvi.—
' There is no calamity so great as despising
the enemy'—we are informed that if we do
so we shall be almost sure to lose 3S- jjP,
which Mr. Chalmers tries to burke by trans-
lating 'our treasure!' Of course the re-
ference is to the precious things above, and
that is unvarnished nonsense.
Dr. Legge saw the difficulty, and tried to
get out of it,—I think unsuccessfully :—
' There is no calamity greater than lightly
engaging an enemy. To do that is near
losing (the gentleness) which is so precious.'
 THE REMAINS OF LAO TZU.
CHAPTER LXX.
The few points calling for notice in ohs.
Ixviii, and Ixix. have been already dealt
with.
Chapter Ixx. contains a genuine and rather
troublesome saying:—
Mr. Chalmers. 'The (Lao Tzu' s) words
have an anceatry, and the things have a
Head. But because these are not under-
stood, therefore I am not known.'
Mr. Balfour comes much nearer than this.
In fact, he would have been almost right,
but for the necessity he was under of con-
sidering the aaying in connection with a
spurious text. The sentence means this : —
Speech has its clue : actions have their mo-
tives. And it is because a man knows not
the clue that he fails to understand my words.
Huai Nan Tsu quotes this saying, and
illustrates it as follows : — Poh Kung said to
Confucius, ' May allegory be used ? ' Con-
fucius, who knew that Poh Kung wanted to
consult about revenging his father's death,
made no reply. ' Suppose I were to throw a
stone into a pool,' continued Poh Kung,
' how then ?' 'A good diver would bring it
up,' answered Confucius. 'But suppose I
threw some water into the pool,' said Poh
Kung. 'Well,' replied Confucius, 'there
was I-ya, He could tell one kind of water
from another by the taste.' ' Then,' said
Poh Kung, ' I suppose allegory may not be
used, eh?' '"Who said it might not be
used ?' asked Confucius. ' The point is the
meaning. If that is known, there is no fur-
ther occasion for conveying it in speech.
He who goes a-fishing must be prepared to
get wet. He who goes a-hunting must be
prepared to use his legs. There is no choice,
So it is that the best form of speech is sil-
ence; the best form of action, inaction.
What fools strive to attain is but a trifle
after all.' Poh Kung, however, did not
grasp this. Hence his death. And it was
277
in such a sense, says Huai Nan Tzu, that
Lao Tzu uttered the above words. Huai
Nan Tzu quotes the first six again, with
CHAPTER LXXI.
This chapter opens as follows : —
Mr. Chalmers. ' The best part of know-
ledge is (conscious) ignorance. The disease
of ignorance is (the conceit of) knowledge.'
Mr. Balfour. 'Those who understand
[the Tao] are unconscious of their upward
progress. Those who count their ignorance
as knowledge, are diseased.'
And yet what Lao Tzu said lies absolute-
ly on the surface. There was no occasion
to go far afield : —
To know, but to be as though not knowing,
— is good. Not to know, but to be as though
knowing, — is evil.
Most readers will at once call to mind the
similar sentence in the Lun Yu : —
Meanwhile, there can be no doubt about the
true meaning of the above saying. Even
were the phrase as it stands in the Tao Te
Ching found to be unmanageable, we have
still Huai Nan Tzu to fall back upon. He
quotes the passage, probably as Lao Tzu
uttered it, before the compiler of the Tao Te
Ching set to work to compress here, to ex-
pand there, never for the better but always
for the worse, and then to serve up with
padding of his own as the work of one of
the mightiest teachers of old : —
The chapter concludes with a sentence
quoted by Han Fei Tzu in connection with
ch. lii., to which it would seem properly to
belong. It is inserted here, however, for
278 THE CHINA REVIEW.
no other 'reason except that 'there is a !
in both :' —
The Tao Te Ching reads 5 for the
second ~Jf\, with this result from Mr.
Chalmers : — ' The Sage has not this disease
(conceit of knowledge), because he takes it
for what it . is, and straightway he is free
from it.' Mr. Balfour says, ' The Sage, who
is not diseased, treats himself as though
he were; wherefore his disease becomes no
disease at all.' The real meaning is sim-
pler : —
The wise man's freedom from grievances
is because he will not regard them as such,
and therefore he is free from them.
CHAPTER LXXIII.
Chapter Ixxii. contains only one short
genuine saying, which has been already
dealt with under ch. xii.
i j* * % M ft
is an apparently simple and genuine saying
of Lao Tzu. It is preceded in the Tao Te
Ching by
a good instance of the way in which the
work was constructed. The first of the two,
as above quoted, is given by Huai Nan Tzu,
and has been rendered as follows : —
Mr. Chalmers. 'Another who has the
courage to restrain himself will survive.'
Mr. Balfour. ' When courage is temper-
ed with caution, a man will preserve his
life.'
Dr. Legge. 'He whose courage appears
in his not daring (to do wrong) will be pre-
served alive.'
What Lao Tzu said was simply this : —
. He who is brave enough not to venture, is
tafe.
It often requires much more moral courage
to be prudent than physical courage to be
rash. Twenty-five centuries ago, this some-
what trite sentiment was doubtless a new
light. But it carries a trifle more in the
Chinese, which I think previous transla-
tors have failed to see. Namely, that such
a man would either push forward with
courage, or retire with caution, as prudence
might in each case dictate. It does not
mean that by sheer bravery he would al-
ways be in a state of not venturing, and so
preserve his life. As a matter of fact, his
' life ' does not enter into the question.
We now come upon the following : —
which sentence, taken in .reference to what
has gone before, seems to be chiefly non-
sense, and as such it has been faithfully
reproduced by the various translators, I
select Dr. Legge's rendering : — ' The one of
these things may seem to be advantageous,
and the other to be injurious ; but
When Heaven's hatred smites a man,
Who the cause shall truly scan ?'
The passage will be found in Section vi.
of Lieh Tzu's works, where it is given as a
saying of Lao Tzu, but in a totally different
connection.
CHAPTER
This chapter concludes with these words :
Of men who try the work of a master-car-
penter, few but will cut their hands.
Dr. Legge and Mr. Chalmers both dis-
cover God in this passage, sc. the great
Architect of the Universe. Huai Nan Tzu
quotes it, but assigns no meaning beyond
that which I have given above.
CHAPTER LXXV.
This chapter ends with a few words
quoted by Huai Nan Tzu:—
 THE REMAINS OF LAO TZU.
The meaning is obvious. Yet Mr. Chalmers
says, ' But only he who takes no measures
whatever for life is above all this selfish-
ness (is superior to him who highly esteems
life).'
Mr. Balfour began by hitting off the true
meaning, and then damned his version by
giving, as an alternative for the last clause,
the equivalent of the few words which Mr.
Chalmers has enclosed in parentheses above.
. Lao Tzu said this:—
Only he who does nothing for his life's
sake, can be truly said to value his life.
CHAPTER LXXVI.
This chapter contains a sentence which
should be considered in connection with
ch. 1.,— if anywhere: —
Mr. Chalmers. ' The rigid and the strong
are the attendants of death ; and the ten-
der and weak the attendants of life.'
Apply these adjectives to the £$ of ch. 1.,
as translated by Messrs Chalmers and Bal-
four, and the result will be mixed.
' Hence the warrior when strong, does not
conquer. When a tree is strong, it becomes
a mere support.'
And the works which pass nnder the name
of Lieh Tzu, would have been something
more than ' a mere support' to Mr. Chalmers,
had he known that this passage was to be
found therein. For, among other changes,
Lieh Tzu reads j^f for ^t, ' un mot' which
Julien might well say ' a beaucoup embar-
rasse les commentateurs ;' and he thus gives
at any rate an intelligible sentence. Out of
the latter character, Mr. Balfour extracted
the following astounding meaning : — ' When
the tree is strong, a combination of strength
is used [to fell it].'
279
CHAPTER LXXVII.
This chapter opens with a simple sentence
which has strangely baffled translators, in-
cluding even the acute Julien ; and which,
although it has no claim to be included
among the genuine Fragmenta, is worth
quoting for the quaintness of the simile con-
tained :—
' The divine WAY is like the drawing of a
bow, —it brings down the high and exalts
the low.'
And any one who will think a moment
will doubtless remember that when a how,
held vertically (as the Chinese hold it), is
drawn, the upper nock is brought down
while the lower nock is brought up. Then
follow a few more characters, which not on-
ly reduce the above figure to a rhetorical
absurdity, hut which will be found almost
word for word in the illustration appended
by Huai Nan Tzu to ch. Ivi. (q.v.). I quote
from the latter, for the reader of the Tao
Te Ching to compare notes ; —
1
Spoil those who have too much to give
to those who have too little.'
The chapter ends with a repetition of five
characters found also at the close of ch. ii.,
to which the reader is referred : —
jdfifeff5^ ii <JBfor it in °h. ii.)
Messrs Balfour and Chalmers both seem to
have overlooked this fact; the consequence
being that they have modified their previ-
ous translations, with the only result that
we have now four erroneous versions of this
phrase instead of two.
CHAPTER lxxviii.
This chapter opens with a phrase which
appears in Huai Nan Tzu as part of his own.
work. It has been dealt with under ch.
xliii., and need not be reproduced here.
280 THE CHINA REVIEW.
With a few intervening characters of
gloss, we pass on to the following:—
Huai Nan Tzu quotes this saying, in an
improved form. He transposes JJ£JJ| and
ijfe. He inserts a (jj, after jjjg and ^|j;
an fjj} after £gty and a <£afterthe
second I^L. Anyhow the meaning is plain
enough : —
The weak overcomes the strong, the hard
overcomes the soft. All the world knows
this, yet none can act up to it.
' Therefore,' the Tao Te Ching continues,
—and we may at once prepare for some
egregious non-sequitur — 'the Sage said,'
which means of course that Lao Tzu says
some other Sage said : —
He who can take upon himself the nation's
shame is fit to be ruler in his State.
He who can take upon himself the nation's
calamities is fit to be ruler over the Empire.
CHAPTER LXXX.
Chapter Ixxix,. contains nothing from Lao
Tzu.
Chapter Ixxx. contains a few unimportant
characters which I have found in the body
of Huai Nan Tzu's text, with no allusion to
the Tao Te Ching :—
1 Legge, from entering upon the inquiry
States so close that they can see from
one to the other, and hear each other's cocks
and dogs.'
The incongruous way in which this sen-
tence is, not woven but, pitchforked into
the Tao Te Ching, will be seen upon
examination of the full text. It is not
worth quoting here.
Chapter Ixxxi. contains nothing over
which I should feel justified in detaining
any longer readers who must already be
weary of the fray,*
HErBErT A. GILES.
* NOTE. —Mr Giles has made a dis-
covery. He has, to all appearance, suc-
ceeded in making out a prima facie case
against the authenticity of the Tao Teh
King. Not that the authenticity of this
wonderful book was hitherto accepted in
blind faith. Scholars like Julien, Chalmers,
Balfour, and Legge were no doubt fully
aware of the mists of obscurity enveloping
the history of the text, and Mr Watters
(Lao Tszu, p. 20—24) distinctly stated,
17 years ago, with reference to the text
of the Tao Teh King, that ' here the most
bewildering uncertainty and confusion are
found.' But all these Sinologists, aware
that every ancient classical text whatso-
ever has to be taken cum grano salis, felt
morally certain that the book which finally
became known as the Tao Teh King was, on
the whole, a sufficiently typical and, so far as
could be expected under the circumstances,
even authentic representation of the teach-
ings of Lao Tszu. To translators, like Dr.
Chalmers, the Tao Teh King seemed to ap-
proach, in its lofty morality and spirituali-
ty, the sacredness of the Bible itself, and
therefore any thought of referring to
writers like Han Fei Tzu or Huai Nan
Tszu as guides either to the understanding
of Lao Tzu's meaning or to the disparagement
of the authenticity of the Tao Teh King
would have appeared to them preposterous.
Indeed it may well give the reader pause
if he considers that Mr Giles' discovery
is based on the study of Machiavellian
writers like Han Fei Tzu and Huai
Nan Tzu and that he had to go to the
writings known under these names as the
source from which his reconstruction of
the Tao Teh King is derived. A man like
Han Fei Tzu, who denied the existence
of any trustworthiness in man or woman,
father or child, is hardly a safe guide to the
meaning of anything in the Tao Teh King.
Some feeling like this probably prevented
men like Chalmers, Wylie, Faber, and
which Mr Giles has taken up and which
has resulted in the above impeachment of
the Tao Teh King as an impudent forgery.
The metaphysical passages, and those bursts
of fervid naturalism which make the
nearest approach to religion, are of course
not found in writers like Han Fei Tzu and
Huai Nan Tzu, and so Mr Giles is able to
say, with some plausibility, that they are
not Lao Tzu's at all but ' pious frauds ' and
' nonsense.' If Mr Giles is right, then Lao
Tzu -was but a man of the stamp of Han
Fei Tzu, because, forsooth, his sayings were
 MORE ABOUT CHINESE RELATIONS WITH TARTAR TRIBES,
MORE ABOUT CHINESE RELATIONS WITH TARTAR
TRIBES.
In the year A.D. 779, the T'u-fan and
the Nan Shao tribes made a raid into mo-
dern Kan Suh and Sz Ch'uan, but were
driven back. The T'u-fan at this date are
described as jjjj ^^, occupying a district
south-west of the -^ 4|t ||S. For services
rendered against the Chinese rebel ;& ^({j,
the Chinese Emperor had promised them
the modern Turfan and Urumtsi [$jf g§
•Ibj^] country, but the sparse people of
those remote regions had been so loyal, and
Li Mih [Mayers, No. 363] protested so
strongly against their being abandoned to
first put in writing by men who had low
ideas of human character and found a
meaning in them which was well illustrated
by the vilest instances of political cunning
and hypocrisy in their experience, e.g.
' with a view to getting above people, keep
in language below them.' But Mr Giles
will pardon us for expressing our conviction
that, in spite of all he has brought forward,
there is still room to believe that Lao Tzu,
or the set of men typically represented by
the term Lao Tzu, differed from men of
the Han Fei Tzu. type as much as heaven
differs from earth, and that the compiler of
the Tao Teh King, who now stands charged
with having perpetrated a pious fraud,
when he, more or less clumsily, tried to
rescue Lao Tzu's genuine sayings from the
unworthy associations in which degenerate
disciples like Han Fei Tzu and Huai Nan
Tzu placed them, was nearer the truth in
the ideal he had of Lao Tzu, more success-
ful in winnowing out the wheat from the
chaff, and a more trustworthy collector of
Lao Tzu's authentic teaching than Mr
Giles and the authors on whom he relies.
281
the ^ that we may conclude that the
population was anything but Tibeto-Mon-
golian. In the year 786, the T'u-fan, un-
der the Chief [|gf] Kieh-tsan [^g ff],
attacked the modern |ij|| >j>j>j, but were
driven back by the Chinese general Ma Sui
[Mayers, No. 475]. In the year 787, an em-
bassy was sent to the T'u-fan, who charged
the Chinese with breach of faith. In the year
787 an offer of marriage alliance, made by the
Hwui He, (jjj Hjjjj, was accepted. In the same
year the Tu-fan fortified the modern P'ing-
liang Fu in Kan Suh, a piece of policy in
In short it seems to us that both parties
in this case, the defendant, i.e. the compiler
of the Tao Teh King backed up by Julien,
Watters, Chalmers, Balfour, and Legge, and
also the complainant, i.e. Mr Giles, back-
ed up by Han Fei Tzu and Huai Nan
Tzu, dealt with the sayings of Lao Tzu
in the manner in which Mencius dealt
with Yao and Shun. Whatever Mencius
found reported and judged worthy of
his own ideal conception of Yao and
Shun, that he put down as having been
said or done by Yao and Shun and the rest
he rejected. Thus also did the compiler
of the Tao Teh King ; and Mr Giles did the
same. We give all of them credit for
having gone to work honestly according to
their several lights and peculiar prejudices
and idiosyncracies, but other critics will
have other judgments. Where no reliable
contemporary sources of information are ex-
tant, we can hardly expect anything else
but a verification of the old proverb: tot
capita tot sensus. Dr. Chalmers declines
making any reply to Mr. Giles' strictures.
•—EDIT. China Review,