Tao Te Ching

Preface by James Legge

In the “Preface” to the third volume of these Sacred Books of the East (1879), I stated that I proposed giving in due course, in order to exhibit the System of Taoism, translations of the Tao Te Ching by Laozi (sixth century BC),1 the Writings of Chuang-Tzŭ (between the middle of the fourth and third centuries BC), and the Treatise of “Actions and Their Retributions” (of our eleventh century); and perhaps also of one or more of the other characteristic Productions of the System.

The two volumes now submitted to the reader are a fulfilment of the promise made so long ago. They contain versions of the three works which were specified, and, in addition, as appendixes, four other shorter treatises of Taoism; analyses of several of the books of Chuang-tzŭ by Lin Hsi-chung; a list of the stories which form so important a part of those books; two essays by two of the greatest Scholars of China, written the one in AD 586 and illustrating the Taoistic beliefs of that age, and the other in AD 1078 and dealing with the four books of Chuang-tzŭ, whose genuineness is frequently called in question. The concluding index is confined very much to proper names. For subjects the reader is referred to the tables of contents, the introduction to the books of Chuang-tzŭ (vol. xxxix pp. 127–163), and the introductory notes to the various appendixes.2

The Treatise of Actions and Their Retributions exhibits to us the Taoism of the eleventh century in its moral or ethical aspects; in the two earlier works we see it rather as a philosophical speculation than as a religion in the ordinary sense of that term. It was not till after the introduction of Buddhism into China in our first century that Taoism began to organise itself as a religion, having its monasteries and nunneries, its images and rituals. While it did so, it maintained the superstitions peculiar to itself:—some, like the cultivation of the Tao as a rule of life favourable to longevity, come down from the earliest times, and others which grew up during the decay of the Chou dynasty, and subsequently blossomed;—now in mystical speculation; now in the pursuits of alchemy; now in the search for the pills of immortality and the elixir vitae; now in astrological fancies; now in visions of spirits and in magical arts to control them; and finally in the terrors of its purgatory and everlasting hell. Its phases have been continually changing, and at present it attracts our notice more as a degraded adjunct of Buddhism than as a development of the speculations of Laozi and Chuang-tzŭ. Up to its contact with Buddhism, it subsisted as an opposition to the Confucian system, which, while admitting the existence and rule of the Supreme Being, bases its teaching on the study of man’s nature and the enforcement of the duties binding on all men from the moral and social principles of their constitution.

It is only during the present century that the Texts of Taoism have begun to receive the attention which they deserve. Christianity was introduced into China by Nestorian missionaries in the seventh century; and from the Xi’an Monument, which was erected by their successors in 781, nearly 150 years after their first entrance, we perceive that they were as familiar with the books of Laozi and Chuang-tzŭ as with the Confucian literature of the empire, but that monument is the only memorial of them that remains. In the thirteenth century the Roman Catholic Church sent its earliest missionaries to China, but we hardly know anything of their literary labours.

The great Romish mission which continue to the present day began towards the end of the sixteenth century; and there exists now in the India Office a translation of the Tao Te Ching in Latin, which was brought to English by a Mr. Matthew Raper, and presented by him to the Royal Society, of which he was a Fellow, on January 10th, 1788. The manuscript is in excellent preservation, but we do not know by whom the version was made. It was presented, as stated in the Introduction, par. 1, to Mr. Raper by P. de Grammont, Missionarius Apostolicus, ex-Jesuita. The chief object of the translator or translators was to show that “the Mysteries of the Most Holy Trinity and of the Incarnate God were anciently known to the Chinese nation.” The version as a whole is of little value. The reader will find, in endnote 108, its explanation of Lao’s seventy-second chapter;—the first morsel of it that has appeared in print.

Protestant missions to China commenced in 1807; but it was not till 1868 that the Rev. Dr. Chalmers, a member of one of them, published his Speculations on Metaphysics, Polity, and Morality of “The Old Philosopher,” Laozi. Meanwhile, Abel-Rémusat had aroused the curiosity of scholars throughout Europe, in 1823, by his Memoir on the Life and Opinions of Laozi, a Chinese Philosopher of the sixth century before our era, who professed the opinions commonly attributed to Pythagoras, to Plato, and to their disciples. Rémusat was followed by one who had received from him his first lessons in Chinese, and had become a truly great Chinese scholar—the late Stanislas Julien. He published in 1842 “a complete translation for the first time of this memorable work, which is regarded with reason as the most profound, the most abstract, and the most difficult of all Chinese literature.” Dr. Chalmers’s translation was also complete, but his comments, whether original or from Chinese sources, were much fewer than those supplied by Julien. Two years later, two German versions of the treatise were published at Leipzig;—by Reinhold von Plänckner and Victor von Strauss, differing much from each other, but both marked by originality and ability.

I undertook myself, as stated above, in 1879 to translate for The Sacred Books of the East the texts of Taoism which appear in these volumes; and, as I could find time from my labours on The Texts of Confucianism, I had written out more than one version of Lao’s work by the end of 1880. Though not satisfied with the result, I felt justified in exhibiting my general views of it in an article in the British Quarterly Review of July, 1883.

In 1884 Mr. F. H. Balfour published at Shanghai a version of Taoist Texts, Ethical, Political, and Speculative. His Texts were ten in all, the Tao Te Ching being the first and longest of them. His version of this differed in many points from all previous versions; and Mr. H. A. Giles, of H.M.’s Consular Service in China, vehemently assailed it and also Dr. Chalmers’s translation, in the China Review for March and April, 1886. Mr. Giles, indeed, occasionally launched a shaft also at Julien and myself; but his main object in his article was to discredit the genuineness and authenticity of the Tao Te Ching itself. “The work,” he says, “is undoubtedly a forgery. It contains, indeed, much that Laozi did say, but more that he did not.” I replied, so far as was necessary, to Mr. Giles in the same Review for January and February, 1888; and a brief summary of my reply is given in the second chapter of the Introduction in this volume. My confidence has never been shaken for a moment in the Tao Te Ching as genuine relic of Laozi, one of the most original minds of the Chinese race.

In preparing the version now published, I have used:—

First, The Complete Works of the Ten Philosophers;—a Suzhou reprint in 1804 of the best editions of the Philosophers, nearly all belonging more or less to the Taoist school, included in it. It is a fine specimen of Chinese printing, clear and accurate. The Treatise of Laozi of course occupies the first place, as edited by Kuei Yu-kuang (better known as Kuei Chên-chʽuan) of the Ming dynasty. The text and commentary are those of Ho-shang Kung (Introd., par. 7), along with the division of the whole into parts and eighty-one chapters, and the titles of the several chapters, all attributed to him. Along the top of the page, there is a large collection of notes from celebrated commentators and writers down to the editor himself.

Second, the Text and Commentary of Wang Pi (called also Fu-ssŭ), who died AD 249, at the early age of twenty-four. See Introduction, par. 8.

Third, Helps (lit. Wings) to Laozi; by Chiao Hung (called also Jo-hou), and prefaced by him in 1587. This is what Julien calls “the most extensive and most important contribution to the understanding of Laozi, which we yet possess.” Its contents are selected from the ablest writings on the Treatise from Han Fei (Introd., par. 3) downwards, closing in many chapters with the notes made by the compiler himself in the course of his studies. Altogether the book sets before us the substance of the views of sixty-four writers on our short Ching. Julien took the trouble to analyse the list of them, and found it composed of three emperors, twenty professed Taoists, seven Buddhists, and thirty-four Confucianists or members of the literati. He says, “These last constantly explain Laozi according to the ideas peculiar to the school of Confucius, at the risk of misrepresenting him, and with the express intention of throttling his system;” then adding, “The commentaries written in such a spirit have no interest for persons who wish to enter fully into the thought of Laozi, and obtain a just idea of his doctrine. I have thought it useless, therefore, to specify the names of such commentaries and their authors.”

I have quoted these sentences of Julien, because of a charge brought by Mr. Balfour, in a prefatory note to his own version of the Tao Te Ching, against him and other translators. “One prime defect,” he says, though with some hesitation, “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 members of the Taoist school. The Confucian element enters largely into all; and here, I think, an injustice has been done to Laozi. To a Confucianist the Taoist system is in every sense of the word a heresy, and a commentator holding his opinion is surely not the best expositor. It is as a grammarian rather than as a philosopher that a member of the Ju Chia deals with the Tao Te Ching; he gives the sense of a passage according to the syntactical construction rather than according to the genius of the philosophy itself; and in attempting to explain the text by his own canons, instead of by the canons of Taoism, he mistakes the superficial and apparently obvious meaning for the hidden and esoteric interpretation.”

Mr. Balfour will hardly repeat his charge of imperfect or erroneous interpretation against Julien; and I believe that is equally undeserved by most, if not all, of the other translators against whom it is directed. He himself adopted as his guide the Explanations of the Tao Te Ching, current as the work of Lü Yen (called also Lü Tsu, Lü Tung-pin, and Lü Chʽung-yang), a Taoist of the eighth century. Through Mr. Balfour’s kindness I have had an opportunity of examining this edition of Lao’s Treatise; and I am compelled to agree with the very unfavourable judgement on it pronounced by Mr. Giles as both “spurious” and “ridiculous.” All that we are told of Lü Yen is very suspicious; much of it evidently false. The editions of our little book ascribed to him are many. I have for more than twenty years possessed one with the title of The Meaning of the Tao Te Ching Explained by the True Man of Chʽung-yang, being a reprint of 1690, and as different as possible from the work patronised by Mr. Balfour.

Fourth, the Tʽai Shang Hsüan Yüan Tao Te Ching—a work of the present dynasty, published at Shanghai, but when produced I do not know. It is certainly of the Lü Tsu type, and is worth purchasing as one of the finest specimens of block-printing. It professes to be the production of “The Immortals of the Eight Grottoes,” each of whom is styled “a Divine Ruler (Ti Chün).” The eighty-one chapters are equally divided for commentary among them, excepting that “the Divine Ruler, the Universal Refiner,” has the last eleven assigned to him. The text is everywhere broken up into short clauses, which are explained in a very few characters by “God, the True Helper,” the same, I suppose, who is also styled, “The Divine Ruler, the True Helper,” and comments at length on chapters 31 to 40. I mention these particulars as an illustration of how the ancient Taoism has become polytheistic and absurd. The name “God, the True Helper,” is a title, I imagine, given to Lü Tsu. With all this nonsense, the composite commentary is a good one, the work, evidently, of one hand. One of the several recommendatory preface is ascribed to Wên Chʽang, the god of literature; and he specially praises the work, as “explaining the meaning by examination of the text.”

Fifth, a Collection of the Most Important Treatises of the Taoist Fathers (Tao Tsu Chên Chʽuan Chi Yao). This was reprinted in 1877 at Changzhou in Jiangsu; beginning with the Tao Te Ching, and ending with the Kan Ying Pʽien. Between these there are fourteen other treatises, mostly short, five of them being among Mr. Balfour’s Taoist Texts. The collection was edited by a Lu Yü; and the commentary selected by him, in all but the last treatise, was by a Li Hsi-yüeh, who appears to have been a recluse in a monastery on a mountain in the department of Pao-ning, Sichuan, if, indeed, what is said of him be not entirely fabulous.

Sixth, the Commentary on the Tao Te Ching, by Wu Chʽêng (AD 1249–1333) of Lin Chʽuan. This has been of the highest service to me. Wu Chʽêng was the greatest of the Yüan scholars. He is one of the literati quoted from occasionally by Chiao Hung in his Wings; but by no means so extensively as Julien supposes (“Observations Détachées” p. xli). My own copy of his work is in the 12th section of the large Collection of the Yüeh-ya Hall, published in 1853. Writing of Wu Chʽêng in 1865 (“Proleg.” to the Shu, p. 36), I said that he was “a bold thinker and a daring critic, handling his text with a freedom which I had not seen in any other Chinese scholar.” The subsequent study of his writings has confirmed me in this opinion of him. Perhaps he might be characterised as an independent, rather than as a bold, thinking, and the daring of his criticism must not be supposed to be without caution. (See “Introd.,” p. 9.)3

I have thus set forth all that is necessary to be said here by way of preface. For various information about the treatises comprised in the appendixes,4 the reader is referred to the preliminary notes, which preceded the translation of most of them. I have often sorely missed the presence of a competent native scholar who would have assisted me in the quest of references, and in talking over difficult passages. Such a helper would have saved me much time; but the result, I think, would scarcely have appeared in any great alteration of my versions.

Was Taoism Older Than Laozi?

In writing the preface to the third volume of these Sacred Books of the East in 1879, I referred to Laozi as “the acknowledged founder” of the system of Taoism. Prolonged study and research, however, have brought me to the conclusion that there was a Taoism earlier than his; and that before he wrote his Tao Te Ching, the principles taught in it had been promulgated, and the ordering of human conduct and government flowing from them inculcated.

For more than a thousand years “the Three Religions” has been a stereotyped phrase in China, meaning what we call Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. The phrase itself simply means “the Three Teachings,” or systems of instruction, leaving the subject-matter of each “Teaching” to be learned by inquiry. Of the three, Buddhism is of course the most recent, having been introduced into China only the first century of our Christian era. Both the others were indigenous to the country, and are traceable to a much greater antiquity, so that it is a question to which the earlier origin should be assigned. The years of Confucius’s life lay between BC 551 and 478; but his own acknowledgement that he was “a transmitter and not a maker,” and the testimony of his grandson, that “he handed down the doctrines of Yao and Shun (BC 2300), and elegantly displayed the regulations of Wên and Wu (BC 1200), taking them as his model,” are well known.

Laozi’s birth is said, in the most likely account of it, to have taken place in the third year of king Ting of the Chou dynasty, (BC) 604. He was thus rather more than fifty years older than Confucius. The two men seem to have met more than once, and I am inclined to think that the name Laozi, as the designation of the other, arose from Confucius’s styling him to his disciples “The Old Philosopher.” They met as heads of different schools or schemes of thought; but did not touch, so far as we know, on the comparative antiquity of their views. It is a peculiarity of the Tao Te Ching that any historical element in it is of the vaguest nature possible, and in all its chapters there is not a single proper name. Yet there are some references to earlier sages whose words the author was copying out, and to “sentence-makers” whose maxims he was introducing to illustrate his own sentiments.5 In the most distant antiquity he saw a happy society in which his highest ideas of the Tao were realised, and in the seventeenth chapter he tells us that in the earliest times the people did not know that there were their rulers, and when those rulers were most successful in dealing with them, simply said, “We are what we are of ourselves.” Evidently mean existed to Laozi at first in a condition of happy innocence—in what we must call a paradisiacal state, according to his idea of what such a state was likely to be.

When we turn from the treatise of Laozi to the writings of Chuang-tzŭ, the greatest of his followers, we are not left in doubt as to his belief in an early state of paradisiacal Taoism. Huang Ti, the first year of whose reign is placed in BC 2697, is often introduced as a seeker of the Tao, and is occasionally condemned as having been one of the first to disturb its rule in men’s minds and break up “the State of Perfect Unity.” He mentions several sovereigns of whom we can hardly find a trace in the records of history as having ruled in the primeval period, and gives us more than one description of the condition of the world during that happy time.6

I do not think that Chuang-tzŭ had any historical evidence for the statements which he makes about those early days, the men who flourished in them, and their ways. His narratives are for the most part fictions, in which the names and incidents are of his own devising. They are no more true as matters of fact than the accounts of the characters in Bunyun’s Pilgrim’s Progress are true, with reference to any particular individuals; but as these last are grandly true of myriads of minds in different ages, so may we read in Chuang-tzŭ’s stories the thoughts of Taoistic men beyond the restrictions of place and time. He believed that those thoughts were as old as the men to whom he attributed them. I find in his belief a ground for believing myself that to Taoism, as well as to Confucianism, we ought to attribute a much earlier origin than the famous men whose names they bear. Perhaps they did not differ so much at first as they came afterwards to do in the hands of Confucius and Laozi, both great thinkers, the one more of a moralist, and the other more of a metaphysician. When and how, if they were ever more akin than they came to be; their divergence took place, are difficult questions on which it may be well to make some remarks after we have tried to set forth the most important principles of Taoism.

Those principles have to be learned from the treatise of Laozi and the writings of Chuang-tzŭ. We can hardly say that the Taoism taught in them is the Taoism now current in China, or that has been current in it for many centuries; but in an inquiry into the nature and origin of religions these are the authorities that must be consulted for Taoism, and whose evidence must be accepted. The treatise, Actions and the Responses to Them, will show one of the phases of it at a much later period.

The Texts of the Tao Te Ching and Chuang-Tzŭ Shu, as Regards Their Authenticity and Genuineness, and the Arrangement of Them

I will now state briefly, first, the grounds on which I accept the Tao Te Ching as a genuine production of the age to which it has been assigned, and the truth of its authorship by Laozi to whom it has been ascribed. It would not have been necessary a few years ago to write as if these points could be called in question, but in 1886 Mr. Herbert A. Giles, of Her Majesty’s Consular Service in China, and one of the ablest Chinese scholars living, vehemently called them in question in an article in the China Review for the months of March and April. His strictures have been replied to, and I am not going to revive here the controversy which they produced, but only to state a portion of the evidence which satisfies my own mind on the two points just mentioned.

It has been said above that the year BC 604 was, probably, that of Laozi’s birth. The year of his death is not recorded. Ssŭ-ma Chʽien, the first great Chinese historian, who died in about BC 85, commences his Biographies with a short account of Laozi. He tells us that the philosopher had been a curator of the Royal Library of Chou, and that, mourning over the decadence of the dynasty, he wished to withdraw from the world, and proceeded to the pass or defile of Hangu,7 leading from China to the west. There he was recognised by the warden of the pass, Yin Hsi (often called Kuan Yin), himself a well-known Taoist, who insisted on his leaving him a writing before he went into seclusion. Laozi then wrote his views on The Tao and its Characteristics, in two parts or sections, containing more than 5,000 characters, gave the manuscript to the warden, and went his way;8 “nor is it known where he died.” This account is strange enough, and we need not wonder that it was by and by embellished with many marvels. It contains, however, the definite statements that Laozi wrote the Tao Te Ching in two parts, and consisting of more than 5,000 characters. And that Chʽien was himself well acquainted with the treatise is apparent from his quotations from it, with, in almost every case, the specification of the author. He thus adduces part of the first chapter, and a large portion of the last chapter but one. His brief reference also to Laozi and his writings are numerous.

But between Laozi and Ssŭ-ma Chʽien there were many Taoist writers whose works remain. I may specify of them Lieh-tzŭ (assuming that his chapters, though not composed in their present form by him, may yet be accepted as fair specimens of his teaching); Chuang-tzŭ (of the fourth century BC. We find him refusing to accept high office from king Wei of Chʽu, BC 339–299); Han Fei, a voluminous author, who died by his own hand in BC 230; and Liu An, a scion of the Imperial House of Han, king of Huai-nan, and better known to us as Huan-nan Tzŭ, who also died by his own hand in BC 122. In the books of all these men we find quotations of many passages that are in our treatise. They are expressly said to be, many of them, quotations from Laozi; Han Fei several times all but shows the book beneath his eyes. To show how numerous the quotations by Han Fei and Liu An are, let it be borne in mind that the Tao Te Ching has come down to us as divided into eighty-one short chapters; and that the whole of it is shorter than the shortest of our Gospels. Of the eighty-one chapters, either the whole or portions of seventy-one are found in those two writers. There are other authors not so decidedly Taoistic, in whom we find quotations from the little book. These quotations are in general wonderfully correct. Various readings indeed there are; but if we were sure that the writers did trust to memory, their differences would only prove that copies of the text had been multiplied from the very first.

In passing on from quotations to the complete text, I will clinch the assertion that Chʽien was well acquainted with our treatise, by a passage from the History of the Former Han Dynasty (BC 206–AD 24), which was begun to be compiled by Pan Ku, who died however in 92, and left a portion to be completed by his sister, the famous Pan Chao. The thirty-second chapter of his Biographies is devoted to Ssŭ-ma Chʽien, and towards the end it is said that “on the subject of the Great Tao he preferred Huang and Lao to the six ching.” “Huang and Lao” must there be the writings of Huang Ti and Laozi. The association of the two names also illustrates the antiquity claimed for Taoism, and the subject of endnote 4.

We go on from quotations to complete texts, and turn, first, to the catalogue of the Imperial Library of Han, as compiled by Liu Hsin, not later than the commencement of our Christian era. There are entered in it Taoist works by thirty-seven different authors, containing in all 993 chapters or sections (pʽien). Yi Yin, the premier of Chʽêng Tʽang (BC 1766), heads the list with fifty-one sections. There are in it four editions of Laozi’s work with commentaries:—by a Mr. Lin, in four sections; a Mr. Fu, in thirty-seven sections; a Mr. Hsü, in six sections; and by Liu Hsiang, Hsin’s own father, in four sections. All these four works have since perished, but there they were in the Imperial Library before our era began. Chuang-tzŭ is in the same list in fifty-two books or sections, the greater part of which have happily escaped the devouring tooth of time.

We turn now to the twentieth chapter of Chʽien’s Biographies, in which he gives an account of Yüeh Yi, the scion of a distinguished family, and who himself played a famous part, both as a politician and military leader, and became prince of Wang-chu under the kingdom of Chao in BC 279. Among his descendants was a Yüeh Chʽên, who learned in Chʽi “the words,” that is, the Taoistic writings “of Huang Ti and Laozi from an old man who lived on the ho-side.” The origin of this old man was not known, but Yüeh Chʽên taught what he learned from him to a Mr. Ko, who again became preceptor to Tsʽao Tsʽan, the chief minister of Chʽi, and afterwards of the new dynasty of Han, dying in BC 190.

Referring now to the catalogue of the Imperial Library of the dynasty of Sui (AD 502–556), we find that it containd many editions of Lao’s treatise with commentaries. The first mentioned is The Tao Te Ching, with the commentary of the old man of the ho-side, in the time of the emperor Wên of Han (BC 179–142). It is added in a note that the dynasty of Liang (AD 502–556) had possessed the edition of “the old man of the ho-side, of the time of the Warring States; but that with some other texts and commentaries it had disappeared.” I find it difficult to believe that there had been two old men of the ho-side,9 both teachers of Taoism and commentators on our Ching, but I am willing to content myself with the more recent work, and accept the copy that has been current—say from BC 150, when Ssŭ-ma Chʽien could have been little more than a boy. Taoism was a favourite study with many of the Han emperors and their ladies. Huai-nan Tzŭ, of whose many quotations from the text of Lao I have spoken, was an uncle of the emperor Wên. To emperor Ching (BC 156–143), the son of Wên, there is attributed the designation of Lao’s treatise as a ching, a work of standard authority. At the beginning of his reign, we are told, some one was commending to him four works, among which were those of Laozi and Chuang-tzŭ. Deeming that the work of Huang-tzŭ and Laozi was of a deeper character than the others, he ordered that it should be called a ching, established a board for the study of Taoism, and issued an edict that the book should be learned and recited at court, and throughout the country.10 Thenceforth it was so styled. We find Huang-fu Mi (AD 215–282) referring to it as the Tao Te Ching.

The second place in the Sui catalogue is given to the text and commentary of Wang Pi or Wang Fu-ssŭ, an extraordinary scholar who died in AD 249, at the early age of twenty-four. This work has always been much prized. It was its text which Lu Tê-ming used in his Explanation of the Terms and Phrases of the Classics, in the seventh century. Among the editions of it which I possess is that printed in 1794 with the imperial moveable metal types.

I need not speak of editions or commentaries subsequent to Wang Pi’s. They soon begin to be many, and are only not so numerous as those of the Confucian Classics.

All the editions of the book are divided into two parts, the former called “Tao”, and the latter “Tê,” meaning the Qualities or Characteristics of the Tao, but this distinction of subjects is by no means uniformly adhered to.

I referred already to the division of the whole into eighty-one short chapters (37 + 44), which is by common tradition attributed to Ho-shang Kung, or “The old man of the ho-side.” Another very early commentator, called Yen Tsun or Yen Chün-ping, made a division into seventy-two chapters (40 + 32), under the influence, no doubt, of some mystical considerations. His predecessor, perhaps, had no better reason for his eighty-one; but the names of his chapters were, for the most part, happily chosen, and have been preserved. Wu Chʽêng arranged the two parts in sixty-seven chapters (31 + 36). It is a mistake, however, to suppose, as even Mr. Wylie with all his general accuracy did,11 that Wu “curtails the ordinary text to some extent.” He does not curtail, but only rearranges according to his fashion, uniting some of Ho-shang Kung’s chapters in one, and sometimes altering the order their clauses.

Ssŭ-ma Chʽien tells us that, as the treatise came from Laozi, it contained more than 5,000 characters; that is, as one critic says, “more than 5,000 and fewer than 6,000.” Ho-shang Kung’s text has 5,350, and one copy 5,590; Wang Pi’s, 5,683, and one copy 5,610. Two other early texts have been counted, giving 5,720 and 5,635 characters respectively. The brevity arises from the terse conciseness of the style, owing mainly to the absence of the embellishment of particles, which forms so striking a peculiarity in the composition of Mencius and Chuang-tzŭ.

In passing on to speak, secondly and more briefly, of the far more voluminous writings of Chuang-tzŭ, I may say that I do not know of any other book so ancient a date as the Tao Te Ching, of which the authenticity of the origin and genuineness of the text can claim to be so well substantiated.12