Fetching
One moment.
Fetching
One moment.
Romanised transliteration as printed by the translator, not the original script. This is what we hold.
1Only one chapter, the twentieth, has somewhat of an autobiographical character. It tells us, however, of no incidents of his life. He appears alone in the world through his cultivation of the TAo, melancholy and misunderstood, yet binding that Tao more closely to his bosom. The Books of Kwang-jze are of a different nature, abounding in pictures of Taoist life, in anecdotes and narratives, graphic, argumentative, often satirical. But they are not historical. Confucius and many of his disciples, Lao and members of his school, heroes and sages of antiquity, and men of his own day, move across his pages; but the incidents in connexion with which they are introduced are probably fictitious, and devised by him ‘to point his moral or adorn his tale.” His names of individuals and places are often like those of Bunyan in his Pilgrim’s Progress or his Holy War, emblematic of their characters and the doctrines which he employs [39] D 34 THE TEXTS OF TAOISM. CH. Iv. them to illustrate. He often comes on the stage himself, and there is an air of verisimilitude in his descriptions, possibly also a certain amount of fact about them; but we cannot appeal to them as historical testimony. It is only to Sze-ma Ahien that we can go for this; he always writes in the spirit of an historian; but what he has to tell us of the two men is not much. And first, as to his account of Lao-3ze. When he wrote, about the beginning of the first century B.C., the Taoist master was already known as Léo-jze. Kien, however, tells us that his surname was Li, and his name R, meaning ‘Ear,’ which gave place after his death to Tan, meaning ‘ Long-eared,’ from which we may conclude that he was named from some peculiarity in the form of his ears. He was a native of the state of Kd, which had then extended far beyond its original limits, and his birth-place was in the present province of Ho-nan or of An-hui. He was a curator in the Royal Library; and when Confucius visited the capital in the year B.C. 517, the two men met. A4ien says that Confucius’s visit to Lo-yang was that he might question Lao on the subject of ceremonies. He might have other objects in mind as well; but however that was, the two met. Li said to Khung, ‘The men about whom you talk are dead, and their bones are mouldered to dust ; only their words are left. Moreover, when the superior man gets his opportunity, he mounts aloft; but when the time is against him, he is carried along by the force of circumstances?.. I have heard that a good merchant, though he have rich treasures safely stored, appears as if he were poor; and that the superior man, though his virtue be complete, is yet to outward seeming stupid. Put away your proud air and many desires, your insinuating habit and wild will. They are of no advantage to you ;—this is all I have to tell you.’ Confucius is made to say to his disciples after the interview: ‘I know how
2Put away your proud air and many desires, your insinuating habit and wild will. They are of no advantage to you ;—this is all I have to tell you.’ Confucius is made to say to his disciples after the interview: ‘I know how 1 Julien translates this by ‘il erre 4 l’aventure.”? In 1861 I rendered it, ‘He moves as if his feet were entangled.’ To one critic it suggests the idea of a bundle or wisp of brushwood rolled about over the ground by the wind. CH. IV. INTRODUCTION. 35 birds can fly, fishes swim, and animals run. But the runner may be snared, the swimmer hooked, and the flyer shot by the arrow. But there is the dragon:—I cannot tell how he mounts on the wind through the clouds, and rises to heaven. To-day I have seen Lao-3ze, and can only compare him to the dragon.’ In this speech of Confucius we have, I believe, the origin of the name L4o-3ze, as applied to the master of Taoism. Its meaning is ‘The Old Philosopher, or ‘The Old Gentleman'.’ Confucius might well so style Li R. At the time of this interview he was himself in his thirty-fifth year, and the other was in his eighty-eighth. Aien adds, ‘LAéo-jze cultivated the T4o and its attributes, the chief aim of his studies being how to keep himself concealed and remain unknown. He continued to reside at (the capital of) KAu, but after a long time, seeing the decay of the dynasty, he left it and went away to the barriergate, leading out of the kingdom on the north-west. Yin Hsi, the warden of the gate, said to him, “ You are about to withdraw yourself out of sight. Let me insist on your (first) composing for me a book.” On this, Lao-3ze wrote a book in two parts, setting forth his views on the T4o and its attributes, in more than 5000 characters. He then went away, and it is not known where he died. He was a superior man, who liked to keep himself unknown.’ Khien finally traces Lao’s descendants down to the first century B.C., and concludes by saying, ‘Those who attach themselves to the doctrine of Lao-3ze condemn that of the Literati, and the Literati on their part condemn L4o- 3ze, verifying the saying, “Parties whose principles are different cannot take counsel together.” Li & taught that by doing nothing others are as a matter of course trans- 1 The characters may mean ‘the old boy,’ and so understood have given rise to various fabulous legends; that his mother had carried him in her womb for seventy-two years (some say, for eighty-one), and that when born the child had the white hair of an old man. Julien has translated the fabulous legend of Ko Hung of our fourth century about him. By that time the legends of Buddhism about Sakyamuni had become current in China, and were copied and applied to Lao-3ze by his followers. Looking at the meaning of the two names, I am surprised no one has characterized Lao-3ze as the Chinese Seneca. D2 36 THE TEXTS OF TAOISM. CH, IV. formed, and that rectification in the same way ensues from being pure and still’
3Looking at the meaning of the two names, I am surprised no one has characterized Lao-3ze as the Chinese Seneca. D2 36 THE TEXTS OF TAOISM. CH, IV. formed, and that rectification in the same way ensues from being pure and still’ This morsel is all that we have of historical narrative about Ldo-3ze. The account of the writing of the Tao Teh Xing at the request of the warden of the barrier-gate has a doubtful and legendary appearance. Otherwise, the record is free from anything to raise suspicion about it. It says nothing about previous existences of Lao, and nothing of his travelling to the west, and learning there the doctrines which are embodied in his work. He goes through the pass out of the domain of Kau, and died no one knowing where. It is difficult, however, to reconcile this last statement with a narrative in the end of AKwang-3ze’s third Book. There we see Léo-3ze dead, and a crowd of mourners wailing round the corpse, and giving extraordinary demonstrations of grief, which offend a disciple of a higher order, who has gone to the house to offer his condolences on the occasion. But for the peculiar nature of most of Kwang’s narratives, we should say, in opposition to A/ien, that the place and time of Lao’s death were well known. Possibly, however, Kwang-jze may have invented the whole story, to give him the opportunity of setting forth what, according to his ideal of it, the life of a Taoist master should be, and how even Léo-jze himself fell short of it. Second, Khien’s account of Kwang-jze is still more brief. He was a native, he tells us, of the territory of Mang, which belonged to the kingdom of Liang or Wei, and held an office, he does not say what, in the city of AAi-yiian. Kwang was thus of the same part of China as Lao-jze, and probably grew up familiar with all his speculations and lessons. He lived during the reigns of the kings Hui of Liang, Hsiian of Ki, and Wei of Khd. We cannot be wrong therefore in assigning his period to the latter half of the third, and earlier part of the fourth century B.c. He was thus a contemporary of Mencius. They visited at the same courts, and yet neither ever mentions the other. They were the two ablest debaters of their day, and fond of exposing what they deemed heresy. But it would only be CH. Iv. INTRODUCTION. 37 a matter of useless speculation to try to account for their never having come into argumentative collision.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
Romanised transliteration as printed by the translator, not the original script. This is what we hold.
1Only one chapter, the twentieth, has somewhat of an autobiographical character. It tells us, however, of no incidents of his life. He appears alone in the world through his cultivation of the TAo, melancholy and misunderstood, yet binding that Tao more closely to his bosom. The Books of Kwang-jze are of a different nature, abounding in pictures of Taoist life, in anecdotes and narratives, graphic, argumentative, often satirical. But they are not historical. Confucius and many of his disciples, Lao and members of his school, heroes and sages of antiquity, and men of his own day, move across his pages; but the incidents in connexion with which they are introduced are probably fictitious, and devised by him ‘to point his moral or adorn his tale.” His names of individuals and places are often like those of Bunyan in his Pilgrim’s Progress or his Holy War, emblematic of their characters and the doctrines which he employs [39] D 34 THE TEXTS OF TAOISM. CH. Iv. them to illustrate. He often comes on the stage himself, and there is an air of verisimilitude in his descriptions, possibly also a certain amount of fact about them; but we cannot appeal to them as historical testimony. It is only to Sze-ma Ahien that we can go for this; he always writes in the spirit of an historian; but what he has to tell us of the two men is not much. And first, as to his account of Lao-3ze. When he wrote, about the beginning of the first century B.C., the Taoist master was already known as Léo-jze. Kien, however, tells us that his surname was Li, and his name R, meaning ‘Ear,’ which gave place after his death to Tan, meaning ‘ Long-eared,’ from which we may conclude that he was named from some peculiarity in the form of his ears. He was a native of the state of Kd, which had then extended far beyond its original limits, and his birth-place was in the present province of Ho-nan or of An-hui. He was a curator in the Royal Library; and when Confucius visited the capital in the year B.C. 517, the two men met. A4ien says that Confucius’s visit to Lo-yang was that he might question Lao on the subject of ceremonies. He might have other objects in mind as well; but however that was, the two met. Li said to Khung, ‘The men about whom you talk are dead, and their bones are mouldered to dust ; only their words are left. Moreover, when the superior man gets his opportunity, he mounts aloft; but when the time is against him, he is carried along by the force of circumstances?.. I have heard that a good merchant, though he have rich treasures safely stored, appears as if he were poor; and that the superior man, though his virtue be complete, is yet to outward seeming stupid. Put away your proud air and many desires, your insinuating habit and wild will. They are of no advantage to you ;—this is all I have to tell you.’ Confucius is made to say to his disciples after the interview: ‘I know how
2Put away your proud air and many desires, your insinuating habit and wild will. They are of no advantage to you ;—this is all I have to tell you.’ Confucius is made to say to his disciples after the interview: ‘I know how 1 Julien translates this by ‘il erre 4 l’aventure.”? In 1861 I rendered it, ‘He moves as if his feet were entangled.’ To one critic it suggests the idea of a bundle or wisp of brushwood rolled about over the ground by the wind. CH. IV. INTRODUCTION. 35 birds can fly, fishes swim, and animals run. But the runner may be snared, the swimmer hooked, and the flyer shot by the arrow. But there is the dragon:—I cannot tell how he mounts on the wind through the clouds, and rises to heaven. To-day I have seen Lao-3ze, and can only compare him to the dragon.’ In this speech of Confucius we have, I believe, the origin of the name L4o-3ze, as applied to the master of Taoism. Its meaning is ‘The Old Philosopher, or ‘The Old Gentleman'.’ Confucius might well so style Li R. At the time of this interview he was himself in his thirty-fifth year, and the other was in his eighty-eighth. Aien adds, ‘LAéo-jze cultivated the T4o and its attributes, the chief aim of his studies being how to keep himself concealed and remain unknown. He continued to reside at (the capital of) KAu, but after a long time, seeing the decay of the dynasty, he left it and went away to the barriergate, leading out of the kingdom on the north-west. Yin Hsi, the warden of the gate, said to him, “ You are about to withdraw yourself out of sight. Let me insist on your (first) composing for me a book.” On this, Lao-3ze wrote a book in two parts, setting forth his views on the T4o and its attributes, in more than 5000 characters. He then went away, and it is not known where he died. He was a superior man, who liked to keep himself unknown.’ Khien finally traces Lao’s descendants down to the first century B.C., and concludes by saying, ‘Those who attach themselves to the doctrine of Lao-3ze condemn that of the Literati, and the Literati on their part condemn L4o- 3ze, verifying the saying, “Parties whose principles are different cannot take counsel together.” Li & taught that by doing nothing others are as a matter of course trans- 1 The characters may mean ‘the old boy,’ and so understood have given rise to various fabulous legends; that his mother had carried him in her womb for seventy-two years (some say, for eighty-one), and that when born the child had the white hair of an old man. Julien has translated the fabulous legend of Ko Hung of our fourth century about him. By that time the legends of Buddhism about Sakyamuni had become current in China, and were copied and applied to Lao-3ze by his followers. Looking at the meaning of the two names, I am surprised no one has characterized Lao-3ze as the Chinese Seneca. D2 36 THE TEXTS OF TAOISM. CH, IV. formed, and that rectification in the same way ensues from being pure and still’
3Looking at the meaning of the two names, I am surprised no one has characterized Lao-3ze as the Chinese Seneca. D2 36 THE TEXTS OF TAOISM. CH, IV. formed, and that rectification in the same way ensues from being pure and still’ This morsel is all that we have of historical narrative about Ldo-3ze. The account of the writing of the Tao Teh Xing at the request of the warden of the barrier-gate has a doubtful and legendary appearance. Otherwise, the record is free from anything to raise suspicion about it. It says nothing about previous existences of Lao, and nothing of his travelling to the west, and learning there the doctrines which are embodied in his work. He goes through the pass out of the domain of Kau, and died no one knowing where. It is difficult, however, to reconcile this last statement with a narrative in the end of AKwang-3ze’s third Book. There we see Léo-3ze dead, and a crowd of mourners wailing round the corpse, and giving extraordinary demonstrations of grief, which offend a disciple of a higher order, who has gone to the house to offer his condolences on the occasion. But for the peculiar nature of most of Kwang’s narratives, we should say, in opposition to A/ien, that the place and time of Lao’s death were well known. Possibly, however, Kwang-jze may have invented the whole story, to give him the opportunity of setting forth what, according to his ideal of it, the life of a Taoist master should be, and how even Léo-jze himself fell short of it. Second, Khien’s account of Kwang-jze is still more brief. He was a native, he tells us, of the territory of Mang, which belonged to the kingdom of Liang or Wei, and held an office, he does not say what, in the city of AAi-yiian. Kwang was thus of the same part of China as Lao-jze, and probably grew up familiar with all his speculations and lessons. He lived during the reigns of the kings Hui of Liang, Hsiian of Ki, and Wei of Khd. We cannot be wrong therefore in assigning his period to the latter half of the third, and earlier part of the fourth century B.c. He was thus a contemporary of Mencius. They visited at the same courts, and yet neither ever mentions the other. They were the two ablest debaters of their day, and fond of exposing what they deemed heresy. But it would only be CH. Iv. INTRODUCTION. 37 a matter of useless speculation to try to account for their never having come into argumentative collision.
The source text as printed, transcribed diplomatically. Where the source language uses a non-Latin script that reaches us only through a Victorian romanisation, this layer is labelled transliteration, because that is what we hold.
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