The next home-grown religion in China is Taoism, ascribed to Lâo-tzé. Of him and of his life, if we exclude mere legends, even less is known than of Confucius. Some have, indeed, gone so far as to deny his existence altogether, and though his reported interview with Confucius has been generally considered as establishing once for all the historical character of both these sages, even that meeting, fixed as having taken place about 517 B.C., might well be the product of tradition only. Something like it has happened, indeed, to most founders of religion. Tradition adds so many fanciful and miraculous traits to the real story of their lives that, like a tree smothered and killed by ivy, the subject of all these fables, the stem round which the ivy clusters, becomes almost invisible, and seems at last to be fabulous itself. Still the trunk must have been there, and must have been real in order to serve as the support of that luxuriant ivy. It is said, for instance, of Lâo-tzé that his mother bore him for seventy-two years, and that, when he was born at last, in 604 B.C., he had already white hair. Is it not palpable how this tradition arose? Lâo-tzé was the name given to him, and that name signifies Old Child, or Old Boy. This name being once given, everything else followed. He was born with white hair, and spoke words of wisdom like an old man. Even the very widely spread idea that the fathers of these wonderful heroes were old men recurs in this instance, for the father of Confucius also was said to have been well stricken in years. But, after all, the parents and what was fabled or believed about them in China are nothing to us.
