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.
What we want to know is what the Old Boy thought and taught, and this is what we find in the Tâo-teh-King. Nor does it help us much if we read of the modern state of Taoism, in which the sublime ideas of Lâo-tzé seem entirely swamped by superstitions, jugglery, foolish ceremonies, and idolatry. On the contrary, we shall have to forget all that Taoism has become in later times, and what it is at the present day, if we want to understand the ideas of the old philosopher. We are told that at present those who profess Taoism belong to the lowest and most degraded classes of society in China, nor do we ever hear of the spreading of Taoism beyond its national frontiers or of any attempts to spread it abroad by means of missionary efforts. In fact, we can hardly doubt that Taoism, in this respect at least, resembled Confucianism. Both were homegrown national forms of religious and mythological faith, both sprang up from a confused and ill-defined mass of local customs and popular legends, sacrificial traditions, medical and hygienic observances—with this difference, however, that the teaching of Confucius acted from the very first prohibitively against the mass of existing superstitious beliefs and practices of the common people, and laid the strongest stress on ethical and political principles, excluded polytheism and all talk about transcendent matters, while Taoism excluded little or nothing, but was ready to accept whatever the people had believed in for centuries, only adding what must always have been a philosophy first and a religion afterwards—the belief in Tâo. In 140 B.C. a learned scholar of the name of Tung Chung-shî recommended to the Emperor Wû that all studies not found in the six departments of knowledge and in other arts sanctioned by Confucius should be strictly forbidden, so that the people should know what to follow, and that the depraved and perverse talk which was heard at that time should cease once for all. But the Emperor, though aware of the evil, threw himself for many years into the arms of the charlatans, mostly Taoists, much as he afterwards repented of his folly. What made Taoism so popular was that the Taoists preferred to practise ever so many of the black arts. They professed to change baser metals into gold, to brew the elixir of immortality, to produce manifestations of the spirits, and to perform similar tricks which have found credence at all times and in all countries among the ignorant masses, sometimes even at Courts and among people who ought to have known better.
What we want to know is what the Old Boy thought and taught, and this is what we find in the Tâo-teh-King. Nor does it help us much if we read of the modern state of Taoism, in which the sublime ideas of Lâo-tzé seem entirely swamped by superstitions, jugglery, foolish ceremonies, and idolatry. On the contrary, we shall have to forget all that Taoism has become in later times, and what it is at the present day, if we want to understand the ideas of the old philosopher. We are told that at present those who profess Taoism belong to the lowest and most degraded classes of society in China, nor do we ever hear of the spreading of Taoism beyond its national frontiers or of any attempts to spread it abroad by means of missionary efforts. In fact, we can hardly doubt that Taoism, in this respect at least, resembled Confucianism. Both were homegrown national forms of religious and mythological faith, both sprang up from a confused and ill-defined mass of local customs and popular legends, sacrificial traditions, medical and hygienic observances—with this difference, however, that the teaching of Confucius acted from the very first prohibitively against the mass of existing superstitious beliefs and practices of the common people, and laid the strongest stress on ethical and political principles, excluded polytheism and all talk about transcendent matters, while Taoism excluded little or nothing, but was ready to accept whatever the people had believed in for centuries, only adding what must always have been a philosophy first and a religion afterwards—the belief in Tâo. In 140 B.C. a learned scholar of the name of Tung Chung-shî recommended to the Emperor Wû that all studies not found in the six departments of knowledge and in other arts sanctioned by Confucius should be strictly forbidden, so that the people should know what to follow, and that the depraved and perverse talk which was heard at that time should cease once for all. But the Emperor, though aware of the evil, threw himself for many years into the arms of the charlatans, mostly Taoists, much as he afterwards repented of his folly. What made Taoism so popular was that the Taoists preferred to practise ever so many of the black arts. They professed to change baser metals into gold, to brew the elixir of immortality, to produce manifestations of the spirits, and to perform similar tricks which have found credence at all times and in all countries among the ignorant masses, sometimes even at Courts and among people who ought to have known better.
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