Chuang Tzu: Mystic, Moralist, and Social Reformer

Mystic, Moralist, and Social Reformer
TRANSLATED FROM THE CHINESE
HERBERT A. GILES
H. B. M.'s Consul at Tamsui
London BERNARD QUARITCH 1889

He is noticed by the historian Ssŭ-ma Ch'ien, who flourished at the close of the second century B.C., as follows:—

To enable the reader to understand more fully the writings of Chuang Tzŭ, and to appreciate his aim and object, it will be necessary to go back a few more hundred years.
In the seventh century B.C., lived a man, now commonly spoken of as Lao Tzŭ. He was the great Prophet of his age. He taught men to return good for evil, and to look forward to a higher life. He professed to have found the clue to all things human and divine.
He seems to have insisted that his system could not be reduced to words. At any rate, he declared that those who spoke did not know, while those who knew did not speak.
But to accommodate himself to conditions of mortality, he called this clue TAO, or The Way, explaining that the word was to be understood metaphorically, and not in a literal sense as the way or road upon which men walk.