Lao Tze[1] means “Old Boy”, as Osiris, in his Libyan form, is said to mean the “Old Man”.[2] He was given this name by his followers, because “his mother carried him in her womb for seventy-two years, so that when he was at length cut out of it his hair was already white”. Julius Cæsar was reputed to have been born in like [[300]]manner; so was the Gaelic hero, Goll MacMorna, who, as we gather from Dunbar, was known in the Lowlands as well as the Highlands; the poet makes one of his characters exclaim,
My fader, meikle Gow mas Mac Morn,
Out of his moderis (mother’s) wame was shorn.
The same legend clings to the memory of Thomas the Rhymer, who is referred to in Gaelic as “the son of the dead woman” (mac na mna marbh), because his mother died before the operation was performed. Shakespeare’s Macduff “was from his mother’s womb untimely ripped”.[3]
It may be that this widespread birth-story had its origin in Egypt. Plutarch, in his treatise on the Mystery of Osiris and Isis, tells that Set (the ancient god who became a devil) was “born neither at the proper time, nor by the right place”, but that he “forced his way through a wound which he had made in his mother’s side”.
Different forms of the legend are found in China. According to the traditions preserved in the “Bamboo Books”, which are of uncertain antiquity, the Emperor Yao was born fourteen months after he was conceived, the Emperor Yu emerged from his mother’s back, and the Emperor Yin from his mother’s chest. The Aryo-Indian hero, Karna, a prominent figure in the Mahábhárata, emerged from one of his mother’s ears; he was a son of Surya, the sun-god.
LAO TZE AND DISCIPLES
From a Chinese painting in the British Museum
According to Taoist lore (after Buddhism and Taoism were partly fused in China), Lao Tze appeared from time to time in China during the early dynasties in different forms, and with different names. He had the [[301]]personal knowledge of the decline of the influence of the Tao from the Perfect Age. After Fu-hi and other sovereigns disturbed the harmonies of heaven and earth, “the manners of the people, from being good and simple, became bad and mean”. He came to cleanse the stream of spiritual life at its source, and was ultimately reborn as Lao Tze, under the Plum Tree of Longevity, having been conceived under the influence of a star in the constellation of the Great Bear. Li (plum tree) was his surname.