Another Indian sage writes:
“At first the Universe was not anything. There was neither sky, nor earth, nor air. Being non-existent, it resolved, ‘Let me be.’ It became fervent. From that fervour smoke was produced. It again became fervent. From the fervour fire was produced. Afterwards the fire became ‘rays’[8] and the ‘rays’ condensed into a cloud, producing the sea. A magical formula (Dasahotri) was created. Prajapati is the Dasahotri.”
When the Rev. Dr. Chalmers of Canton translated the Taoist Texts into English in 1868[9], he wrote: “I have thought it better to leave the word ‘Tao’ untranslated, both because it has given the name to the sect—the Taoists—and because no English word is its exact equivalent. Three terms suggest themselves—‘the Way’, ‘Reason’, and ‘the Word’; but they are all liable to objection. Were we guided by etymology, ‘the Way’ would come nearest to the original, and in one or two passages the idea of a Way seems to be in the term; but this is too materialistic to serve the purpose of a translation. ‘Reason’ again seems to be more like a quality or attribute of some conscious Being than Tao is. I would translate it by ‘the Word’ in the sense of the Logos, but this would be like settling the question which I wish to leave open, viz. what amount of resemblance there is between the [[305]]Logos of the New Testament and this Tao, which is its nearest representative in Chinese.”
The New Testament doctrine of the Logos may here be reproduced by way of comparison, the quotation being from Dr. Weymouth’s idiomatic translation, which may be compared with the authorized versions:[10]
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing that exists came into being. In Him was Life, and that Life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overpowered it.
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, in order that he might give testimony concerning the Light—so that all might believe through him. He was not the Light, but he existed that he might give testimony concerning the Light. The true Light was that which illumines every man by its coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came into existence through Him, and the world did not recognize Him.
The meaning of the word “Tao”, says Max Von Brandt, “has never been explained or understood,” and he adds, “Like the Hellenistic ‘Logos’, it is at once the efficient and the material cause.”[11] Professor G. Foot Moore says, “Tao is literally ‘way’; like corresponding words in many languages, ‘course’, ‘method’, ‘order’, ‘norm’.”[12] Archdeacon Hardwick[13] was “disposed to argue” that the system of Taoism was founded on the idea of “some power resembling the ‘Nature’ of modern speculators. The indefinite expression ‘Tao’ was adopted to denominate an abstract cause, or the initial principle of life and order, [[306]]to which worshippers were able to assign the attributes of immateriality, eternity, immensity, invisibility.”
Canon Farrar has written in this connection: “We have long personified under the name of Nature the sum total of God’s law as observed in the physical world; and now the notion of Nature as a distinct, living, independent entity seems to be ineradicable alike from our literature and our systems of philosophy.”[14]
Dr. Legge comments on this passage: “But it seems to me that this metaphorical use of the word ‘nature’ for the Cause and Ruler of it implies the previous notion of Him, that is, of God, in the mind.”[15]
Dr. Legge notes that in Lao Tze’s treatise “Tao appears as the spontaneously operating cause of all movement in the phenomena of the universe.… Tao is a phenomenon, not a positive being, but a mode of being.”[16]
Others have rendered Tao as “God”. But “the old Taoists had no idea of a personal God,” says Dr. Legge.