It may seem a kind of divergence from our stream of history, to turn aside and tell stories from the Book of Liehtse; but there are excuses. Chinese history, literature, thought— everything—have been such a closed book to the West, that those scholars who have opened a few of its pages are to be considered public benefactors; and there is room and to spare for any who will but hold such opened pages up;—we are not in the future to dwell so cut off from a third of mankind. Also it will do us good to look at Theosophy from the angle of vision of another race. I think Liehtse has much to show us as to the difference between the methods of the Chinese and Western minds: the latter that must bring most truths down through the brain-mind, and set them forth decked in the apparel of reason; the former that is, as it seems to me, often rather childlike as to the things of the brain-mind; but has a way of bringing the great truths down and past the brain-mind by some circuitous route; or it may be only by a route much more direct than ours. The West presents its illuminations so that they look big on the surface; you say, This is the work of a great mind. A writer in the Times Literary Supplement brought out the idea well, in comparing the two poetries. What he said was, in effect, as follows:—the Western poet, too often, dons his singing robe before he will sing; works himself up; expects to step out of current life into the Grand Manner;—and unless the Soul happens to be there and vocal at the time, achieves mostly pombundle. The Chinaman presents his illumination as if it were nothing at all,—just the simplest childish-foolish thing; nothing in the world for the brain-mind to get excited about. You take very little notice at the time: more of their quaint punchinello chinoiserie, you say. Three weeks after, you find that it was a clear voice from the supermundane, a high revelation. The Chinese poet saunters along playing a common little tune on his Pan-pipes. Singing robes?— None in the world; just what he goes to work in. Grand Manner?— 'Sir,' says he, 'the contemptible present singer never heard of it; wait for that till the coming of a Superior Man.'—'Well,' you say, 'at least there is no danger of pombundle'; and indeed there is not. But you rather like the little tune, and stop to listen . . . and then . . . Oh God! the Wonder of wonders has happened, and the Universe will never be quite the dull, fool, ditchwater thing it was to you before . . .
Liehtse gives one rather that kind of feeling. We know practically nothing about him.—I count three stages of growth among the sinologists: the first, with a missionary bias; the second, with only the natural bias of pure scholarship and critical intellectualism, broad and generous, but rather running at times towards tidying up the things of the Soul from off the face of the earth; the third, with scholarship plus sympathy, understanding, and a dash of mystical insight. The men of the first stage accepted Liehtse as a real person, and called him a degenerator of Taoism, a teacher of immoral doctrine;—in the Book of Liehtse, certainly, such doctrine is to be found. The men of the second stage effectually tidied Liehtse up: Dr. H. A. Giles says he was an invention of the fertile brain of Chwangtse, and his book a forgery of Han times. Well; people did forge ancient literature in those days, and were well paid for doing so; and you cannot be quite certain of the complete authenticity of any book purporting to have been written before Ts'in Shi Hwangti's time. Also Chwangtse's brain was fertile enough for anything;—so that there was much excuse for the men of the second stage. But then came Dr. Lionel Giles* who belongs to the third stage, and perhaps is the third stage. He shows that though there is in the Book of Liehtse a residue or scum of immoral teaching, it is quite in opposition to the tendency of the teaching that remains when this scum is removed; and deduces from this fact the sensible idea that the scum was a later forgery; the rest, the authentic work of a true philosopher with an original mind and a style of his own. Such a man, of course, might have lived later than Chwangtse, and taken his nom de plume of Liehtse from the latter's book; but against this there is the fact that Liehtse's teaching forms a natural link between Chtangtse's and that of their common Master Laotse; and above all—and herein lies the real importance of him—the real Liehtse treats Confucius as a Teacher and Man of Tao. But by Chwangtse's time the two schools had separated: Confucius was Chwangtse's butt;—we shall see why. And in the scum of Liehtse he is made fun of in Chwangtse's spirit, but without Changtse's wit and style.
——— * Whose translation of parts of the Book of Liehtse, with an invaluable preface, appears in the Wisdom of the East Series; from which translation the passages quoted in this lecture are taken;—as also are many ideas from the preface. ———
So that whoever wrote this book,—whether it was the man referred to by Chwangtse when he says: "There was Liehtse again; he could ride upon the wind and go wheresoever he wished, staying away as long as thirteen days,"—or someone else of the same name, he did not take his non de plume from that passage in Chwangtse, because he was probably dead when Chwangtse wrote it. We may, then, safely call him a Taoist Teacher of the fifth century,—or at latest of the early fourth.
The book's own account of itself is, that it was not written by
Liehtse, but compiled from his oral teaching by his disciples.
Thus it begins:
"Our Master Liehtse live in the Cheng State for forty years, and no man knew him for what he was. The prince, his ministers, and the state officials looked upon him as one of the common herd. A time of dearth fell upon the state, and he was preparing to emigrate to Wei, when his disciples said to him: 'Now that our Master is going away without any prospect of returning, we have ventured to approach him, hoping for instruction. Are there no words from the lips of Hu-Ch'iu Tsu-lin that you can impart to us?'—Lieh the Master smiled and said: 'Do you suppose that Hu Tzu dealt in words? However, I will try to repeat to you what my Teacher said on one occasion to Po-hun Moujen. I was standing by and heard his words, which ran as follows.'"
Then come some rather severe metaphysics on cosmogony: really, a more systematic statement of the teaching thereon which Laotse referred to, but did not (in the Tao Teh King) define. 'More systematic,'—and yet by no means are the lines laid down and the plan marked out; there is no cartography of cosmogenesis; . . . but seeds of meditation are sown. Of course, it is meaningless nonsense for the mind to which all metaphysics and abstract thought are meaningless nonsense. Mystics, however, will see in it an attempt to put the Unutterable into words. One paragraph may be quoted:
"There is life, and That which produces life; form, and That which imparts form; sound, and That which causes color; taste, and That which causes taste. The source of life is death; but That which produces life never comes to an end."
Remember the dying Socrates: 'life comes from death, as death from life.' We appear, at birth, out of that Unseen into which we return at death, says Liehtse; but that which produces life, —which is the cause of this manifestation (you can say, the Soul),—is eternal.
"The origin of form is matter; but That which imparts form has no material existence."