The full-juiced apple, waxing over-mellow,
Drops in a silent autumn night.
All its allotted length of days,
The flower ripens in its place,
Ripens and fades, and falls, and hath no toil,
Fast-rooted in the fruitful soil.”[30]
Lao-tzŭ’s mode of contemplating natural phenomena is, indeed, altogether much more like that of the poetical metaphysician than that of the physicist. He does not look upon a stream, for example, as composed of certain chemical elements in certain proportions, as running at a calculable rapid rate, carrying with it an alarming amount of mud, and having in each microscopic drop exactly so many thousands of animalculæ. He thinks of it rather as at first a tiny stream up among the hills, scooping out the hard earth, and slowly wearing away impeding stones, in order to make a channel for its waters; as flowing thence down into the vale where it gives itself up to enrich the fields; then as passing on thence to join the brimming river, and finally submit itself to the great sea.[31] He regards everything from an ethical point of view, and finds a lesson everywhere. He does not regard the study of nature as consisting in the investigation of colour, sound, heat, and such things—the less one has to do with these the better. The study should be carried on in one’s own room without any adventitious aids. The student must overcome his affections and passions before he can attain to a knowledge of the great mysteries of Nature, but having once attained the serene heights of desireless existence he can know all things.[32] This is no doubt a bad way of studying nature, and one which would never conduct to the material benefit of humanity. Yet it also has its uses. It helps to make us “mingle with the universe,” have a lower appreciation of ourselves, and sympathise affectionately with all that surrounds us. We have abundance of room in the world for the two classes of philosophers—those who experiment on Nature with a view to the material progress of mankind, and those who regard her with the dutiful love of a son for a mother.
In the teachings of Lao-tzŭ in Speculative Physics, as sketched above, the student of philosophy will find many ideas resembling others with which he is already more familiar. To those of the sages of Ancient Greece it is perhaps unnecessary for me to do more than refer. With them as living also in the comparative childhood of the world Lao-tzŭ might naturally be supposed to have considerable affinity. In the Timæus of Plato there is a passage which does not accord with the rest of that work, nor with the spirit of the other Platonic dialogues, and which bears considerable resemblance to the doctrine of Lao-tzŭ about the primordial all-producing Nature (Tao). The hero of the dialogue, if such an expression may be used, Timæus himself, suddenly leaves the train of imaginative discourse which he had been for some time pursuing about the visible universe and the mode in which the divine artificer constructed it, and he introduces a new conception, that of the primeval mother, formless, immortal, and indestructible.[33] Reference has already been made to the resemblance between Lao-tzŭ’s teachings and those of Anaximander, and Hegel says of the latter’s notion, that the ἄπειρον is the principle from which endless worlds or gods originate and into which they vanish, that it sounds quite Oriental.[34] But not only are Lao-tzŭ’s speculations on physics like those of other ancients, they resemble also those of many modern philosophers, and his theory about the study of Nature may well be compared with that of Schelling. The Tao itself, or the primordial existence, appears under various names in the history of Philosophy. It is the Tʽai-chi (太極) or Great Extreme—the Tʽai-yi (太一) or Great Unit—the Anima Mundi—the Absolute—the Vital Force—Gravity—Caloric—when considered as universally active and productive.
“There is but one vast universal dynamic, one mover, one might,
Variously operant under the various conditions it finds;