[43] See The Prince, chs, 8, 178.
[44] See The Prince, ch. 14.
[45] Do. ch. 18.
[46] Ch. 16, &c.
CHAPTER VII.
ETHICS.
Lao-tzŭ’s notions on ethics are fortunately set forth with much more fulness than on any other department of knowledge, and in giving a brief account of them one is rather encumbered by the abundance of aphorisms than perplexed by their paucity. In saying this, however, I do not mean to intimate that the philosopher has elaborated a system of speculative or practical morality, or that he has given full and explicit statements about the moral sense and many other subjects familiar to the student of western ethics. On several of these points he is absolutely silent, and his notions about others are expressed darkly and laconically, and only occasionally in a connected manner. We must, however, make the most we can of the obscure text and discordant commentaries, in order to learn at least an outline of what our author taught.
In the first place, Lao-tzŭ seems to have believed in the existence of a primitive time, when virtue and vice were unknown terms.[1] During this period everything that man did was according to Nature (Tao), and this not by any effort on man’s part, but merely as the result of his existence. He knew not good or evil, nor any of the relative virtues and vices which have since obtained names. This was the period of Nature in the world’s history, a period of extreme simplicity of manners and purity of life corresponding to the Garden-of-Eden state of the Hebrews, before man perceived that he was unclothed, and became as a God knowing good and evil. To this succeeded the period of Virtue (德) in two stages or degrees. The higher is almost identical with the state of Nature, as in it also man led a pure life, without need of effort and without consciousness of goodness. Of the people of this period we may speak as the
“Saturni gentem, haud vinclo nec legibus æquam,
Sponte sua, veterisque dei se more tenentem.”[2]
In the next and lower stage life was still virtuous, though occasionally sliding into vice, and unable to maintain the stability of unconscious and unforced excellence.[3] Then came the time when humanity and equity appeared, and when filial piety and integrity made themselves known.[4] These were degenerate days when man was no more “Nature’s priest” and when the “vision splendid” had almost ceased to attend him. Finally came the days when craft and cunning were developed, and when insincerity arose. Propriety and carefulness of external deportment also, according to Lao-tzŭ, indicated a great falling away from primitive simplicity the beginning of trouble; and he, accordingly, speaks of them rather slightingly. This is a point on which Confucius seems to have been of a very different opinion, although he had studied the ceremonial code under Lao-tzŭ.