The triumph of Confucianism in the centuries which intervened between Lao Tzŭ and Chuang Tzŭ would account for the antagonism between Taoism and Confucianism as we find it. But it fails to account for the way in which Confucius is sometimes represented as playing into the hands of Taoism. On p. [85] f. n. the translator explains it as a literary coup de main. Dr. Chalmers, quoted by Dr. Legge,[51] says that both Chuang Tzŭ and Lieh Tzŭ introduced Confucius into their writings "as the lords of the Philistines did the captive Samson on their festive occasions, 'to make sport for them.'" But there is not a hint of this given in the text, though throughout one long chapter (chap. iv) we find Confucius giving a Taoist refutation of Confucianist doctrines when defended by his own pupil Yen Hui. It might seem like an attempt to draw a distinction between Confucius and Confucianism, though elsewhere Confucius is ridiculed as wanting in sense.
May not the explanation be as follows?—
(i.) Lao Tzŭ and Confucius were probably much nearer to one another philosophically than the Taoism of Chuang Tzŭ and the Confucianism of Mencius. The passages in which Confucius talks Taoism would, on this hypothesis, represent a traditional survival of their real relations to one another. The episode of Confucius' visit to Lao Tzŭ "to ask about the Tao," would, whether it records a fact or not, tend in the same direction.
(ii.) From the first we may assume that the one took an ideal, the other a practical and utilitarian view of Tao "the Way"; Confucius finding it in social duties and the work of practical life, Lao Tzŭ in the hidden and the inward, the "interior life," as Christian mystics would call it. Thus the historian Ssŭ-ma Ch'ien[52] says, "Lao Tzŭ cultivated the Tao and virtue, his chief aim in his studies being how to keep himself concealed and unknown. Seeing the decay of the dynasty he withdrew himself out of sight, and no one knows where he died."
(iii.) The divergence between the two views, the ideal and the actual, the mystical and the practical, would increase with time, each intensifying the other by opposition and reaction, until the practical won its way to security, and the mystical got left out in the cold, perhaps persecuted, certainly suspected, and treated as heterodox, and naturally retaliating by scornful criticism of the dominant view. When this stage is reached, Mencius regards Lao Tzŭ as a heresiarch, while Chuang Tzŭ often treats Confucius with contempt and ridicule. For "the Way that is walked upon is not the Way," and "the Tao which shines forth is not Tao" (p. [25]). But Confucianism being "established," the Taoists are now "dissenters," and not being strong enough to disestablish Confucianism become more and more mystical, and content themselves with a policy of protest.
If there is little direct evidence for this theory as to the relations of Taoism and Confucianism, there is a curious parallel in Western thought. When Plato was known only in a neo-Platonic disguise, and Aristotle judged by the Organon, it was possible for partisans to represent the two philosophers as typical opposites, and to assume that "every one is born a Platonist or an Aristotelian," forgetting that Aristotle was Plato's pupil, and both were followers of Socrates. Later on, when Aristotelianism became "established" as the Christian philosophy, Platonism, which survived in the more mystical schoolmen, fell under suspicion, and not unfrequently justified the suspicion by developing in the direction of Pantheism. It was not till the thirteenth century that the world appealed from Platonists and Aristotelians to Plato and Aristotle, and discovered that the divergent streams flowed from neighbouring springs. Such an appeal, it is to be feared, is hardly possible in the case of Lao Tzŭ and Confucius, especially as the authenticity of the Tao-Tê-Ching is still in controversy among Sinologues.
My object, however, in this note, which has grown out of all proportion, was not to suggest a theory as to the possible relations of Lao Tzŭ and Confucius, but to point out what seemed to be a remarkable parallel between the teaching of Chuang Tzŭ and Heracleitus. In doing this I have accepted Mr. Giles's translation as an ultimate fact, for the simple reason that I do not know a single Chinese character. So far, therefore, as the translation prejudices or prejudges questions of Chinese scholarship, I must leave the defence to the translator. It is also possible, and more than possible, that my Western preconceptions may have biassed my judgment of Chuang Tzŭ's philosophical teaching. Recent attempts[53] to draw a parallel between the life of Gautama and the life of Christ have shown how easy it is unconsciously to read between the lines, and find parallelisms where they do not exist. If I have been guilty in the same way, then, with Socrates in the Republic, I say, "I can but suffer the penalty of ignorance; and that penalty is, to be taught by those who know."
A. L. M.