Where are you to say that Liehtse's Confucianism ends, and his Taoism begins? It is very difficult to draw a line. Confucius, remember, gave "As-the-heart" for the single character that should express his whole doctrine. Liehtse is leading you inward, to see how the conduct of life depends upon Balance, which also is a word that may translate Tao. Where the balance is, there we come into relations with the great Tao. There is nothing supra-Confucian here; though soon we may see an insistence upon the Inner which, it may be supposed, later Confucianism, drifting toxards externalism, would hardly have enjoyed.—A man in Sung carved a mulberry-leaf in jade for his prince. It took three years to complete, and was so well done, so realistic in its down and glossiness, that if placed in a heap of real mulberry-leaves, it could not be distinguished from them. The State pensioned him as a reward; but Liehtse, hearing of it, said: "If God Almighty took three years to complete a leaf, there would be very few trees with leaves on them. The Sage will rely less on human skill and science, than on the evolution of Tao."

Lung Shu came to the great doctor Wen Chih, and said to him: "You are the master of cunning arts. I have a disease; can you cure it, Sir?" "So far," said Wen Chih, "you have only made known your desire. Please let me know the symptoms of your disease." They were, utter indifference to the things and events of the world. "I hold it no honor to be praised in my own village, nor disgrace to be decried in my native State. Gain brings me no joy, loss no sorrow. I dwell in my home as if it were a mere caravanserai, and regard my native district as though it were one of the barbarian kingdoms. Honors and rewards fail to rouse me, pains and penalties to overawe me, good or bad fortune to influence me; joy or grief to move me. What disease is this? What remedy will cure it?" *

——— * I may say here that though I am quoting the speeches more or less directly from Dr. Lionel Giles' translation, too many liberties are being taken, verbally, with the narative parts of these stories, to allow quotation marks and small type. One contracts and expands (sparingly, the latter); but gives the story. ———

Wen Chih examined his heart under X-rays;—really and truly that is in effect what Liehtse says.—"Ah," said he, "I see that a good square inch of your heart is hollow; you are within a little of being a true Sage. Six of the orifices are open and clear, and only the seventh is blocked up. This last is doubtless due to the fact that you are mistaking for a disease what is in reality an approach to divine enlightenment. It is a case in which my shallow art is of no avail."

I tell this tale, as also that other about the exchange of hearts, partly to suggest that Liehtse's China may have had the actuality, or at least a reminiscence, of scientific knowledge since lost there, and only discovered in Europe recently. In the same way one finds references to automatic oxen, self-moving chariots, traveling by air, and a number of other things which, as we read of them, sound just like superstitious nonsense. There are old Chinese drawings of pterodactyls, and suchlike unchancey antediluvian wild fowl. Argal, (you would say) the Chinese knew of these once; although Ptero and his friends have been extinct quite a few million years, one supposes. Or was it superstition again? Then why was it not superstition in Professor So-and-so, who found the bones and reconstructed the beastie for holiday crowds to gaze upon at the Crystal Palace or the Metropolitan Museum? Knowledge does die away into reminiscence, and then into oblivion; and the chances are that Liehtse's time retained reminiscences which have since become oblivion-hidden;—then rediscovered in the West.—But I tell the tale also for a certain divergence marked in it, between Taoist and Confucian thought. Laotse would have chuckled over it, who brooded much on 'self-emptiness' as the first step towards illumination. Confucius would have allowed it; but it would not have occurred to him, unsuggested.

Now here is something still further from Confucianism; something prophetic of later Taoist developments, though it still contains Laotse's thought, and—be it said—deep wisdom.

Fan Tsu Hua was a bully and a charlatan, who by his trickery had won such hold over the king of Tsin that anyone he might recommend was surely advanced to office, and anyone he cried down would lose his all. So it was said he had magic to make the rich poor and the poor rich. He had many disciples, who were the terror of the peaceably disposed.

One day they saw an old weak man approaching, 'with weather-beaten face and clothes of no particular cut.' A chance for sport not to be neglected, they thought; and began to hustle him about in their usual fashion, 'slapping him on the back, and what not.' But he—Shang Ch'iu K'ai was his name—seemed only full of joy and serenity, and heeded nothing. Growing tired of their fun at last, they would make an end of it; and led him to the top of a high cliff. "Whoever dares throw himself over," said one of them, "will find a hundred ounces of silver," which certainly he had not had with him at the top, and none of them had put there.

It was a wonder; and still more a wonder his being unhurt; but you can make chance account for most things, and they meant to get rid of him. So they brought him to the banks of the river, saying: "A pearl of great price is here, to be had for the diving." In he went without a word, and disappeared duly; and so, thought they, their fun had come to a happy end. But no: as they turned to go, up he came, serene and smiling, and scrambled out. "Well; did you find the pearl?" they asked. "Oh yes," said Shang; "it was just as your honors said." He showed it to them; and it was indeed a pearl of great price.

Here was something beyond them; the old man, clearly, was a favorite of Fortune; Fan their master himself must deal with him. So they sent word ahead, and brought him to the palace of Fan. Who understood well the limitations of quack magic: if he was to be beaten at these tricks, where would his influence be? So he heaped up riches in the courtyard, and made a great fire all round.—"Anyone can have those things," he announced, "who will go in and get them." Shang quietly walked through the flames, and came out with his arms full; not a hair of his head was singed.

And now they were filled with consternation; they had been making a mock of Tao these years; and here evidently was a real Master of Tao, come to expose them.—"Sir," they said, "we did not know that you posessed the Secret, and were playing you tricks. We insulted you, unaware that you were a divine man. But you have leaped from the cliff, dived into the Yellow River, and walked through the flames without injury; you have shown us our stupidity, blindness, and deafness. We pray you to forgive us, and to reveal to us the Secret."

He looked at them in blank amazement.—"What is this you are telling me?" said he. "I am only old Shang Ch'iu K'ai the peasant. I heard that you, Sir, by your magic could make the poor rich. I wanted to be rich, so I came to you. I believed in you absolutely, and in all your disciples said; and so my mind was made one; I forgot my body; I saw nothing of cliffs or fire or water. But now you say you were decieving me, my soul returns to its perplexity, and my eyes and ears to their sight and hearing. What terrible dangers I have escaped! My limbs freeze with horror to think of them."

Tsai Wo, continues Liehtse, told this story to Confucius.—"Is this so strange to you?" said the latter. "The man of perfect faith can move heaven and earth, and fly to the six cardinal points without hindrance. His powers are not confined to walking in perilous places and passing through water and fire. If Shang Ch'iu K'ai, whose motive was greed and whose belief was false, found no obstacle in external things, how much more certainly will it be so when the motive is pure and both parties sincere?"

I will finish it with what is really another of Liehtse's stories,—also dealing with a man who walked through fire uninjured, unconscious of it because of the one-pointedness of his mind.

The incident came to the ears of Marquis Wen of Wei, who spoke to Tsu Hsia, a disciple of Confucius, about it.—"From what I have heard the Master say," said Tsu Hsia, "the man who achieves harmony with Tao enters into close relations with outer objects, and none of them has power to harm or hinder him."—"Why, my friend," said the Marquis, "cannot you do all these marvels?"—"I have not yet succeeded," said Tsu Hsia, "in cleansing my heart from impurities and discarding brainmind wisdom."—"And why," said the Marquis, "cannot the Master himself" (Confucius, of course) "perform such feats?"—"The Master," said Tsu Hsia, "is able to perform them; but he is also able to refrain from performing them."—which, again, he was. Here is another example:

Hui Yang went to visit Prince K'ang of Sung. The prince, however, stamped his foot, rasped his throat, and said angrily:— "The things I like are courage and strength. I am not fond of your good and virtuous people. What can a stranger like you have to teach me?"

"I have a secret," said Hui Yang, "whereby my opponent, however brave or strong, can be prevented from harming me either by thrust or blow. Would not Your Highness care to know that secret?"

"Capital!" said the Prince; "that is certainly something I should like to hear about."

"True," said Hui yang, "when you render his stabs or blows ineffectual, you cover your opponent with shame. But my secret will make him, however brave or strong, afraid to stab or strike at all."

"Better still," said the Prince; "let me hear about it."

"It is all very well for him to be afraid to do it." said Hui Yang; "but that does not imply he has no will to do it. Now, my secret would deprive him even of the will."

"Better and better," said Prince K'ang; "I beseech you to reveal it to me."

"Yes," said Hui Yang; "but this not having the will to injure does not necessarily connote a desire to love and do good. But my secret is one whereby every man, woman, and child in the empire shall be inspired with the friendly desire to love and do good to each other. This is much better than the possession of mere courage and strength. Has Your Highness no mind to acquire such a secret as this?"

The Prince confessed that, on the contray, he was most anxious to learn it.

"It is nothing else than the teachings of Confucius and Mo Ti," said Hui Yang.

A main idea of Taoism—one with which the Confucius of orthodox Confucianism did not concern himself—is the possibility of creating within one's outer and mortal an inner and immortal self; by subduing desire, by sublimating away all impurities, by concentration. The seed of that Immortality is hidden in us; the seed of mastery of the inner and outer worlds. Faith is the key. Shang Ch'iu K'ai, whose "faith had made him whole," walked through fire. "Whoso hath faith as a grain of mustard-seed," said Jesus, can move mountains. It sounds as if he had been reading the Book of Liehtse; which is at pains to show how the thing is done. T'ai-hsing and Wang-wu, the mountains, stood not where they stand now, but in the south of the Chi district and north of Ho-yang. I like the tale well, and shall tell it for its naive Chinesity. The Simpleton of the North Mountain, an old man of ninety, dwelt opposite to them, and was vexed in spirit because their northern flanks blocked the way for travelers, who had to go round. So he called his family together and broached a plan.—"Let us put forth our utmost strength and clear away this obstacle," said he; "let us cut right through the mountains till we come to Han-yin." All agreed except his wife. "My goodman," said she, "has not the strength to sweep away a dung-hill, let alone such mountains as T'ai-hsing and Wang-wu. Besides, where will you put the earth and stones?" They answered that they would throw them on the promontory of P'o-hai. So the old man, followed by his son and grandson, sallied forth with their pickaxes, and began hewing away at the rocks and cutting up the soil, and carting it away in baskets to the promontory. A widow who lived near by had a little boy who, though he was only just shedding his milk-teeth, came skipping along to give them what help he could. Engrossed in their toil they never went home except once at the turn of the season.

The Wise Old Man of the River-bend burst out laughing and urged them to stop. "Great indeed is your witlessness!" said he. "With the poor remaining strength of your declining years you will not succeed in removing a hair's-breadth of the mountains, much less the whole vast mass of rock and soil." With a sigh the Simpleton of the North Mountain answered:—"Surely it is you who are narrow-minded and unreasonable. You are not to be compared with the widow's son, despite his puny strength. Though I myself must die, I shall leave my son behind me, and he his son. My grandson will beget sons in his turn, and those sons also will have sons and grandsons. With all this posterity my line will not die out; while on the other hand the mountains will receive no increment or addition. Why then should I despair of leveling them to the ground at last?"—The Wise Old Man of the River-bend had nothing to say in reply.

Chinese! Chinese!—From whatever angle you look at it, it smacks of the nation that saw Babylon fall, and Rome, and may yet—

But look now, at what happened. There was something about the project and character of the Simpleton of the North Mountain, that attracted the attention of the Serpent-Brandishing deities. They reported the matter to Almighty God; who was interested; and perhaps was less patient than the simpleton.—I do not quite know who this person translated 'Almighty God' may be; I think he figures in the Taoist hierarchy somewhere below Laotse and the other Adepts. At any rate he was in a position to order the two sons of K'ua O—and I do not know who K'ua O and his sons were— to expedite matters. So the one of them took up T'ai-hsing, and the other Wu-wang, and transported them to the positions where they remain to this day to prove the truth of Liehtse's story. Further proof:—the region between Ts'i in the north and Han in the south—that is to say, northern Homan—is still and has been ever since, an unbroken plain.

And perhaps, behind this naive Chinesity, lie grand enunciations of occult law. . . .

I will end with what is probably Liehtse's most famous story— and, from a purely literary standpoint, his best. It is worthy of Chwangtse himself; and I tell it less for its philosophy than for its fun.

One morning a fuel-gatherer—we may call him Li for convenience, though Liehtse leaves him nameless—killed a deer in the forest; and to keep the carcass safe till he went home in the evening, hid it under a pile of brushwood. His work during the day took him far and when he looked for the deer again, he could not find it. "I must have dreamed the whole thing," he said;—and satisfied himself with that explanation. He made a verse about it as he trudged home through the woods, and went crooning:

At dawn in the hollow, beside the stream, I hid the deer I killed in the dream; At eve I sought for it far and near; And found 'twas a dream that I killed the deer.

He passed the cottage of Yen the woodman—Yen we may call him, though Liehtse calls him nothing.—who heard the song, and pondered. "One might as well take a look at the place," thought he; it seemed to him it might be such and such a hollow, by such and such a stream. Thither he went, and found the pile of brushwood; It looked to him a likely place enough to hide a deer under. He made search, and there the carcass was.

He took it home and explained the matter to his wife. "Once upon a time," said he, "a fuel-gatherer dreamed he had killed a deer and forgotten where he had hidden it. Now I have got the deer, and here it is; so his dream came true, in a way."—"Rubbish!" she answered. "It was you must have dreamed the fuel-gatherer and his dreim. You must have killed the deer yourself, since you have it there; but where is your fuel-gatherer?"

That night Li dreamed again; and in his dream saw Yen fetch the deer from its hiding-place and bring it home. So in the morning he went to Yen's house and there, sure enough, the deer was. They argued the matter out, but to no purpose. Then they took it before the magistrate, who gave judgment as follows:

"The plaintiff began with a real deer and an alleged dream; and now comes forward with a real dream and an alleged deer. The defendant has the deer the plaintiff dreamed, and wants to keep it. According to his wife, however, the plaintiff and the deer are both but figments of the defendant's dream. Meanwhile, there is the deer; which you had better divide between you."

The case was reported to the Prince of Cheng, whose opinion was that the magistrate had dreamed the whole story, himself. But his Prime Minister said: "If you want to distinguish between dream and waking, you would have to go back to the Yellow Emperor or Confucius. As both are dead, you had better uphold the magistrate's decision." *

——— * The tale is told both in Dr. Lionel Giles's translation mentioned above, and also, with verbal differences, in Dr. H. A. Giles's work on Chinese Literature. The present telling follows now one, now the other version, now goes its own way;— and pleads guilty to adding the verse the woodman crooned. ———



XIII. MANG THE PHILOSOPHER, AND BUTTERFLY CHWANG

Liehtse's tale of the Dream and the Deer leads me naturally to this characteristic bit from Chwangtse:*—

"Once upon a time, I, Chwangtse, dreamed I was a butterfly fluttering hither and thither; to all intents and purposes a veritable butterfly. I followed my butterfly fancies, and was unconscious of my individuality as a man. Suddenly I awoke, and there I lay, a man again. Now how am I to know whether I was then, Chwangtse dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am Chwang?"

——— * Which, like nearly all the other passages from him in this lecture, is quoted from Dr. H. A. Giles's Chinese Literature, in the Literatures of the World series; New York, Appleton. ———

For which reason he is, says Dr. Giles, known to this day as "Butterfly Chwang"; and the name is not all inappropriate. He flits from fun to philosophy, and from philosoply to fun, as if they were dark rose and laughing pansy; when he has you in the gravest depths of wisdom and metaphysic, he will not be content till with a flirt of his wings and an aspect gravely solemn he has you in fits of laughter again. His is really a book that belongs to world-literature; as good reading, for us now, as for any ancient Chinaman of them all. I think he worked more strenuously in the field of sheer intellect—stirred the thought stuff more—than most other Chinese thinkers,—and so is more akin to the Western mind; he carves his cerebrations more definitely, and leaves less to the intuition. The great lack in him is his failure to appreciate Confucius; and to explain that, before I go further with Butterfly Chwang, I shall take a glance at the times he lived in.

They were out of joint when Confucius came; they were a couple of centuries more so now. Still more was the Tiger stalking abroad: there were two or three tigers in particular, among the Great Powers, evidentlv crouching for a spring—that should settle things. Time was building the funeral pyre for the Phoenix, and building it of the debris of ruined worlds. In the early sixth century, the best minds were retiring in disgust to the wilds;—you remember the anchorite's rebuke to Tse-Lu. But now they were all coming from their retirement—the most active minds, whether the best or not—to shout their nostrums and make confusion worse confounded. All sorts of socialisms were in the air, raucously bellowed by would-be reformers. A "loud barbarian from the south" (as Mencius called him—I do not know who he was) was proclaiming that property should be abolished, and all goods held in common. One Yang Chu was yelling universal egoism: "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." Against him, one Mo Ti had been preaching universal altruism;—but I judge, not too sensibly, and without appeal to philosophy or mysticism. Thought of all kinds was in a ferment, and the world filled with the confused noise of its expression; clear voices were needed, to restate the message of the Teachers of old.

Then Mencius arose to speak for Confucius in this China so much further progressed along the Gadarene road. A strong and brilliant man, he took the field strongly and brilliantly, and filled the courts of dukes and kings with a roll of Confucian drums. Confucius, as I have tried to show you, had all Mysticism divinely behind and backing him, though he said little about it; Mencius, I think, had none. Mencius remade a Confucius of his own, with the mystical elements lacking. He saw in him only a social reformer and teacher of ethics; and it is the easiest thing in the world to see Confucius only through Mencian spectacles.

I would not fall into the mistake of undervaluing Mencius. He was a very great man; and the work he did for China was enormous, and indispensable. You may call him something between the St. Paul and the Constantine of Confucianism. Unlike Constantine, he was not a sovereign, to establish the system; but he hobnobbed with sovereigns, and never allowed them to think him their inferior; and it was he who made of Confucianism a system that could be established. Unlike St. Paul, he did not develop the inner side of his Master's teachings; but he so popularized them as to ensure their triumph. He took the ideas of Confucius, such of them as lay within his own statesmanlike and practical scope of vision, restated and formulated them, and made of them what became the Chinese Constitution. A brave and honest thinker, essentially a man of action in thought, he never consciously deteriorated or took away from Confucius' doctrine. It is more as if some great President or Prime Minister, at some future time, should suddenly perceive that H.P. Blavatsky had brought that which would save his nation; and proceed to apply that saving thing, as best he might, in the field of practical politics and reform—or rather to restate it in such a way that (according to his view) it might be applied.

He put the constituents parts of society in order of importance as follows: the People; the Gods; the Sovereign: and this has been a cardinal principle in Chinese polity. He saw clearly that the Chow dynasty could never be revived; and arrived at the conclusion that a dynasty was only sacred while it retained the "mandate of heaven." Chow had lost that; and therefore it was within the rights of Heaven, as you may say, to place its mandate elsewhere;—and within the rights of the subject—as the logic of events so clearly proved Chow had lost the mandate—to rebel. Confucius had hoped to revivify Chow—had begun with that hope, at any rate: Mencius hoped to raise up some efficient sovereign who should overturn Chow. The Right of Rebellion, thus taught by him, is another fundamental Chinese principle. It works this way: if there was discontent, there was misrule; and it was the fault of the ruler. If the latter was a local magistrate, or a governor, prefect, or viceroy, you had but to make a demonstration, normally speaking, before his yamen: this was technically a 'rebellion' within Mencius' meaning; and the offending authority must report it to Pekin, which then commonly replaced him with another. (It would get to Pekin's ears anyway; so you had better—and ususally did—report it yourself.) If the offender was the Son of Heaven, with all his dynasty involved— why, then one had to rebel in good earnest; and it was to be supposed that if Heaven had really given one a mandate, one would win. The effect was that, although nominally absolute, very few emperors have dared or cared to fly quite in the face of Confucius, or Mencius, of their religio-political system, of the Board of Censors whose business it was to criticize the Throne, and of a vast opinion.

There was the tradition an emperor ruled for the people. The office of ruler was divine; the man that held it was kept an impersonality as much as possible. He changed his name on coming to the throne, and perhaps several times afterwards: thus we speak of the great emperors Han Wuti and Tang Taitsong; who might, however, be called more exactly, Liu Ch'e, who was emperor during the period Wuti of the Han Dynasty; Li Shihmin, who filled the throne during the T'ang period called Taitsong. Again, there was the great idea, Confucio-Mencian, that the son of Heven must be 'compliant': leading rather than driving. He promulgated edicts, but they were never rigidly enforced; a certain voluntaryism was allowed as to the carrying out of them: if one of them was found unsuccessful, or not to command popular approval, another could be—and was—issued to modify or change it. So that the whole system was far removed from what we think of as an 'Oriental Despotism'; on the contrary, there was always a large measure of freedom and self-government. You began with the family: the head of that was its ruler, and responsible for order in his little realm. But he governed by consent and affection, not by force. Each village-community was self-governing; the headman in it taking the place of the father in the family; he was responsible for order, so it was his business to keep the people happy;—and the same principle was extended to fit the province, the viceroyalty, the empire. Further, there was the absence of any aristocracy or privileged class; and the fact that all offices were open to all Chinamen (actors excepted)—the sole key to open it being merit, as attested by competitive examinations.

The system is Mencian; the inspiration behind it from Confucius. It is the former's working out of the latter's superb idea of the li.

The Mencian system has broken down, and been abolished. It had grown old, outworn and corrupt. But it was established a couple of centuries before that of Augustus, and has been subject to the same stress of time and the cycles; and only broke down the other day. Time will wear out anything made by man. There is no garment, but the body will out-grow or out-wear it; no body, but the soul will outlive it and cast it away. Mencius, inspired by his Master Confucius, projected a system that time took two thousand years and more to wear out in China. It was one that did much or everything to shield the people from tyranny. Whether a better system has been devised, I do not know; but should say not—in historical times. As to the inspiration behind it—well, lest you should doubt the value of Confucius, compare the history of Europe with that of China. We have disproportioned ideas, and do not see these things straight. The Chinese Empire was founded some two centuries before the Roman: both composed of heterogeneous elements. Both, after about four centuries, fell; but China, after about four centuries more, came together and was great again. Fifteen hundred years after Ts'in Shi Hwangti had founded China, her manvantara then having ended, and her whole creative cycle run through, she fell to the Mongols. Fifteen hundred years after Julius Caesar had founded his empire, the last wretched remnant of it fell to the Turks. But China first compelled her conquerors to behave like Chinamen, and then, after a century, turned them out. The Turks never became Greek or Roman, and so far have not quite been turned out. The roman empire disappeared, and never reunited;—that is what has been the matter with Europe ever since. Europe, in her manvantara, has wasted three parts of her creative force in wars and disunion. But China, even in her pralaya, became a strong, united power again under the Mings (1368-1644)—the first of them—a native dynasty. Conquered again, now by the Manchus, she mader her conquerors behave like Chinamen,—imposed on them her culture;—and went forth under their banners to conquer. The European pralaya (630-1240) was a time barren of creation in art and literature, and in life uttterly squalid and lightless The Chinese pralaya, after the Mongol Conquest, took a very long time to sink into squalidity. The arts, which had died in Europe long before Rome fell, lived on in China, though with ever-waning energy, through the Mongol and well into the Ming time: the national stability, the force of custom, was there to carry them on. What light, what life, what vigor was there in Rome or Constantinople a century and a half after Alaric or Heraclius? But Ming Yunglo, a century and a half after the fall of Sung, reigned in great splendor; sent his armies conquering to the Caspian, and his navies to the conquest of Ceylon, the discovery of Africa, the gathering in of the tribute of the Archipelago and the shores of the Indian Ocean. Until the end of the eighteenth century the minor arts and crafts—pottery and bronzes—of which there was nothing to speak of in Europe in the corresponding European age—were flourishing wonderfully; and in the seventeenth and eighteeenth centuries, under Kanghi and Kienlung, China was once more a great military power. She chased and whipped the Goorkhas down through the Himalays and into India, only twenty years before England fought difficult and doubtful campaigns with those fierce little mountaineers. You may even say she has been better off in her pralaya, in many ways, and until recently, than most of Europe has been in most of her manvantara. In Kienlung's reign, for example (1735-1795) there were higher standards of life, more security, law, and order, than in the Europe of Catherine of Russia, Frederick the Great, Louis XV and the Revolution, and the English Georges. There was far less ferment of the Spirit, true; less possibility of progress;—but that is merely to say that China was in pralaya, Europe in high manvantara. The explanation is that a stability had been imparted to that Far Eastern civilization, which Europe has lacked altogether; whose history, for all its splendid high- lights, has had thousands of hideous shadows; has not been so noble a thing as we tacitly and complacently assume; but a long record of wars, confusions, disorder, and cruelities, with only dawning now the possibility of that union which is the first condition of true progress, as distinguished from the riot of material inventions and political experiments that has gone by that name.—But now, back to Mencius again.

In all things he tried to follow Confucius; beginning early by being born in the latter's own district of Tsow in Shantung, and having a woman in ten thousand for his mother;—she has been the model held up to all Chinese mothers since. He grew up strong in body and mind, thoughtful and fearless; a tireless student of history, poetry, national institutions, and the lives of great men. Like Confucius, he opened a school, and gathered disciples about him: but there was never the bond of love here, that there had been between Confucius and Tse Lu, Yen Huy, and the others. These may have heard from their Master the pure deep things of Theosophy; one would venture the statement that none of Mencius' following heard the like from him. He saw in Confucius that which he himself was fitted to be, and set out to become. He went from court to court, and everywhere, as a great scholar, was received with honor. (You will note as one more proof of an immemorial culture, that then, as now the scholar, as such, was at the very top of the social scale. There was but one word for scholar and official.)—He proposed, like Confucius, that some king should make him his minister; and like Confucius, he was always disappointed. But in him we come on none of the soft lights and tones that endear Confucius to us; he fell far short of being Such a One. A clear, bold mind, without atmosphere, with all its lines sharply defined.... he made free to lecture the great ones of the earth, and was very round with them, even ridiculing them at his pleasure. He held the field for Confucius—not the Taoist, but the Mencian Confucius—against all comers; smote Yang Chu the Egotist hip and thigh; smote gentle Mo Ti, the Altruist; preached fine and practical ethics; and had no patience with those dreamers of the House of Laotse.—A man sent from the Gods, I should say, to do a great work; even though—

And then there was that dreamer of dreams, of Butterfly dreams,— subtle mystical humorous Chwangtse: how could it be otherwise than that clear-minded clarion-throated Philosopher Mang should afford him excellent play? Philosopher Mang (Philosopher of the Second Class, so officially entitled), in the name of his Master K'ung Ch'iu, fell foul of Dreamer Chwang; how could it be otherwise than that Dreamer Chwang should aim his shafts, not a Mang merely, but (alas!) at the one whose name was always on Mang's lips?—"Confucius says, Confucius says, Confucius says"— cries Philosopher Mang.—"Oh hang your Confucius!" thinks Chwang the Mystic; "let us have a little of the silence and splendor of the Within!" (Well, Confucius would have said the same thing, I think.) "Let me tell you a tale," says Chwang; and straight goes forward with it.

"It was the time of the autumn floods. Every stream poured into the river, which swelled in its turbid course. The banks were so far apart that from one to the other you could not tell a cow from a horse.

"Then the Spirit of the River laughed for joy that all the beauty of the earth was gathered to himself. Down with the current he journeyed east, until he reached the Ocean. There looking eastward, and seeing no limit to its expanse of waves, his countenance changed. As he gazed out, he sighed, and said to the Spirit of the Ocean: 'A vulgar proverb says that he who has heard but a part of the truth thinks no one equal to himself. Such a one am I.

"'When formerly I heard people detracting from the learning of Confucius, or underrating the heroism of Po I. I did not believe. But now that I have looked on your inexhaustibility— alas for me had I not reached your abode! I should have been forever a laughing-stock to those of comprehensive enlightenment.'

"To which the Spirit of the Ocean answered: 'You cannot speak of ocean to a well-frog,—the creature of a narrower sphere. You cannot speak of ice to a summer insect,—the creature of a season. You cannot speak of Tao to a pedant; his scope is too restricted. But now that you have emerged from your narrow sphere, and have seen the great sea, you know your own insignificance, and I can speak of great principles.

"Have you never heard of the Frog of the Old Well? The Frog said to the Turtle of the Eastern Sea, 'Happy indeed am I! I hop on the rail around the well. I rest in the hollow of some broken brick. Swimming, I gather the water under my arms and shut my mouth tight. I plunge into the mud, burying my feet and toes. Not one of the cockles, crabs, or tadpoles I see around me is my match. Why do you not come, Sir, and pay me a visit?'"

"Now the Turtle of the Eastern Sea had not got its left leg down ere its right leg had stuck fast, so it shrank back and begged to be excused. It then described the sea, saying, 'A thousand leagues would not measure its breadth, nor a thousand fathoms its depth. In the days of Yu the Great there were nine years of flood out of ten; but this did not add to its contents. In the days of T'ang there were seven years of drought out of eight, but this did not narrow its span. Not to be affected by volume of water, not to be affected by duration of time—this is the happiness of the Eastern Sea.' At this the Frog of the Old Well was considerably astonished, and knew not what to say next. And for one whose knowledge does not reach to the positive-negative domain the attempt to understand me is like a mosquito trying to carry a mountain, or an ant to swim the Yellow River,—they cannot succeed."

If Chwangtse had lived before Mencius, or Mencius after Chwangtse, Chwangtse could have afforded to see Confucius in his true light, as Liehtse did; but the power and influence of the mind of Mencius were such that in his time there was no looking at the Master except through his glasses. We do not know what happened when Laotse and Confucius met; but I suspect it was very like what happened when Mr. Judge met Madame Blavatsky. But Butterfly Chwang, the rascal, undertook to let us know; and wrote it out in full. He knew well enough what would happen if he met Mencius; and took that as his model. He wanted Mencius to know it too. He itched to say to him, "Put away, sir, your flashy airs," and the rest; and so made Laotse say it to Confucius. It shows how large Philosopher Mang had come to loom, that anyone could attribute "flashy airs" to that great-hearted simple Gentleman K'ung Ch'iu. One thing only I believe in about that interview: Confucius' reputed speech on coming forth from it to his disciples:—"There is the Dragon; I do not know how he mounts upon the wind and rises about the clouds. Today I have seen Laotse, and can only compare him to the Dragon." He would have said that; it has definite meaning; the Dragon was the symbol of the spirit, and so universally recognised.—Confucius appears to have taken none of his disciples into the Library; and Confucianist writers have had nothing to say about the incident, except that it occurred, I believe. Chwangtse, and all Taoist writers after him, show Confucius taking his rating very quietly;—as indeed, he would have done, had Laotse been in a mood for quizzing. For Confucius never argued or pressed his opinions; where his words were not asked for and listened to, he retired. But it is not possible the recognition should have been other than mutual: the great Laotse would have known a Man when he saw him. I like the young imperturbable K'ung Jung, precocious ten-year-old of some seven centuries later. His father took him up to the capital when the Dragon Statesman Li Ying was the height of his power; and the boy determined on gaining an interview with Li. He got admission to the latter's house by claiming blood-relationship. Asked by the great man wherein it lay, says he very sweetly: "Your ancestor Laotse and my ancestor Confucius were friends engaged in the search for truth; may we not then be said to be of the same family?"— "Cleverness in youth," sneered a bystander, "does not mean brilliancy in later life."—"You, Sir," says Ten-years-old, turning to him, "must have been a very remarkable boy." *

———- * Giles: Chinese Literature. ———-

The truth is, both Mencius and Chwangtse stood a step lower and nearer this world than had the two they followed: whose station had been on the level platform at the top of the altar. But Mencius descending had gone eastward; Chwangtse towards the west.

He was all for getting at the Mean, the Absolute Life, beyond the pairs of opposites;—which is, indeed, the central Chinese thought, Confucian or Taoist, the raison d'etre of Chinese longevity, and the saving health of China. But unfortunately he —Chwangtse—did not see that his own opposite, Philosopher Mang, was driving him an inch or two away from the Middle Line. So, with a more brilliant mind (a cant phrase that!) he stands well below Laotse; just as Mencius stands below K'ung Ch'iu. The spiritual down-breathing had reached a lower plane: soon the manvantara was to begin, and the Crest-Wave to be among the black-haired People. For all these Teachers and Half-Teachers were but early swallows and forerunners. Laotse and Confucius had caught the wind at its rising, on the peaks where they stood very near the Spirit; Chwangtse and Mangtse caught it in the region of the intellect: the former in his wild valley, the latter on his level prosaic plain. They are both called more daring thinkers than their predecessors; which is merely to say that in them the Spirit figured more on the intellectual, less on its own plane. They were lesser men, of course. Mencius had lost Confucius' spirituality; Chwangtse, I think, something of the sweet sanifying influence of Laotse's universal compassion.

Well, now: three little tales from Chwangtse, to illustrate his wit and daring; and after then, to the grand idea he bequeathed to China.

"Chwangtse one day saw an empty skull, bleached, but still preserving its shape. Striking it with his riding-whip, he said: 'Was thou once some ambitious citizen whose inordinate yearnings brought him to this pass?—some statesman who plunged his country in ruin, and perished in the fray?—some wretch who left behind him a legacy of shame?—some beggar who died in the pangs of hunger and cold? Or didst thou reach this state by the natural course of old age?'

"He took the skull home, and slept that night with it under his head for a pillow, and dreamed. The skull appeared to him in his dream, and said: 'You speak well, Sir; but all you say has reference to the life of mortals, and to mortal troubles. In death there are none of these things. Would you like to hear about death?'

"Cwangtse, however, was not convinced, and said: 'Were I to prevail upon God to let your body be born again, and your bones and flesh be renewed, so that you could return to your parents, to your wife and to the friends of your youth—would you be willing?'

"At this the skull opened its eyes wide and knitted its brows and said: 'How should I cast aside happiness greater than that of a king, and mingle once again in the toils and troubles of mortality?'"

Here is the famous tale of the Grand Augur and the Pigs:—

"The Grand Augur, in his ceremonial robes, approached the shambles and thus addressed the Pigs:—

"'Why,' said he, 'should you object to die? I shall fattan you for three months. I shall discipline myself for ten days and fast for three. I shall strew fine grass, and place you bodily upon a carved sacrificial dish. Does not this satisfy you?

"'Yet perhaps after all,' he continued, speaking from the pigs' point of view, 'it is better to live on bran and escape the shambles...

"'No,' said he; speaking from his own point of view again. 'To enjoy honor when alive one would readily die on a war-shield or in the haeadsman's basket.'

"So he rejected the pigs' point of view and clung to his own. In what sense, then, was he different from the pigs?"

And here, the still more famous tale of the Sacred Tortoise:—

"Chwantse was fishing in the river P'u when the Prince of Ch'u sent two high officials to ask him to take charge of the administration.

"Chwangtse went on fishing, and without turning his head said: 'I have heard that in Ch'u there is a sacred tortoise which has been dead now some three thousand years. And that the prince keeps this tortoise carefully enclosed in a chest on the altar of his ancestral temple. Now if this tortoise had its choice, which would it prefer: to be dead, and have its remains venerated; or to be alive, and wagging its tail in the mud?'

"'Sir,' replied the two officials, 'it would rather be alive, and wagging its tail in the mud.'

"'Begone!' cried Chwangtse. 'I too will wag my tail in the mud!'"

Well; so much for Butterfly; now for Chwang—and to introduce you to some of his real thought and teaching. You will not have shot so wide of the mark as to see in his story of the skull traces of pessimism: Chwantse had none of it; he was a very happy fellow; like the policeman in the poem,

".....a merry genial wag Who loved a mad conceit."

But he was by all means and anyhow for preaching the Inner as against the outer. Yet he did not dismiss this world, either, as a vain delusion and sorrowful mockery;—the gist of his teaching is this: that men bear a false relation to the world; and he desired to teach the true relation. He loved the Universe, and had a sublime confidence in it as the embodiment and expression of Tao; and would apply this thought as a solvent to the one false thing in it: the human personality, with its heresy of separateness. Dissolve that,—and it is merely an idea; in the words of a modern philosopher, all in the mind,—and you have the one true elixir flowing in your veins, the universal harmony; are part of the solemn and glorious pageant of the years. The motions of the heavenly bodies, the sweetness of Spring and the wistfulness of Autumn, flaunting Summer and Winter's beauty of snow—all are parcel of yourself, and within the circle of your consciousness. Often he rises to a high poetic note;—it is largely the supreme beauty of his style which keeps his book, so thouroughly unorthodox, still alive and wagging its tail among his countrymen. Chwangtse will not help you through the examinations; but he is mighty good to read when your days of competing are over; as I think it is Dr. Giles who says.

Like his contemporary Diogenes, he would have his dead body cast out to the vultures; but the spirit of his wish was by no means cynical. "When Chwangtse was about to die," he writes (anticipating things pleasantly), "his disciples expressed a wish to give him a splendid funeral. But he said: 'With heaven and earth for my coffin and shell, and the sun, moon, and stars for my burial regalia; with all creation to escort me to the grave— is not my funeral already prepared?'"

He speaks of the dangers of externalism, even in the pursuit of virtue; then says: "The man who has harmony within, though he sit motionless like the image of a dead man at a sacrifice, yet his Dragon Self will appear; though he be absorbed in silence, his thunder will be heard; the divine power in him will be at work, and heaven will follow it; while he abides in tranquillity and inaction, the myriads of things and beings will gather under his influence."—"Not to run counter to the natural bias of things," he says, "is to be perfect." It is by this running counter—going aginst the Law, following our personal desires and so forth,—that we create karma,—give the Universe something to readjust,—and set in motion all our troubles. "He who fully understands this, by storing it within enlarges the heart, and with this enlargement brings all creation to himself. Such a man will bury gold on the hillside, and cast pearls into the sea."— sink a plummet into that, I beseech you; it is one of the grand utterances of wonder and wisdom.—"He will not struggle for wealth or strive for fame; rejoice over longevity, or grieve at an early death. He will get no elation from success, nor chagrin from failure; he will not account the throne his private gain, no look on the empire of the world as glory personal. His glory is to know that all thigns are one, and life and death but phases of the same existence."

Why call that about burying gold and casting pearls into the sea one of the supreme utterances?—Well; Chwangtse has a way of putting a whole essay into a sentence; this is a case in point. We have discussed Natural Magic together many times; we know how the ultimate beauty occurs when something human has flowed out into Nature, and left its mysterious trace there, upon the mountains, or by the river-brink,

"By paved fountain, or by rushy brook. Or on the beached margent of the sea."

Tu Fu saw in the blues and purples of the morning-glory the colors of the silken garments of the lost poet Ssema Hsiangju, of a thousand years before—that is, of the silken garments of his rich emotion and adventures. China somehow has understood this deep connexion between man and Nature; and that it is human thought molds the beauty and richness, or hideousness and sterility of the world. Are the mountains noble? They store the grandeur and aspirations of eighteen millions of years of mankind. Are the deserts desolate and terrible? It was man made the deserts: not with his hands, but with his thought. Man is the fine workshop and careful laboratory wherein Nature prepares the most wonderful of her wonders. It is an instinct for this truth that makes Chinese poetry the marvel that it is.—So the man of Tao is enriching the natural world: filling the hills with gold, putting pearls in the sea.

I do not know where there is a more pregnant passage than this following,—a better acid (of words) to corrode the desperate metal of selfhood; listen well, for each clause is a volume. "Can one get Tao to possess it for one's own?" asks Chwangtse; and answers himself thus: "Your very body is not your own; how then should Tao be?—If my body is not my own, whose is it, pray?—It is the delegated image of God. Your posterity is not your own; it is the delegated exuviae of God. You move, but know not how; you are at rest, but know not why; you taste, but know not the cause; these are the operations of universal law. How then should you get Tao so as to possess it for your own?"

Now then, I want to take one of those clauses, and try to see what Chwangtse really meant by it. "Your individuality is not your own, but the delegated adaptability of God."—There is a certain position in the Scheme of Things Entire,—a point, with a relation of its own to the rest of the Scheme, to the Universe;— as the red line has a relation of its own to the rest of the spectrum and the ray of light as a whole..... From that point, from that position, there is a work to be done, which can be done from no other. The Lonely Eternal looks out through these eyes, because it must see all things; and there are things no eyes can see but these, no other hands do. This point is an infinitesimal part of the whole; but without its full and proper functioning, the Whole falls short in that much:—because of your or my petty omissions, the Universe limps and goes lame.—Into this position, as into all others impartially, the One Life which is Tao flows, adapting itself through aeons to the relations which that point bears to the Whole: and the result and the process of this adaptation is—your individuality or mine.

You are not the point, the position: because it is merely that which you hold and through which you function; it is yours, but not you. What then are you? That which occupies and adapts itself to the point? But that is Tao, the Universal. You can only say it is you, if from you you subtract all you-ness. Your individuality, then, is a temporary aspect of Tao in a certain relation to the totality of Tao, the One Thing which is the No Thing:—or it is the "delegated adaptability of God."

How and wherein adaptable?—The Infinite, occupying this position, has formed therein all sorts of attachments and dislikes; and each one of them hinders it adaptability. Your surroundings have reflected themselves on you: and the sum of the reflexions is your personality,—the little cage of I-am-ness from which it is so hard to escape. Every reflected image engraves itself on the stuff of yourself by the sensation of attachment or repulsion which it arouses. When it says, "The One becomes the Two"—which is the way in one form or another all ancient philosophy sums up the beginning of things;—this is what is meant: the 'One' is Tao; the 'Two' is this conditioned world, whose nature and essence is to appear as pairs of opposites—to be attractive, or to repel. The pigs' point of view was that it was better to live on bran and escape the shambles; the Grand Augur's, that the pomp and ceremony of the sacrifice, the public honor, ought more than to compensate them for the momentary inconvenience of being killed. Opposite ways of thinking; points of view: which cherishing, Grand Augur and pigs alike dwelt on the plane of externals; and so there was no real difference between them. When you stand for you, and I for myself, it is six of one and half a dozen of the other; but when either of us stand for That which is both of us, and all else,— then we touch reality; then there is no longer conflict, or opposites; no longer false appearances,—but the presence and cognition of the True.

Here let me note what seems to me a radical superiority in Chinese methods of thought. You may take the Bhagavad-Gita, perhaps, as the highest expression of Aryan religio-philosophic thinking. There we have the Spirit, the One, shown as the self of the Universe, but speaking through, and as, Krishna, a human personality. Heaven forbid that I should suggest there is anthropomorphism in this. Still, I think our finest mystical and poetic perceptions of the Light beyond all lights do tend to crystallize themselves into the shape of a Being; we do tend to symbolize and figure that Wonder as ..... an Individuality .....in some indefinable splendid sort. Often you find real mystics, men who have seen with their own eyes so to say, talking about God, the Lord, the Great King, and what not of the like; and though you know perfectly well what they mean, there was yet that necessity on them to use those figures of speech. But in China, no. There, they begin from the opposite end. Neither in Laotse nor in Confucius, nor in their schools, can you find a trace of personalism. Gods many, yes; as reason and common sense declare; but nothing you can call a god is so ancient, constant, and eternal as Tao, "which would appear to have been before God." Go to their poets, and you find that the rage is all for Beauty as the light shining through things. The grass-blade and the moutain, the moonlit water and the peony, are lit from within and utterly adorable: not because God made them; not as reminding you of the Topmost of any Hierarchy of Being; but, if you really go to the bottom of it, because there is no personality in them,—and so nothing to hinder the eternal wonder, impersonal Tao, from shining through.—As if we came through our individuality to a conception of the Divine; but they, through a perception of the divine, to a right understanding of their individuality. It amounts to us to fall into gross hideous anthropomorphism; the worst of them into superstitions of their own.—When one quotes Chwangtse as speaking of "the delegated adaptability of God," one must remember that one has to use some English word for his totally impersonal Tao or Tien, or even Shangti, or whatever it may be.

This Tao, you say, something far off,—a principle in philosophy or a metaphysical idea,—may be very nice to discuss in a lecture or write poetry about; but dear me! between whiles we have a great deal to do, and really—But no! it is actually, as Mohammed said, "nearer to thee than thy jugular vein." It is a simple adjustment of oneself to the Universe,—of which, after all, one cannot escape being a part; it is the attainment of a true relationship to the whole. What obscures and hinders that, is simply our human brain-mind consciousness. "Consider the lilies of the field," that attain a perfection of beauty. The thing that moves us, or ought to move us, in flowers, trees, seas and mountains, is this: that lacking this fretting, gnawing sense of I-am-ness, their emanations are pure Tao, and may reach us along the channel we call beauty: may flood our being through "the gateway of the eyes." Beauty is Tao made visible. The rose and peony do not feel themselves 'I,' distinct from 'you' and the rest; they are in opposition to nothing; they do not fall in love, and have no aversions: they simply worship Heaven and are unanxious, and so beautiful. When we know this, we see what beauty means; and that it is not something we can afford to ignore and treat with stoic indifference or puritan dislike. It is Tao visible; I call every flower an avatar of God. Now you see how Taoism leads to poetry; is the philosophy of poetry; is indeed Poetics, rather than Metephysics. Think of all the little jewels you know in Keats, in Shelley, or Wordsworth: the moments when the mists between those men and the divine "defecated to a thin transparency";—those were precisely the moments when the poets lost sight of their I-am-ness and entered into true relations with the Universe. A daffodil, every second of its life, holds within itself all the real things poets have ever said, or will ever say, about it; and can reach our souls directly with edicts from the Dragon Throne of the Eternal.—I watched the linarias yesterday, and their purple delicacy assured me that all the filth, all the falsehood and tragedy of the world, should pass and be blown away; that the garden was full of dancing fairies, joy moving them to their dancing; that it was my own fault if I could not see Apollo leaning down out of the Sun; and my own fatuity, and that alone, if I could not hear the Stars of Morning singing together, and all the sons of God shouting for you. And it was the truth they were telling; the plain, bald, naked truth;—they have never learned to lie, and do not know what it means. There is no sentimentalism in this; only science. We live in a Universe absolutely soaked through with God,—or with Poetry, which is perhaps a better name for It; a Universe peopled thick with Gods. But it is all very far from our common thoughts and conceptions; that is why it sounds to most people like sentimental nonsense and 'poetry.' No wonder Plato hated that word;—since it is made a hand-grenade, in the popular mind, to fling at every truth. And yet Poetry 'gets in on us,' too, occasionally, and accomplishes for

"the woods and waters wild"

the work they cannot do for themselves;—the work they cannot do, cause we will not look at them, cannot see them, and have forgotten their ancient language, being too much immersed in a rubbishing gabble of our own.

What Toism, and especially Chwangtse as I think, did for the Chinese was to publish the syntax and vocabulary of that ancient language; to make people understand how to take these grand protagonists of Tao; how to communicate familiarly with these selfless avatars of the Most High. Listen to this: the thought is close-packed, but I think you will follow it:—

"The true Sage rejects all distinction of this and that," that is to say, of subjective, or that which one perceives within one's own mind and consciousness, and objective, or that which is perceived as existing outside of them;—he does not look upon the mountain or the daffodil as things different or apart from his own conscious being. "He takes his refuge in Tao, and places himself in subjective relations with all things"; he keeps the mountain within him; the scent of the daffodil, and her yellow candle-flame of beauty, are within the sphere and circle of himself;

"...the little wave of Breffny goes stumbling through his soul."

"Hence it is said"—this is Chwangtse again—"that there is nothing like the light of Nature.

"Only the truly intelligent understand this principle of the identity of things. They do not view things as apprehended by themselves, but transfer themselves into the position of the things viewed."—And there, I may say, you have it: the last is the secret of the wonder-light in all Far Eastern Poetry and Art; more, it is the explanation of all poetry everywhere. It is the doctrine, the archeus, the Open Sesame, the thyme- and lavender- and sweetwilliam-breathed Secret Garden of this old wizardly Science of Song;—who would go in there, and have the dark and bright blossoms for his companions, let him understand this. For Poetry is the revelation of the Great Life beyond the little life of this human personality; to tap it, you must evict yourself from the personal self; "transfer yourself into the position of the things viewed," and not see, but be, the little stumbling wave or the spray of plum-blossom, thinking its thoughts.—"Viewing things thus," continues our Chwangtse, "you are able to comprehend and master them. So it is that to place oneself in inner relation with externals, without consciousness of their objectivity,—this is Tao. But to wear out one's intellect in an obstinate adherence to the objectivity—the apartness—of things, not recognizing that they are all one—this is called Three in the Morning.—'What do you mean by Three in the Morning?' asked Tse Yu.—'A keeper of monkeys,' Tse Chi replied, 'said with regard to their daily ration of chestnuts that each monkey should have three in the morning and four at night. At this the monkeys were very angry; so he said that they might have four in the morning and three at night; whereat they were well pleased. The number of nuts was the same; but there was an adaptation to the feelings of those concerned.'"— which, again, means simply that to follow Tao and dodge until it is altogether sloughed off the sense of separateness, is to follow the lines of least resistance.

All these ideas are a natural growth from the teachings of Laotse; but Butterfly Chwang, in working them out and stating them so brilliantly, did an inestimable service to the ages that were to come.



XIV. THE MANVANTARA OPENS

Laotse's Blue Pearl was already shining into poetry. Ch'u Yuan, the first great poet, belongs to this same fourth century; it is a long step from the little wistful ballads that Confucius gathered to the "wild irregular meters," * splendid imagery, and be it said, deep soul symbolism of his great poem the Li Sao (Falling into Trouble). The theme of it is this: From earliest childhood Ch'u Yuan had sought the Tao, but in vain. At last, banished by the prince whose minister he had been, he retired into the wilds, and was meditating at the tomb of Shun in Hupeh, in what was then the far south. There the Phoenix and the Dragon came to him, and bore him aloft, past the West Pole, past the Milky Way, past even the Source of the Hoangho, to the Gates of Heaven. Where, however, there was no admittance for him; and full of sorrow he returned to earth.

——— * Chinese Literature, by Dr. H. A. Giles. What is said about the Li Sao here comes from that work—except the suggestions as to its inner meaning. ———

On the banks of the Mi-lo a fisherman met him, and asked him the cause of his trouble.—"All the world is foul," answered Ch'u Yuan, "and I alone am clean."—"If that is so," said the fisherman, "why not plunge into the current, and make its foulness clean with the infection of your purity? The Man of Tao does not quarrel with his surroundings, but adjusts himself to them." Ch'u Yuan took the hint: leaped into the Mi-lo;—and yearly since then they have held the Dragon-boat Festival on the waters of Middle China to commemorate the search for his body.— Just how much of this is in the Li Sao,—where the poem ends,— I do not clearly gather from Professor Giles's account; but the whole story appears to me to be a magnificent Soul Symbol: of that Path which leads you indeed on dragon flights to the borders of the Infinite, but whose end, rightly considered, is in this world, and to be as it were drowned in the waters of this world, with your cleanness infecting them to be clean,—and lighting them for all future ages with beauty, as with little dragon-boats luminous with an inner flame. Ch'u Yuan had followers in that and the next century; but perhaps his greatness was hardly to be approached for a thousand years.

But we were still in Tiger-time, and with quite the worst of it to come. Here lay the Blue Pearl scintillating rainbows up through the heavy atmosphere; but despite its flashing and up-fountaining those strange dying-dolphin hues and glories, you could never have told, in Tiger-time, what it really was. The Dragon was yet a long way off; though indeed it must be allowed that flight, when Chwangtse wrote and Ch'u Yuan sung, was surprised with the far churr of startling wings under the stars. Ears intent to listen were surprised; but only for a moment;— there was that angry howling again from the northern hills and the southern forests: the two great Tigers of the world face to face, tails lashing;—and between them and in their path, Chow quite prone,—the helpless Black-haired People trembling or chattering frivolously. Not for such an age as that Chwangtse and Ch'u Yuan wrote, but indeed you may say for all time. What light from the Blue Pearl could then shine forth and be seen, would, in the thick fog and smoke-gloom, take on wild fantastic guise; which, as we shall see, it did:—but what Chwangtse had written remained, pure immortality, to kindle up better ages to come. When China should be ready, Chwangtse and the Pearl would be found waiting for her. The manvantara had not yet dawned; but we may hurry on now to its dawning.

The Crest-Wave was still in India when China plunged into the abyss from which her old order of ages never emerged. Soon after Asoka came to the throne of Magadha, in 284 B.C., Su Tai, wise prime minister to the Lord of Chao, took occasion to speak— seriously to his royal master as to the latter's perennial little wars with Yen.* "This morning as I crossed the river," said he, "I saw a mussel open its shell to the sun. Straight an oyster-catcher thrust in his bill to eat the mussel; which promptly snapped the shell to and held the bird fast.—'If it doesn't rain today or tomorrow,' said the oyster-catcher, 'there'll be a dead mussel here.'—'And if you don't get out of this by today or tomorrow,' said the mussel, 'there'll be a dead oyster-catcher.' Meanwhile up came a fisherman and carried them both off. I fear Ts'in will be our fisherman."

——— * The tale is taken from Dr. H.A. Gile's Chinese Literature. ———

Which duly came to pass. Even in Liehtse's time Ts'in characteristics were well understood: he tells a sly story of a neighboring state much infested by robbers. The king was proud of a great detective who kept them down; but they soon killed the Pinkerton, and got to work again. Then he reformed himself,—and the robbers found his kingdom no place for them. In a body they crossed the Hoangho into Ts'in;—and bequeathed to its policy their tendencies and aptitudes.

Ts'in had come to be the strongest state in China. Next neighbor to the Huns, and half Hun herself, she had learned warfare in a school forever in session. But she had had wise rulers also, after their fashion of wisdom: who had been greatly at pains to educate her in all the learning of the Chinese. So now she stood, an armed camp of a nation, enamored of war, and completely civilized in all external things. Ts'u, her strongest rival, stretching southward to the Yangtse and beyond, had had to deal with barbarians less virile than the Huns; and besides, dwelling as Ts'u did among the mountains and forests of romance, she had some heart in her for poetry and mysticism, whereas Ts'in's was all for sheer fighting. Laotse probably had been a Ts'u man; and also Chwangtse and Ch'u Yuan; and in after ages it was nearly always from the forests of Ts'u that the great winds of poetry were blown. Still—he had immense territories and resources, and the world looked mainly to her for defense against the northern Tiger Ts'in. Soon after Su Tai told his master the parable of the mussel and the oyster-catcher the grand clash came, and the era of petty wars and raidings was over. Ts'u gathered to herself most of the rest of China for her allies, and there was a giant war that fills the whole horizon, nearly, of the first half of the third century B. C. New territories were involved: the world had expanded mightily since the days of Confucius. "First and last," says Ssema Tsien, "the allies hurled a million men against Ts'in." But to no purpose; one nation after another went down before those Hun-trained half-Huns from the north-west. In 257 Chau Tsiang king of Ts'in took the Chow capital, and relieved Nan Wang, the last of the Chows, of the Nine Tripods of Ta Yu, the symbols of his sacred sovereignty; —the mantle of the Caliphate passed from the House of Wen Wang and the Duke of Chow.

The world had crumbled to pieces: there had been changes of dynasty before, but never (in known history) a change like this. The Chows had been reigning nearly nine hundred years; but their system had been in the main the same as that of the Shangs and Hias, and of Yao, Shun, and Ta Yu: it was two millenniums, a century, and a decade old. A Chinaman, in Chau Tsiang's place, would merely have reshaped the old order and set up a new feudal-pontifical house instead of Chow; which could not have lasted, because old age had worn the old system out. But these barbarians came in with new ideas. A new empire, a new race, a new nation was to be born.

Chau Tsiang died in 251; and even then one could not clearly foresee what should follow. In 253 he had performed the significant sacrifice to Heaven, a prerogative of the King-Pontiff: but he had not assumed the title. Resistance was still in being. His son and successor reigned three days only; and his son, another nonentity, five years without claiming to be more than King of Ts'in. But when this man died in 246, he left the destinies of the world in the hands of a boy of thirteen; who very quickly showed the world in whose hands its destinies lay. Not now a King of Ts'in; not a King-Pontiff of Chow;—not, if you please, a mere wang or king at all;—but Hwangti, like that great figure of mythological times, the Yellow Emperor, who had but to sit on his throne, and all the world was governed and at peace. The child began by assuming that astounding title: Ts'in Shi Hwangti, the First August Emperor: peace to the ages that were past; let them lie in their tomb; time now should begin again!—Childish boyish swank and braggadocio, said the world; but very soon the world found itself mistaken. Hwangti;—but no sitting on his throne in meditation, no letting the world be governed by Tao, for him!

If you have read that delightful book Through Hidden Shensi, by Mr. F. A. Nichols, the city of Hienfang, or Changan, or, by its modern name, Singanfu or Sian-fu in Shensi, will be much more than a name to you. Thither it was that the Dowager Empress fled with her court from Pekin at the time of the Boxer Rebellion; there, long ago, Han Wuti's banners flew; there Tang Taitsong reigned in all his glory and might; there the Banished Angel sang in the palace gardens of Tang Hsuantsong the luckless: history has paid such tribute of splendor to few of the cities of the world. At Hienfang now this barbarian boy and Attila-Napoleon among kings built his capital;—built it right splendidly, after such ideas of splendor as a young half-Hun might cherish. For indeed, he had but little and remote Chinese heredity in him; was of the race of Attila and Genghiz, of Mahmoud of Ghazna, Tamerlane, and all the world-shaking Turkish conquerors. —Well, but these people, though by nature and function destroyers, have been great builders too: building hugely, monumentally, and to inspire awe, and not with the faery grace and ephemeral loveliness of the Chinese;—though they learned the trick of that, too,—as they learned in the west kindred qualities from the Saracens. Grand Pekin is of their architecture; which is Chinese with a spaciousness and monumental solemnity added. Such a capital Ts'in She Hwangti built him at Hien fang or Changan. In the Hall of audience of his palace within the walls he set up twelve statues, each (I like this barbarian touch) weighing twelve thousand pounds. Well; we should say, each costing so many thousand dollars; you need not laugh; I am not sure but that the young Hun had the best of it. And without the walls he built him, too, a Palace of Delight with many halls and courtyards; in some of which (I like this too) he could drill ten thousand men.

All of this was but the trappings and the suits of his sovereignty: he let it be known he had the substance as well. No great strategist himself, he commanded the services of mighty generals: one Meng-tien in especial, a bright particular star in the War-God's firmament. An early step to disarm the nations, and have all weapons sent to Changan; then, with these, to furnish forth a great standing army, which he sent out under Meng-tien to conquer. The Middle Kingdom and the quondam Great Powers were quieted; then south of the Yangtse the great soldier swept, adding unknown regions to his master's domain. Then rorth and west, till the Huns and their like had grown very tame and wary;—and over all these realms the Emperor spread his network of fine roads and canals, linking them with Changan: what the Romans did for Europe in road-building, he did for China.

He had, of course, a host of relatives; and precedent loomed large to tell him what to do with them: the precedent of the dynasty-founders of old. Nor were they themselves likely to have been backward in reminding him. Wu Wang had come into possession of many feudal dominions, and had made of the members of his family dukes and marquises to rule them. Ts'in Shi Hwangti's empire was many times the size of Wu Wang's; so he was in a much better position to reward the deserving. We must remember that he was no heir to a single sovereignty, but a Napoleon with a Europe at his feet. Ts'in and Ts'u and Tsin and the others were old-established kingdoms, with as long a history behind them as France or England has now; and that history had been filled with wars, mutual antagonisms and hatreds. Chow itself was like an Italy before Garibaldi;—with a papacy more inept, and holding vaguer sway:—it had been at one time the seat of empire, and it was the source of all culture. He had to deal, then, with a heterogeneity as pronounced as that which confronted Napoleon; but he was not of the stuff for which you prepare Waterloos. No one dreamed that he would treat the world other than as such a heterogeneity. His relations expected to be made the Jeromes, Eugenes, and Murats of the Hollands, Spains, and Sicilies to hand. The world could have conceived of no other way of dealing with the situation. But Ts'in Shi Hwangti could, very well.

He abolished the feudal system. He abolished nationalities and national boundaries. There should be no more Ts'in and Tsin and Ts'u; no more ruling dukes and marquises. Instead, there should be an entirely new set of provinces, of which he would appoint the governors, not hereditary; and they should be responsible to him: promotable when good, dismissable and beheadable on the first sign of naughtiness. It was an idea of his own; he had no foreign history to go to for models and precedents, and there had been nothing like it in Chinese History. Napoleon hardly conceived such a tremendous idea, much less had he the force to carry it out. Even the achievement of Augustus was smaller; and Augustus had before him models in the history of many ancient empires.

Now what was the ferment behind this man's mind;—this barbarian —for so he was—of tremendous schemes and doings? The answer is astonishing, when one thinks of the crude ruthless human dynamo he was. It was simply Taoism: it was Laotse's Blue Pearl;— but shining, of course, as through the heart of a very London Particular of Hunnish-barbarian fogs. No subtleties of mysticism; no Chwangtsean spiritual and poetry-breeding ideas, for him!—It has fallen, this magical Pearl, into turbid and tremendous waters, a natural potential Niagara; it has stirred, it has infected their vast bulk into active Niagarahood. He was on fire for the unknown and the marvelous; could conceive of no impossible—it should go hard, he thought, but that the subtler worlds that interpenetrate this one should be as wonderful as this world under Ts'in Shi Hwangti. Don't argue with him; it is dangerous!—certainly there was an Elixir of Life, decantable into goblets, from which Ts'in Shi Hwangti might drink and become immortal,—the First August Emperor, and the only one forever! Certainly there were those Golden Islands eastward, where Gods dispensed that nectar to the fortunate;—out in your ships, you there, and search the waves for them! And certainly, too, there were God knew what of fairylands and paradises beyond the western desert; out, you General Meng-tien, with your great armies and find them! He did tremendous things, and all the while was thus dreaming wildly. From the business of state he would seize hours at intervals to lecture to his courtiers on Tao;—I think not in a way that would have been intelligible to Laotse or Chwangtse. Those who yawned were beheaded, I believe.

How would such a prodigy in time appear to his own age? Such cataclysmic wars as Ts'in had been waging for the conquest of China take society first, so to say, upon its circumference, smash that to atoms, and then go working inwards. The most conservative and stable elements are the last and least affected. The peasant is killed, knocked about, transported, enclaved; but when the storm is over, and he gets back to his plough and hoe and rice-field again, sun and wind and rain and the earth-breath soothe him back to and confirm in what he was of old: only some new definite spiritual impulse or the sweep of the major cycles can change him much,—and then the change is only modification. At the other end of society you have the Intellectuals. In England, Oxford is the home and last refuge of lost causes. A literary culture three times as old as modern Oxford's, as China's was then, will be, you may imagine, fixed and conservative. It is a mental mold petrified with age; the minds participating must conform to it, solidify, and grow harder in the matrix it provides than granite or adamant. We have seen how in recent times the Confucian literati resisted the onset of westernism. All these steam-engines and telegraphs seemed to them fearfully crude and vulgar in comparison with the niceties of literary style, the finesses of time-taking ceremonious courtesies, that had been to them and to their ancestors time out of mind the true refinements of life, and even the realities. China rigid against the West was not a semi-barbarism resisting civilization, but an excessively perfected culture resisting the raw energies of one still young and, in its eyes, still with the taint of savagery: brusque manners, materialistic valuations.

Ts'in Shi Hwangti in his day had to meet a like opposition. The wars had broken up the structure of society, but not the long tradition of refined learning. That had always seemed the quarter from which light and leading must come; but it had long ceased to be a quarter from which light or leading could come. Mencius had been used to rate and ridicule the ruling princes; and scholars now could not understand that Mencius and his ruling princes and all their order were dead. They could not understand that they were not Menciuses, nor Ts'in Shi Hwangti a kinglet such as he had dealt with. Now Mencius had been a great man,—a Man's son, as they say;—and very likely he and Ts'in Shi Hwangti might have hit it off well enough. But there was no Mencius, no Man's son, among the literati now. The whole class was wily, polite, sarcastic, subtle, unimaginative, refined to a degree, immovable in conservatism. The Taoist teachers had breathed in a new spirit, but it had not reached them. How would Ts'in Shi Hwangti, barbarian, wild Taoist, and man of swift great action, appear to them?

Of course they could not abide him; and had not the sense to fear. They were at their old game of wire-pulling: would have the feudal system back, with all the old inefficiency; in the name of Ta Yu and the Duke of Chow they would do what they might to undo the strivings of this Ts'in upstart. So all the subtleties of the old order were arrayed against him,—pull devil, pull baker.

He knew it; and knew the extreme difficulty of striking any ordinary blow to quiet them. He had challenged Time Past to the conflict, and meant to win. Time Future was knocking at the doors of the empire, and he intended it should come in and find a home. His armies had crossed the Gobi, and smelt out unending possibilities in the fabulous west; they had opened up the fabulous south, the abode of Romance and genii and dragons. It was like the discovery of the Americas: a new world brought over the horizon. His great minister, Li Ssu had invented a new script, the Lesser Seal, easier and simpler than the old one; Meng-tien, conqueror of the Gobi, had invented the camel's-hair brush wherewith to write gracefully on silk or cloth, instead of difficultly with stylus on bamboo-strips as of old. It was the morning stir of the new manvantara; and little as the emperor might care for culture, he heard the Future crying to him. He heard, too, the opposing murmur of the still unconquered Past. The literati stood against him as the Papacy against Frederick II of Sicily: a less open opposition, and one harder to meet.

He did not solve the problem till near the end of his reign. In 213 he called a great meeting in the Hall of Audience at Changan. See the squat burly figure enthroned in grand splendor; the twelve weighty statues arranged around; the chief civil and military officers of the empire, thorough Taoists like himself, gathered on one side; the Academies and Censorates, all the leaders of the literati, on the other. The place was big enough for a largish meeting. Minister Li Ssu rises to describe the work of the Emperor; whereafter the latter calls for expressions of opinion. A member of his household opines that he "surpasses the very greatest of his predecessors": which causes a subdued sneer to run through the ranks of scholars. One of them takes the floor and begins to speak. Deprecates flattery guardedly, as bad for any sovereign; considers who the greatest of these predecessors were:—Yao, Shun, and Yu, 'Tang the Completer, Wu Wang; and—implies a good deal. Warms to his work at last, and grows bitter; almost openly pooh poohs all modern achievements; respectfully—or perhaps not too respectfully—advocates a return to the feudal—

"Silence!" roars Attila-Napoleon from his throne; and motions Li Ssu to make answer. The answer was predetermined, one imagines. It was an order that five hundred of the chief literati present should retire and be beheaded, and that thousands more should be banished. And that all books should be burned. Attila-Napoleon's orders had a way of being carried out. This was one.

He had meanwhile been busy with the great material monument of his reign: the Wall of China; and with cautious campaigns yearly to the north of it; and with personal supervision of the Commissariat Department of all his armies everywhere; and with daily long hikes to keep himself in trim. Now the Wall came in useful. To stretch its fifteen hundred miles of length over wild mountains and valleys in that bleak north of the world, some little labor was needed; and scholars and academicians were many and, for most purposes, useless; and they needed to be brought into touch with physical realities to round out their characters;—then let them go and build the wall. He buried enough of them—alive, it is to be feared: an ugly Ts'in custom, not a Chinese,—to make melons ripen in mid-winter over their common grave; the rest he sentenced to four years of wall-building,—which meant death. That, too, was the penalty for concealing books. He was now in dead earnest that the Past should go, and history begin again; to be read forever afterwards in this order,—the Creation, the Reign of Ts'in Shi Hwangti.

But he spared books on useful subjects: that is to say, on Medicine, Agriculture, and Magic.

So ancient China is to be seen now only as through a glass darkly; if his great attempt had been quite successful, it would not be to be seen at all. His crimes made no karma for China; they are not a blot on her record;—since they were done by an outside barbarian,—a mere publican and Ts'inner. From our standpoint as students of history, he was a malefactor of the first order; even when you take no account of his ruthless cruelty to men;—and so China has considered him ever since. Yet Karma finds ruthless agents for striking its horrible and beneficial blows; (and woe unto them that it finds!). It seems that Ts'in Shi Hwangti did draw the bowstring back—by this very wickedness,—far back—that sent the arrow China tearing and blazing out through the centuries to come. The fires in which the books were burned were the pyre of the Phoenix,—the burning of the astral molds,—the ignition and annihilation of the weight and the karma of two millenniums. The Secular Bird was to burn and be consumed to the last feather, and be turned to ashes utterly, before she might spring up into the ether for her new flight of ages.

One wonders what would happen if a Ts'in Shi Hwangti were to arise and do by modern Christendom what this one did by ancient China. I say nothing about the literati, but only about the literature. Would burning it be altogether an evil? Nearly all that is supremely worth keeping would live through; and its value would be immensely enhanced. First the newspapers would go, that sow lies broadcast, and the seeds of national hatreds. The light literature would go, that stands between men and thought. The books of theology would go, and the dust of creedalism that lies so thick on men's minds. A thousand bad precedents that keep us bound to medievalism would go with the law-books: there would be a chance to pronounce, here and now as human beings, on such things as capital punishment;—which remains, though we do not recognise the fact, solely because it has been in vogue all these centuries, and is a habit hard to break with. History would go; yes;—but a mort of pernicious lies would go with it. Well, well; one speaks of course in jest (partly). But when all is said, China was not unfortunate in having a strong giant of a man, a foreigner withal, at her head during those crucial decades. Ts'in Shi Hwangti guarded China through most of that perilous intermission between the cycles. It was the good that he did that mostly lived after him.

In 210 he fell ill, took no precautions, and died,—in his fiftieth year. A marvelous mausoleum was built for him: a palace, with a mountain heaped on top, and the floor of it a map of China, with the waters done in quicksilver. Whether his evil deeds were interred with his bones, who can say?—certainly his living wives were, and the thousands of living workmen who had built the mausoleum. Ts'innish doings, not Chinese. In the Book of Odes, Confucius preserved a Ts'in ballad mourning over men so buried alive with their dead king.

The strong hand lifted, rebellion broke out, and for awhile it looked as if Chu Hia must sink into the beast again. His feeble son got rid of Meng-tien, poisoned Li Ssu, offered the feeblest resistance to the rebels, and then poisoned himself. After four years of fighting,—what you might call "unpleasantness all round,"—one Liu Pang achieved the throne. He had started life as a beadle; joined Ts'in Shi Hwangti's army, and risen to be a general; created himself after the emperor's death Prince of Han; and now had the honor to inaugurate, as Emperor Kaotsu, the greatest of the Chinese dynasties.

In the two-fifties strong barbarous Ts'in had swallowed unmanly worn-out China, and for half a century had been digesting the feast. Then—to mix my metaphors a little—China flopped up to the surface again, pale, but smiling blandly. In the sunlight she gathered strength and cohesion, and proceeded presently to swallow Ts'in and everything else in sight; and emerged soon young, strong, vigorous, and glowing-hearted to the conquest of many worlds in the unknown. What was Ts'in, now is Shensi Province, the very Heart of Han: the Shensi man today is the Son of Han, Ts'in Englished; but in Shensi, the old Ts'in, in their tenderest moods, they call it Han still,—the proudest most patriotic name there is for it.

Not at once was the Golden Age of Han to dawn: half a thirteen-decade cycle from the opening of the manvantara in the two-forties had to pass first. Ts'in Shi Hwangti had mapped out a great empire; it fell to the Hans to consolidate it. Han Kaotsu followed somewhat in the footsteps of his predecessor, less the cruelty and barbarism, and most of the strength. The sentiment of the empire was Chinese, not Ts'innish; so, though not a brilliant or always a fortunate soldier, he was able to assert his sway over the greater part of China Proper. Chinesism had spread over territories never before Chinese, and wherever it had spread, the people were glad of a Chinese dynasty; besides, his rule was tactful and kindly. They were glad that the Gods of the Soil of Han were to be worshipped now, and those of Ts'in disthroned; and that the Ts'in edicts were annulled;—as they were with one important exception: those relating to literature. A cultureless son of the proletariat himself. Han Kaotsu felt no urge towards resurrecting that; and perhaps it was as well that the sleeping dogs should be let lie awhile. The wonder is that the old nationalities did not reassert themselves; but they did not, to any extent worth mentioning; and perhaps this is the best proof of Han Kaotsu's real strength. Ts'in Shi Hwangti had dealt soundly with the everlasting Hun in his time; but when he died, the Hun recovered. They kept Han Kaotsu busy, so that his saddle, as he said, was his throne. They raided past the capital and down into Ssechuan; once very nearly captured the emperor; and had to be brought out at last with a Chinese princess for the Hun king. Generally speaking, the Hans would have lived at peace with them if they could, and were ready to try better means of solving the problem than war. But it certainly was a problem; for in these Huns we find little traces of human nature that you could work upon. But China was a big country by that time, and only a part of it, comparatively small, suffered from the Huns. For the rest, Han Kaotsu was popular, his people were happy, and his reign of twelve years was a breathing-time in which they gathered strength. He kept a hundred thousand workmen busy on public works, largely road- and bridge-building: a suspension bridge that he built, a hundred and fifty yards long, and crossing a valley five hundred feet below, is still in use,—or was during the last century. He died in 194.