The Sayings of Lao Tzu PDF

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The mention of this Classic, or Treatise of the Way and of Virtue (as it may be translated for want of better English equivalents), brings us naturally to the vexed question as to whether the text which has come down to us can really be attributed to the'hand of Lao Tzii, or whether it is not rather a garbled and unauthorised com pilation of his sayings, or even the mere forgery of a later age.

The Chinese themselves, it may be remarked, are almost unanimous in denying its authenticity.

It has been urged that we must make allowance here for Confucian bias but the internal evidence alone should suffice to dispel the notion, to which many eminent sinologues have clung, that the Tao TE Ching in its present form can possibly represent the actual work of Lao Tzii.

On the other hand, it is highly probable that much of it is substantially what he said orwrote, though carelessly collected and pieced to gether at random.

Ssi'l ma Ch'ien, who published his history in 91 b.c and was consequently removed from Lao Tzii by a much longer period than we are from Shakespeare, tells us that the Sage wrote a book of five thousand and odd words; and, indeed, by that time the Tao Te Ching may possibly have existed in something like its present shape.

But anyone who reflects on the turbulent condition of China during the intervening centuries, and the chaotic state of primitive literature before the labours of Con fucius, to say nothing of the Burning of the Books in 213 b.c., will find it hard to convince himself that Ssh-ma Ch'ien ever had before him the actual writings of the philosopher.

Arbitrary and confused though the arrange ment of the Tao T2 Ching appears, it is possible to trace a coherent line of thought throughout the whole. And although no coiner of paradox on such an extensive scale as Lao ti could hope to achieve absolute and invariable consistency, it is easy to see that the Tao T2 Ching is something more than a mere jumble of stray aphorisms that it is, in fact, the w