The contrast between the system of Lao-tsze and that of Confucius may be
indicated in a word: the former was speculative, the latter practical, and it is no
wonder, therefore that the latter, addressing itself to man’s actual necessities and
daily duties, prevailed over the former. But, in an abstract sense, Lao’s, as
originally defined by himself, was the purer and more elevated; for it aimed at
securing the immortality of man through the contemplation of GOD, the
subjugation of the passions, and the absolute tranquillity of the soul. He taught
that Silence and the Void generated the Taou, the “Logos” or reason by which
movement was produced; and that all beings containing in themselves the
duality of male and female sprang from them.
Man, he said, was composed of two principles, the material and the spiritual:
from the latter he emanated, and to it he ought to return, by throwing off the
fetters and snares of the world, crushing out the material passions, the desires of
the soul, and the pleasures of the body, and abandoning riches, honours, and the
ties of life.
Before Lao-tsze’s time, the Chinese seem to have worshipped the Shang-te, or
Supreme Ruler, and the Tien, or Heaven: but Lao-tsze preached in their place the
Taou, or “reason” of the Kosmos. Of a Supreme Creative and Eternal Power he
had no conception. There was as little theology in his system as in that of
Confucius; but its morality was not less admirable; it insisted on the practice of
those virtues which form the moral code of all the higher religions,—charity,
benevolence, chastity, and the free-will, moral agency, and responsibility of
man. But there was an obscurity about Lao-tsze’s teaching, which enabled his
followers successfully to pervert it, and it gradually assumed a form which the
Teacher himself would undoubtedly have been the first to repudiate. The Taossi,
as they were called, professed to have discovered the drink of immortality, and
practised divination, alchemy, the invocation of spirits, and other superstitious
rites. These follies were gravely ridiculed by the Joo-Keaou, or sect of
Confucius, and gradually were abandoned by all but the most illiterate.
Among the host of deities worshipped by this sect we may instance the San-
tsing, or “Three Pure Ones,” the three-fold ruler of the assembled gods in
heaven, the sun, the moon, and the stars, who delivers his name and benevolent
commands to be promulgated amongst mankind, that all who see and recite that
name may be delivered from all evil, and obtain infinite happiness. “It is
impossible to doubt,” says a writer, “that we see here traces of a Divine
revelation, corrupted though it has now become. China has her Trinity in