Page:An analysis of religious belief (1877).djvu/425

 *over, the reverence with which he speaks of Taò, and the care with which he insists that Taò does nothing, seem at first sight inconsistent. We feel ourselves in an atmosphere of hopeless mysticism. Nevertheless, these superficial troubles vanish, or at least retire into the background, after repeated perusals of the work. There are few books that gain more on continued acquaintance. Every successive study reveals more and more of a wisdom and a beauty which we miss at first in the obscurity and strangeness of the style.

And first, Taò itself turns out to be a less incomprehensible and contradictory being than we originally supposed. For although he may sometimes be spoken of as doing nothing, or even as destitute of all distinct qualities, yet other attributes expressly exclude the notion of absolute inaction. A being which creates, cherishes and loves, and in which all the world implicitly trusts, is not the kind of nonentity that can be described as wholly devoid of "action, thought, judgment, and intelligence." Moreover, it is to be borne in mind that the sage is to imitate Taò in the quality—for which he is highly lauded—of doing nothing. The two pictures, that of Taò and his follower, must be held side by side in order to be correctly understood. Now what is the peculiar beauty, from a philosophical point of view, of the order of Nature? It is that all its parts harmoniously perform their several offices, without any violent or conspicuous intrusion of the presiding principle which guides them all.

Other teachers, indeed, have seen God mainly in violent and convulsive manifestations, and have appealed to miraculous suspensions of natural order as the best proofs of his existence. Not so Laò-tsé. He sees him in the quiet, unobtrusive, unapparent guidance of the world; in the unseen, yet irresistible power to which mankind unresistingly submit, precisely because it is never thrust offensively upon them. The Deity of Laò-tsé is free from those gross and unlovely elements which degrade his character in so many other religions. He rules by