Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/152

 CHAPTER XII.

A TAOIST PATRIARCH.

there is no country in the world in which official position and emoluments are more highly thought of than in China, there are, on the other hand, but few countries where they are more despised by certain schools of thought. The ideal man of Confucius was, first and foremost, an officer or Minister of State; and this conception has lived and flourished among the Chinese down to the present day. As a recoil, however, from the worldliness of the Confucian standard, we have the bright ideal of the Taoists, who look upon wealth and honours as illusory, and see the true Sage rather in him who abandons himself to quietism, contemplation, and the culture of his natural endowments. One of the most illustrious representatives of this persuasion was the patriarch Lü Tsû, about whom many curious stories are told, and to whom is attributed a very original and abstruse commentary upon the Tao Tê Ching. Now it must be remembered, at the outset, that a great many of the fairy tales and legends familiar to all children are common to many countries. Mr. W. E. S. Ralston is well known as an indefatigable investigator of what may be called the science of comparative romance, and while his public story-tellings are crowded with children as delighted and