Page:The Sayings of Lao Tzŭ.djvu/11

 wrote, though carelessly collected and pieced together at random. Ssŭ-ma Ch'ien, who published his history in 91, and was consequently removed from Lao Tzŭ 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 Tê 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 Confucius, to say nothing of the Burning of the Books in 213, will find it hard to convince himself that Ssŭ-ma Ch'ien ever had before him the actual writings of the philosopher.

Arbitrary and confused though the arrangement of the Tao Tê 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 Tzŭ could hope to achieve absolute and invariable consistency, it is easy to see that the Tao Tê Ching is something more than a mere jumble of stray aphorisms—that it is, in fact, the well-defined though rudimentary outline of a great system of transcendental and ethical philosophy. That this magnificent scheme of thought never reached its full expression in Lao Tzŭ's treatment is largely due to the fact that he was perpetually struggling to convey his ideas through the medium of a language still imperfectly developed, and forming an inadequate vehicle for abstruse philosophical conceptions. This, too, combined with an extra-