Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu

  I hope enough has been said to show that it is not safe to assume that the Chuang tzu was written by Chuang Tzu simply because such an attribution is traditional. If that is so, we cannot assume, because Lao Tzu is mentioned in the Chuang tzu, that Chuang Tzu must have known of him. In fact what we are entitled to is simply the tautological statement that the parts of the Chuang tzu which contain stories about Lao Tzu must have been written at a time when the stories were already current. All we have done is to exchange the problem about the date of Lao Tzu for the problem about the date of the parts of the Chuang tzu which contain stories about Lao Tzu, and even then, what we can hope to settle, assuming for argument’s sake that we can come to any definite conclusions about the date of these parts of the Chuang tzu, is the date of the currency of the stories, not the date of Lao Tzu the man.

  Although the mere fact that stories concerning Lao Tzu are to be found in the Chuang tzu does not entitle us to answer the question, ‘did Chuang Tzu know of Lao Tzu?’, it is nevertheless an interesting question and one that we ought to ask. One of the strongest arguments against the traditionalists’ case for placing Lao Tzu in the sixth century BC is the fact that Mencius, in spite of his strong sense of mission against heterodox schools, attacks Yang Chu and Mo Tzu but does not mention Lao Tzu. Not only does he not mention Lao Tzu explicitly, but he never even shows any awareness of any of the views we associate with Lao Tzu. The traditionalists’ answer often takes the form that, al- though Mencius did not mention Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu certainly did. We have seen that the force of the argument depends on whether by ‘Chuang Tzu’ is meant the work or the man. If the work is meant, the fact is undeniable but proves nothing. But if the man is meant, then the question is an interesting one and should be examined.

  In order to answer this question, we have to re-formulate it and ask: in passages in the Chuang tzu where Chuang Tzu figures in a serious philosophical discussion does he ever mention, or, in general, show any signs that he knows of Lao Tzu? The answer to this is no. It may be said that in the passages where Chuang Tzu figures, perhaps there is no reason for him to mention Lao Tzu. This may be true of some of these passages, but there is one passage where Chuang Tzu’s silence on the point is, to say the least, surprising. In chapter 24 there is a conversation between Chuang Tzu and his friend, the famous sophist, Hui Shih. Chuang Tzu said, ‘Ju, Mo, Yang, and Ping are four. Together with you it will make five.’ Leaving on one side the question as to who Ping was - and the answer is certainly not relevant to our question - Chuang Tzu has named only three schools of thought, viz. Ju, i.e. the Confucian school, Mo, i.e. the school of Mo Tzu, and Yang, i.e. the school of Yang Chu. Why did Chuang Tzu not mention Lao Tzu and his school, particularly as, according to the traditionalist view, Chuang Tzu was the second great Taoist thinker who carried on the teachings of the school founded by Lao Tzu? This silence seems to go some way in providing evidence to show that Chuang Tzu was not aware either of Lao Tzu or of his school or, at least, not as a prominent school of thought dating from the time of Confucius.

  Although we can proceed no further with the problem as far as the Chuang tzu is concerned, there is one piece of evidence which is relevant. In chapter 3 of the Mo tzu, Mo Tzu was said to have been moved by the sight of silk coming out the colour of the dye. This was taken as a moral the application of which could be extended to the state and the individual. When the king of a state is influenced by good ministers, that state will be well governed. When an individual is influenced by good teachers and friends, he will be a good man. Examples are given in each case. Now this chapter is to be found also in the Lii shih ch’un ch’iu (chiian 3, pt 4), and the two versions are in fact identical up to the end of the section about the ‘dyeing’ of states. The final section about individuals is quite different. In the Mo tzu version three examples only are given of individuals who came under the influence of good men, viz. Tuan-kan Mu, Ch’in Ku-li and Fu Yiieh. Tuan-kan Mu was a Confucian and Ch’in Ku-li a well-known disciple of Mo Tzu’s, both of the fifth century BC(Fu Yiieh was an ancient figure and does not concern us). In the Lii shih ch’un ch’iu, however, the list is augmented, and at the head of this list of illustrious individuals is Confucius who was said to have come under the good influence of, amongst others, Lao Tzu. It seems that between the time the Mo tzu chapter assumed its present form and the time it was incorporated, in its modified form, into the Lti shih ch’un ch’iu, the story of Confucius receiving instruction from Lao Tzu must have become so well known that in revising the list the editors of the Ui shih ch’un ch’iu placed Confucius at the head of it. As we know roughly the date of composition of the Ui shih ch’un ch’iu, if we could determine approximately the terminus a quo of the Mo tzu chapter we can determine the period in which the story gained currency. This we are fortunately in a position to do. The Mo tzu chapter mentions the death of King K’ang of Sung which took place in 286 BC. Thus we can say that the chapter could not have been completed in its present form before that date, although there is no reason to doubt the authenticity of the saying attributed to Mo Tzu in the opening section. We can say, then, that it must have been within the period of the forty years or so between 286 and 240 BC that the story of the encounter between Confucius and Lao Tzu became widely known and accepted.

  We can sum up our somewhat lengthy discussion so far of the problem of whether Lao Tzu was a historical figure who lived in the sixth century BC, in this way. Not only did Mencius show no signs of awareness of Lao Tzu and his school, Chuang Tzu who lived probably well on into the third century BC showed no knowledge of Lao Tzu either. This is surprising in the case of Mencius for he was such a staunch supporter of the Confucian philosophy and was tireless in his attacks on heterodox views, and it is equally surprising in the case of Chuang Tzu for,, according to the traditionalist account, he was the successor to Lao Tzu in the Taoist school of thought. We have seen that it was not until the second half of the third century BC that the story of an encounter between Lao Tzu and Confucius became widely known. And it is solely on this story that the traditional- ists’ case for Lao Tzu being an older contemporary of Confucius is founded.

  Apart from the late date of the story of the encounter, there is another reason for looking upon it with suspicion as evidence of the date of Lao Tzu. When we examine this story we can see that it is, in fact, an illustrative story. It is, therefore, highly precarious to take the events contained in it as historical, particu- larly where the events concern only the variable factors. In our story, the point is the discomfiture of Confucius in the hands of some hermit or other. The identity of the hermit, the location of the incident and the way the discomfiture is brought about are all variable factors. It is interesting to note that the accounts in the Shift chi are not in fact very close to the accounts about the encounter between Lao Tzu and Confucius in the Chuang tzu, but resemble, in some features, rather more closely the account in the same work (chapter 26) of a meeting between Lao Lai Tzu - one of the persons with whom Lao Tzu is identified in his biography - and Confucius. This illustrates the point that the identity of the interlocutor is of little importance. Stories of this kind are to be found in more than one work, and one suspects that these originated with schools other than the Confucianist, in many cases probably Taoist. But some of these stories came to be accepted even by Confucianist circles at a fairly early date, as a few of them are to be found even in the Analects of Confucius* If we look upon these stories as forming a genre which must have been popular from fairly early times, then the fact that in a few of these the hermit happens to be Lao Tzu loses any historical significance it might have had they been unique. That a few illustrative stories of probably a late date are to be found in the Chuang tzu is hardly sufficient evidence on which to rest the whole case for the historicity, let alone the early date, of Lao Tzu.

  We cannot leave the present topic without taking at least a cursory glance at the passages in the Li chi. As we have seen, in these passages Confucius merely recounts what he
heard from Lao Tzu when he was with him. The Lao Tzu here is not a hermit who held Taoist views but an elderly gentleman well versed in the rites, as what Confucius learned from him concerned the finer points ih their observance. The Li chi is a compilation of the first century BC and as we do not know from what sources these accounts were derived we can do no more than speculate about their date. My conjecture is that these were later in date than the stories in the Taoist tradition, and constituted a move on the part of the Confucians to counter the successful attempts by the Taoists to make Confucius a figure of ridicule. Instead of denying flatly that Confucius ever met Lao Tzu, or alternately, that Lao Tzu was a historical figure, they transformed him into an elderly gentleman well versed in the rites and so, in effect, turned him into a good Confucian. This was a very shrewd move, as it is far easier to change the nature of a widely accepted tradition than to discredit it altogether. That the move was successful can be seen from the fact that by the time Ssu-ma Ch’ien came to write the biographies of Lao Tzu and Confucius, he made use of Confucianist sources as well as the Taoist.

  There is another tradition which is to be found in the biography of Lao Tzu in the Shih chi. This concerns his westward journey through the Pass and the writing of a work in two books at the request of the Keeper of the Pass (kuan ling yin). This story has no direct bearing on the date of Lao Tzu, but, nevertheless, it repays closer examination. Now at some time or other, after the story had gained wide acceptance, Kuan Yin* (the Keeper of the Pass) came to be regarded as a philosopher in his own right, accredited with not only philosophical views but a philosophical work as well. It is interesting that Kuan Yin is mentioned in the Lii shih ch’un ch’iu (chiian 17, pt 7) as valuing ‘limpidity’. He is also mentioned in the final chapter of the Chuang tzu which is a sort of general account of ancient Chinese thought and is considered by most scholars to be later in date than the main body of the work. In the Chiang tzu Kuan Yin is mentioned in only one other chapter, chapter 19, but, again, there are some reasons for thinking that this chapter may be late as well. The Hsün tzu, for instance, mentions Lao Tzu’s views once but not Kuan Yin, although, curiously enough, the notion of ‘limpidity’ figures prominently in a theory of the mind in chapter 21. This would seem to show that it was after the composition of the relevant parts of the Hsün tzu that Kuan Yin became an individual with a distinct identity.

  Finally, there is one piece of evidence which is of some interest to us. In the Yang chu chapter of the Lieh tzu there is recorded a conversation between Yang Chu and Ch’in Ku-li which ends with Ch’in Ku-li saying, ‘If one were to ask Lao Tan and Kuan Yin about your opinion they would agree with you and if one were to ask the Great Yu and Mo Ti about mine, they would agree with me.’ It is true, most scholars agree that the Lieh tzu is a late compilation, but much of the material in it is early and there is no reason to think that this story was an invention by the compiler. The point that concerns us is the apparent Mohist origin of the story. It seems hardly likely to be a pure coincidence that not only the tradition that Confucius received instruction from Lao Tzu had something to do with the Mohist school, but the name of Kuan Yin was also coupled with that of Lao Tzu in the words attributed to a well-known Mohist.

  The tentative conclusion we have arrived at concerning Lao Tzu the man is this. There is no certain evidence that he was a historical figure. What is certain is that there are two stories about him, and concerning these there are two points worth noting. Firstly, both stories have something to do with the Mohist school; and secondly, both came to be widely known in the forty years or so before the compilation of the Lii shih ch’un ch’iu in 240 BC. That in the Lii shih ch’un ch’iu the stories are taken for granted may be due to the fact that there probably was a Mohist among the editors. All this, and indeed my whole account of Lao Tzu, is speculative, but when there is so little that is certain there is not only room but need for speculation.

  APPENDIX 2

  THE NATURE OF THE WORK

  In the latter part of the Warring States period philosophical works no longer consisted of recorded sayings explicitly attributed to a particular thinker. The Lao tzu is no exception. Neither Lao Tzu nor the name of any other person appears in the work. That it is attributed to Lao Tzu is purely a matter of tradition.

  Another feature of the works of this period is the increasing use of rhyming passages. In the case of the Lao tzu these amount to considerably more than half of the whole work. Such passages must have been meant to be learned by rote with the meaning explained at length in an oral commentary. Hence the cryptic nature of most of the sayings. As these rhyming passages were handed on orally, there probably was no one authoritative form nor one unique interpretation for them. They were common property to followers of various schools sharing a common tendency in thought.

  There was, presumably, no one standard collection of such sayings either. This is confirmed by a cursory glance at the bibliographical chapter of the Han shu. Besides a work called Lao lai tzu, named after one of the figures with whom Lao Tzu was identified in the Shih chi biography, there are two works with titles that are interesting. These are the Lao ch’eng tzu and the Cheng chang che. Now Lao. ch’eng tzu literally means ‘the old man with mature wisdom’ while Cheng chang che means ‘the elder from the state of Cheng’. If we remember that Lao tzu literally means ‘the old man’ we cannot help being impressed by the similarity of the titles of the three works. As far as I am aware, we have no extant quotations from the Lao ch’eng tzu, but fortunately for us there are preserved three quotations from the Cheng chang che in the Hanfei tzu (twice in chapter 34 and once in chapter 37), and these bear a singular resemblance to the Lao tzu. We can only conclude that in that period there were a number of works which were Taoist in content, appearing under various titles all of which meant ‘old man’ or ‘elder’, and the important point for us is that the Lao tzu was only one of these works. It so happened that Lao Tzu was also one of the hermits that figured in the illustrative stories about Confucius. The two facts reinforced each other so that the Lao tzu was able to survive as the sole representative of this genre of literature, and, by the last quarter of the third century BC, the work was firmly associated with Lao Tzu, the man who was said to have instructed Confucius in the rites.

  Not only were there other collections similar to the Lao tzu, but the Lao tzu itself probably did not exist in a definitive form until a later period. In this respect, it is interesting to note that in the Huai nan tzu, particularly in chapter 12, which uses stories taken from various works as pegs for hanging quotations from the Lao tzu, the text explicitly quoted as sayings of Lao Tzu is practically identical with our present text. On the other hand in the Chieh Lao (Explanations of Lao) and Yii Lao (Illustrations of Lao) chapters in the Han fei tzu where quotations are never introduced by ‘Lao Tzu said’, though in a few cases by ‘the Book said’, the text is close to, but not identical with, the present text, and quotations attributed to Lao Tzu in the final chapter of the Chuang tzu, though in most cases recognizable as such, differ considerably from the present text. It seems then that the text was still in a fluid state in the second half of the third century BC or even later, but by the middle of the second century BC, at the latest, the text already assumed a form very much like the present one. It is possible that this happened in the early years of the Western Han Dynasty. There is some reason to believe that in that period there were already specialist ‘professors’ (po shih) devoted to the study of individual ancient works, including the so-called philosophers (chu tzu), as distinct from the classics (ching). If that is the case, then the Lao tzu which was held in great esteem in court circles was almost certain to have its po shih. This would cause the text to become standardized and would also account for the fact that the text used by the editors of the Huai nan tzu was already, to all intents and purposes, identical with the present text.

  It follows from what we have said about ancient Chinese works that they are best looked upon as anthologies.
At best the material contained in such works consists of sayings of a particular thinker, often augmented by later material belonging to the same school. At worst the material is no more than a collection of passages with only a common tendency in thought. A careful reading of the Lao tzu cannot but leave us with the impression that it is not only an anthology but an anthology of the second kind. There are various features which give rise to such an impression.

  Many chapters fall into sections having, at times, little or no connexion with one another. In the compilation of works of the latter part of the Warring States period one of the principles was the placing together of passages about the same topic which sometimes meant no more than passages having one or more catchwords in common. Whether this results in the putting together of passages which are relevant to one another depends on the purpose of the compiler which may be simply to facilit- ate memorization. This is true of the Lao tzu. If we do not bear this in mind and insist on treating chapters as organic wholes we run the risk of distorting the meaning. Two examples will make clear the kind of thing I have in mind. In chapter V we have