ting but the rising sun. The kingdom of heaven has to him its ideal not in the advance of human development but in the original constitution of the most primitive human society. The Jew has his Garden of Eden, but it fades from his sight in the vision of a coming and a higher glory; the Chinaman has nothing to counterpoise the vision of his Eden, and he sees no glory but that which is passed

away.

I shall point out in the sequel wherein consists at once the truth and the fallacy of this Confucian view, and shall endeavour to indicate the reason why a really high theory has proved utterly ineffectual to furnish to this people a source of aspiration. But in the meantime let me briefly pass to the one remaining party amongst the original beliefs of China. We have seen how in the worship of the ancestral dead the nation reverted to a memory instead of a hope. We have seen how in the idealising of a primitive society the Chinese mind again sought its anchor on the receding rather than on the approaching shore. We are now in the final phase to see another and yet a different form of the same tendency. The final phase is that strange creed which, at a period almost contemporary with Confucius, found its exponent in the mystic Lâotze.1 And here once more regression is the order

1 The system is called Tâoism, from a word Tao, whose etymology is uncertain, but which seems to indicate the surrender

of the day. If the ancestral worshipper proposed for imitation the men of a previous age, if the follower of Confucius sought his model in the imagination of a primitive society, the disciple of Lâo-tze virtually went further back still. He proposed in effect that man should retrace his steps into the life of the plant. He does not use the simile, but he clearly expresses the thought. He looks upon modern society-the society of his own age-as a departure from primitive simplicity. What makes it a departure from primitive simplicity is the accumulated product of human consciousness. Man has become too reflective, too calculating, too aiming. He has set himself against the stream of nature, and has tried to alter the course of that stream. Everything in the world but himself yields itself up to the order of nature. Man alone resists its order, and therefore man alone is unhappy. If he would cease to be unhappy, let him become what other things are unconscious.1 Let him yield himself again to that fixed order of nature which he is powerless to change. Let him go back to the life. of the vegetable, which lives without knowing that it lives, and grows without considering its growth.

to a fixed order. For some definitions of the word, see Professor Douglas, 'Confucianism and Tâoism,' p. 189; also Watters, 'Lâotze, a Study in Chinese Philosophy,' p. 45.

1 The admiration of the principle of unconsciousness in the system of Lao-tze will be found expressed in 'Tao-te-King,' Julien's edition, Introduction, p. xiii.

Let him become spontaneous, uncalculating, aimless; let him cease to map out a plan for his earthly life or a means for his daily bread. His course is mapped out already in a fixed and unalterable way. He needs no ship nor helm nor oar, no sail nor chart nor compass. He has only to become sea-weed, and to drift, ignoring himself and everything around; the order of nature will do the rest.

I have thus tried in a few sentences to describe rather than to define the system of Lâo-tze. It will be seen on the very surface to present in some respects a marked and direct contrast to the contemporaneous view of Confucius, and in point of fact these two systems have been generally viewed as indicating contrary aspects of the Chinese mind. Confucius belongs to the outward order; Lâo-tze to the mystical and introvertive. Confucius is occupied with the problem of social wellbeing; Lâo-tze is concerned only with the peace of the individual. Confucius is inspired by the pride of empire; Lâo-tze is desirous above all things to sink into humility-not the humility of thinking lowly of one's self, but the humility of not thinking at all. Confucius requires in the members of the State an interest in the common welfare; Lâo-tze seeks a mystical resignation, in which all interest, common or individual, is forgotten. These are the points of contrast, and I do not attempt to deny them. But I say that these points of contrast are only two

opposite tendencies of one national ideal—the spirit of regress. Just as the same sense of guilt may wake on the cheek of one man the blush of shame, and dim that of another with the pallor of fear, so has the national spirit of China expressed itself in one instance by an exhibition of materialism, and in another by a display of material crucifixion. The system of Confucius and the system of Lâo-tze are both modes of one spirit, and of that spirit which essentially belongs to China. They are both regressions toward the past; their difference lies simply in the fact that the one goes further back than the other. Confucius retraces his steps to the primitive age of man, and attempts to find there a model for the ages to come; Lâo-tze retraces his steps to an age more primitive still, and seeks in the life of the unconscious plant to bury the burden of human grief and care. The difference in their form is accidental; the one thing not accidental is their common motive of regressiveness. This is in all the forms of Chinese faith the essentially national feature, the one element which distinctively and for ever marks out this branch from all the surrounding branches of the religious tree. Neither ancestral worship, nor the doctrine of Confucius, nor the creed of Lâo-tze, presents anything that is new; each of them can be paralleled by things analogous in other climes. The element which is distinctive of China amongst the religions of antiquity is the fact that,

whether in the worship of the departed, or in the search for a new kingdom, or in the pursuit of a mystical goal, the Chinaman is actuated by one and the same desire-the desire to regain the standpoint of an earlier day.

This, then, is the message of China to the religious world, "Go back." It is a strange, weird, unexpected message, altogether unlike what one looks for in such a sphere, and altogether unique amongst the voices of surrounding nations. Speak to the children of Israel that they go forward" are the words which are inscribed on the threshold of the Jewish temple. They form the key-note to the whole history of that people. And they are the key-note of that music to which marches nearly all religious history. The impulse to go forward, to press toward the mark of a coming prize, to leave the acquisitions of the past behind in the pursuit of a higher goal, has been the almost unbroken aim of the religions of mankind. India presses forward to the future, and in all the forms of her faith seeks refuge from the present hour in a state to come. Persia presses forward to the future, and looks for a solution of the problem to the ripening circles of the suns. Even Egypt presses forward to the future; the motto of her pyramids is not so much the glory of antiquity as the power of everlastingness; she seeks to build something which shall endure. But here is a voice which seems disso