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CH. III.
INTRODUCTION.
21
and earth and all that in them is, under the guidance of the Tâo. It was an evolution and not a creation. How the Tâo itself came,- I do not say into existence, but into operation,-neither Lâo nor Kwang ever thought of saying anything about. We have seen that it is nothing materiall. It acted spontaneously of itself. Its sudden appearance in the field of non-existence, Producer, Transformer, Beautifier, surpasses my comprehension. To Lão it seemed to be before God. I am compelled to accept the existence of God, as the ultimate Fact, bowing before it with reverence, and not attempting to explain it, the one mystery, the sole mystery of the universe.
4. 'The bodily shape was the body preserving in it the spirit, and each had its peculiar manifestation which we call its nature.' So it is said in the passage quoted above from Kwang-zze's twelfth Book, and the language shows
marcas how Taoism, in a loose and indefinite way, Man is composed of body and considered man to be composed of body and
spirit. spirit, associated together, yet not necessarily dependent on each other. Little is found bearing on this tenet in the Tâo Teh King. The concluding sentence of ch. 33, 'He who dies and yet does not perish, has longevity,' is of doubtful acceptation. More pertinent is the description of life as 'a coming forth,' and of death as 'an entering?;' but Kwang-zze expounds more fully, though after all unsatisfactorily, the teaching of their system on the subject.
At the conclusion of his third Book, writing of the death of Lâo-zze, he says, 'When the master came, it was at the proper time; when he went away, it was the simple sequence (of his coming). Quiet acquiescence in what happens at its proper time, and quietly submitting (to its sequence), afford no occasion for grief or for joy. The ancients described (death) as the loosening of the cord on which God suspended (the life). What we can point to are the faggots that have been consumed; but the fire is transmitted elsewhere, and we know not that it is over and ended.'
1 The Tâo Teh King, ch. 14; et al.
? Ch. 50.
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