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THE TEXTS OF TAOISM.
APP, VIII.
tation of them shows them to be far from any wish to defame Khung-zze.
3. And there is that in the style which slightly indicates his real meaning. (In his last Book for instance), when discussing the historical phases of Taoism, he exhibits them from Mo Ti, Khin Hwa-lî, Phăng Măng, Shăn Tâo, Thien Pien, Kwan Yin, and Lão Tan, down even to himself, and brings them all together as constituting one school, but Confucius is not among them?. So great and peculiar is the honour which he does to him!
4. I have had my doubts, however, about The Robber Kih (Bk. XXIX),' and 'The Old Fisherman (Bk. XXXI)' for they do seem to be really defamatory of Confucius. And as to 'The Kings who have wished to Resign the Throne (Bk. XXVIII)' and 'The Delight in the Sword-fight (Bk. XXX);' they are written in a low and vulgar style, and have nothing to do with the doctrine of the Tâo. Looking at the thing and reflecting on it, there occurred to me the paragraph at the end of Book XXVII (Metaphorical Language'). It tells us that when Yang Zze-kü had gone as far as Khin, he met with Lâo-ze, who said to him, “Your eyes are lofty, and you stare; who would live with you? The purest carries himself as if he were defiled, and the most virtuous seems to feel himself defective." Yang Zze-kü looked abashed and changed countenance. When he first went to his lodging-house, the people in it met him and went before him. The master of it carried his mat for him, and the mistress brought to him the towel and comb. The lodgers left their mats and the cook his fire-place, as he went past them. When he went away, the others in the house would have striven with him about the places for their mats.'
After reading this paragraph, I passed over the four intermediate Books,—the Zang Wang, the Yüeh Kien, the Yü Fû, and the Tâo Kih, and joined it on to the first paragraph of the Lieh Yü-khâu (Book XXXII). I then read how Lieh- ze had started to go to Khi but came back
1 See Book XXXIII, pars. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.
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