Chuang Tzu: Mystic, Moralist, and Social Reformer

The softest things in the world overcome the hardest. That which has no substance enters where there is no gap. And so I know that there is an advantage in Inaction.

Such doctrines as these, however, were not likely to appeal strongly to the sympathies of a practical people. In the sixth century B.C., before the death of Lao Tzu, another Prophet arose. He taught his countrymen that duty to one’s neighbor comprises the whole duty of humanity. Benevolence, justice, sincerity, and fortitude—these sum up the ethics of Confucius. He knew nothing of a God, of a soul, or of an unseen world. And he declared Confucius discouraged speculation about the supernatural or the unknown. that the unknowable had better remain untouched.

Against these rigid and worldly pronouncements, Chuang Tzu raised a powerful cry. The idealism of Lao Tzu had captured his poetic soul, and he determined to stop the tide of materialism in which he felt people were being quickly swept toward spiritual ruin original: "perdition".

He failed, of course. It was, indeed, too great a task to persuade the pragmatic Chinese nation that by doing nothing, all things would be accomplished. But Chuang Tzu left to future generations a work which, by reason of its marvelous literary beauty, has always held a primary place in literature. It is also a work of great originality of thought. It is true that the writer appears chiefly as a disciple insisting upon the principles of a Master; however, he managed to expand the field and carry his own speculations into regions never dreamed of by Lao Tzu.

It may here be mentioned that the historian Sima Qian original: "Ssŭ-ma Ch’ien", whom I have already quoted, states in his biographical account of Lao Tzu that the latter left behind him a small volume of 5,000