Lin Yutangs Introduction to Chuangtse: Mystic and

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    Jesus was followed by St. Paul, Socrates by Plato, fucius by Mencius, and Laotse by gtse. In all four cases, the first was the real teacher aher wrote no books or wrote very little, and the sed began to develop the does and wrote long and profound discourses. gtse, who died about 275 B.C., was separated from Laotses death by not quite two hundred years, and was strictly a porary of Mencius. Yet the most curious thing is that although both these writers mentiohe other philosophers of the time, her was mentioned by the other in his works.

    On the whole, gtse must be sidered the greatest prose writer of the Chou Dynasty, as Chu: Yu:an must be sidered the greatest poet. His claim to this positios both upon the brilliance of his style and the depth of his thought. That explains the fact that although he robably the greatest slanderer of fucius, and with Motse, the greatest antagonist of fu ideas, no fu scholar has not openly or secretly admired him. People who would not openly agree with his ideas would heless read him as literature.

    Nor  it be sa<kbd>９９lib.</kbd>id truly that a pure-blooded ese could ever quite disagree with gtses ideas. Taoism is not a school of thought in a, it is a deep, fual trait of ese thinking, and of the ese attitude toward life and toward society. It has depth, while fuism has only a practical sense of proportions; it enriches ese poetry and imagination in an immeasurable manner, and it gives a philosophi to whatever is in the idle, freedom-loving, poetic, vagabond ese soul. It provides the only safe, romantic release from the severe fu classic restraint, and humahe very humanists themselves; therefore when a ese succeeds, he is always a fuist, and when he fails, he is always a Taoist. As more people fail than succeed in this world, and as all who succeed know that they succeed but in a lame and halting manner when they examihemselves in the dark hours of the night, I believe Taoist ideas are more often at work than fuism. Even a fuist succeeds only when he knows he never really succeeds, that is, by following Taoist wisdom. Tseng Kuofan, the great fu general who suppressed the Taiping Rebellion, had failed in his early campaign and began to succeed only one m when he realized with true Taoist humility that he was "no good," and gave power to his assistant generals.

    gtse is therefore important as the first one who fully developed the Taoistic thesis of the rhythm of life, tained in the epigrams of Laotse. Uher ese philosophers principally occupied with practical questions of gover and personal morality, he gives the only metaphysics existing in ese literature before the ing of Buddhism. I am sure his mysticism will charm some readers and repel others. Certain traits in it, like weeding out the idea of the ego and quiet plation and "seeing the Solitary" explain <abbr></abbr>how these native ese ideas were back of the development of the  (Japanese Zen) Buddhism. Any branch of human knowledge, eveudy of the rocks of the earth and the ic rays of heaven, strikes mysticism when is reaches ah at all, and it seems ese Taoism skipped the stific study of nature to reach the same intuitive clusion by insight aloherefore it is not surprising that Albert Einstein and gtse agree, as agree they must, on the relativity of all standards. The only difference is that Eiakes on the more difficult and, to a ese, more stupid work of mathematical proof, while gtse furhe philosophic import of this theory of relativity, which must be sooner or later developed by Western philosophers in the  decades.

    A word must be added about gtses attitude toward fucius. It will be evident to any reader that he was one of the greatest romanticizers of history, and that any of the aes he tells about fucius, or Laotse or the Yellow Emperor must be accepted on a par with those aes he tells about the versation of General Clouds and Great Nebulous, or between the Spirit of the River and the Spirit of the O. It must be also plainly uood that he was a humorist with a wild and rather luxuriant fantasy, with an Ameri love for exaggeration and for the big. One should therefore read him as one would a humorist writer knowing that he is frivolous when he is profound and profound when he is frivolous.

    The exta of gtse sists of thirty<u>藏书网</u>-three chapters, all of them a mixture of philosophic disquisition and aes or parables. The chapters taining the most virulent attacks on fuism (not included here) have been sidered fery, and a few ese "textual critics" have even sidered all of them fery except the first seven chapters. This is easy to uand because it is the modern ese fashion to talk of fery. One  rest assured that these "textual critics" are uific because very little of it is philological criticism, but sists of opinions as to style and whether gtse had or had not enough culture to attack fucius only in a mild and polished manner. (See samples of this type of "criticism" in my long introdu to The Book of History.) Only one or two anas are pointed out, which could be due to later interpolations and the rest is a subjective assertion of opinion. Even the evaluations of style are faulty, and at least a distin should be made between interpolations and wholesale fery. Some of the best pieces of gtse are decidedly outside the first seven chapters, and it has not even occurred to the critics to provide an answer as to who else could have writtehere is no reason to be sure that even the most eloquent exposition of the thieves philosophy, regarded by most as fery, <code></code>was not the work of gtse, who had so little to do with the "gentlemen." Oher hand, I believe various aes have been freely added by later geions into the extremely loose structure of the chapters.

    I have chosen here eleven chapters, including all but one of the first best seven chapters. With one minor exception, these chapters are translated plete. The philosophically most important are the chapters on "Levelling All Things" and "Autumn Floods." The chapters, "Joioes," "Horses Hooves," "Opening Trunks" and "Tolerance" belong in one group with the main theme of protest against civilization. The most eloquent protest is tained in "Opening Trunks," while the most characteristically Taoistic is the chapter on "Tolerahe most mystid deeply religious piece is "The Great Supreme." The most beautifully written is "Autumn Floods." The queerest is the chapter on "Deformities" (a typically "romanticist" theme). The most delightful is probably "Horses Hooves," and the most fantastic is the first chapter, "A Happy Excursion." Some of gtses parables iher chapters will be found under "Parables of A Philosophers" elsewhere in this volume.

    I have based my translation on that of Herbert A. Giles. It soon became apparent in my work that Giles was free in his translation where exaess was easy and possible, and that he had a glib, colloquial style which might be sidered a blemish. The result is that hardly a line has bee untouched, and I have had to make my own translation,<big>99lib?</big> taking advantage of whatever is good in his English rendering. But still I owe a great debt to my predecessor, and he has notably succeeded in this difficult task in many passages. Where his rendering is good, I have not chosen to be different. In this sehe translation may be regarded as my own.

    It should be hat throughout the text, Giles translates "Heaven" as "God" where it means God. Oher hand, the term "Creator" is a rendering of chao-wu, or "he who creates things." I will not go into details of translation of other philosophic terms here.

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