are of a very limited class, and are invariably recorded in the brief manner of the chapter that has just been quoted. Eclipses of the sun are duly registered, and the record thus acquires a chronological value of high importance in historical researches. Among the other facts commonly mentioned are sacrifices for rain, which occur very frequently; wars, with the results of great battles; the marriages or deaths of rulers and important persons; their journeys; occasionally their murder; meetings of rulers for the purpose of common action in matters of State; diplomatic missions, invasions of locusts or other troublesome insects; and lastly, peculiarities of various kinds in the state of the weather. It is plain that annals of this kind have no religious significance beyond that which they derive from the mere fact of being reputed sacred. And in this aspect the Ch'un Ts'ëw is certainly curious. Having been assigned—rightly or wrongly—to the pen of the prophet of China, it seems to have become a point of honor with Chinese scholars to extract from it, by hook or by crook, the profoundest lessons on politics and morals.
Section II.—The Tao-te-King.[1]
There are in China three recognized sects or "religiones licitæ:"—Confucianism, Buddhism, and Tao-ism. We have examined the Sacred Books of the first; those of the second will come under review in another section. There remains the comparatively small and unimportant sect of the Taò-ssé, or "Doctors of Reason," who derive their origin from Laò-tsè, and who possess as their classic the single written composition which emanated from their founder. It is entitled the Taò-té-King.
Ancient as this book is (probably about B.C. 520), there is no
- ↑ By far the best European work on the Tao-te-King is that of Victor von Strauss, and I have followed his translation, though not without consulting those of others. I am fully sensible of the inconvenience of a double translation, and I should have preferred to follow Chalmers' English rendering of Lao-tse, had not the obscurity of his version been so great as to render it almost unintelligible to the general reader. Reinhold von Planckner's translation errs on the other side by excess of clearness. It is a palpable attempt to force upon the ancient Chinaman a connected system professedly unraveled from the text by the ingenuity of the modern German. It should be used only with extreme caution, or not at all.
