attempts to win a forced immortality, in semi-scientific formalism. But in Lâo-tze and in the greatest philosophers of the school, it is illumined with paradoxical magnificence. Confucianism seems by comparison a meticulous and utilitarian system of morality designed to bring up honest subjects for the State, and Buddhism a desperate renunciation of nature and of reason alike, a refined anæsthetic for the annihilation of universal grief. Lâo-tze does not seek to change men or to annihilate them, but he points out the path by which, following again the line of natural destiny, they may obtain peace and immortality. “For Lâo-tze,” Puini says, “the man who enters into society is the comic figure par excellence. And his ridiculousness increases in proportion as he complicates the artificial manner of his life.” Putting it roughly, and leaving aside the other points of the doctrine, we may say that Lâo-tze was a Rousseau who appeared six centuries before Christ, instead of coming eighteen centuries after Christ.
By way of a final comparison with Europeans, let me recall the fact that Kwang-tze, since he lived in the fourth century before Christ, was the contemporary of Plato and of Aristotle—to remain in the philosophical field. Unlike them, however, he did not limit himself to the study of logic, physics, and metaphysics, but concerned
