PREFACE. XV
there is a large collection of notes from celebrated com- mentators and writers down to the editor himself.
Second, the Text and Commentary of Wang Pi (called also Fu-sze), who died A.D. 249, at the early age of twenty- four. See Introduction, p. 8.
Third, 'Helps (lit. Wings) to Lao-jze;' by ^lao Hung (called also Zao-hau), and prefaced by him in 1587. This is what Julien calls ' the most extensive and most important contribution to the understanding of Lao-jze, which we yet possess.' Its contents are selected from the ablest writings on the Treatise from Han Fei (Introd., p. 5) downwards, closing in many chapters with the notes made by the com- piler himself in the course of his studies. Altogether the book sets before us the substance of the views of sixty-four writers on our short ^Ting. Julien took the trouble to analyse the list of them, and found it composed of three emperors, twenty professed Taoists, seven Buddhists, and thirty-four Confucianists or members of the Literati. He says, ' These last constantly explain Lao-^ze according to the ideas peculiar to the School of Confucius, at the risk of misrepresenting him, and with the express intention of throttling his system ; ' then adding, ' The commentaries written in such a spirit have no interest for persons who wish to enter fully into the thought of Lao-jze, and obtain a just idea of his doctrine. I have thought it useless, therefore, to specify the names of such commentaries and their authors."
I have quoted these sentences of Julien, because of a charge brought by Mr. Balfour, in a prefatory note to his own version of the Tao Teh ^ing, against him and other translators. ' One prime defect,' he says, though with some hesitation, ' lies at the root of every translation that has been published hitherto ; and this is, that not one seems to have been based solely and entirely on commentaries furnished by members of the Taoist school. The Con- fucian element enters largely into all ; and here, I think, an injustice has been done to Lao-jze. To a Confucianist the Taoist system is in every sense of the word a heresy, and
