In writing the preface to the third volume of these Sacred Books of the East in 1879, I referred to Laozi as “the acknowledged founder” of the system of Taoism. Prolonged study and research, however, have brought me to the conclusion that there was a Taoism earlier than his; and that before he wrote his Tao Te Ching , the principles taught in it had been promulgated, and the ordering of human conduct and government flowing from them inculcated.
For more than a thousand years “the Three Religions” has been a stereotyped phrase in China, meaning what we call Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. The phrase itself simply means “the Three Teachings,” or systems of instruction, leaving the subject-matter of each “Teaching” to be learned by inquiry. Of the three, Buddhism is of course the most recent, having been introduced into China only the first century of our Christian era. Both the others were indigenous to the country, and are traceable to a much greater antiquity, so that it is a question to which the earlier origin should be assigned. The years of Confucius’s life lay between BC 551 and 478; but his own acknowledgement that he was “a transmitter and not a maker,” and the testimony of his grandson, that “he handed down the doctrines of Yao and Shun ( BC 2300), and elegantly displayed the regulations of Wên and Wu ( BC 1200), taking them as his model,” are well known.
Laozi’s birth is said, in the most likely account of it, to have taken place in the third year of king Ting of the Chou dynasty, ( BC ) 604. He was thus rather more than fifty years older than Confucius. The two men seem to have met more than once, and I am inclined to think that the name Laozi, as the designation of the other, arose from Confucius’s styling him to his disciples “The Old Philosopher.” They met as heads of