Taoistic men beyond the restrictions of place and time. He believed that those thoughts were as old as the men to whom he attributed them. I find in his belief a ground for believing myself that to Taoism, as well as to Confucianism, we ought to attribute a much earlier origin than the famous men whose names they bear. Perhaps they did not differ so much at first as they came afterwards to do in the hands of Confucius and Laozi, both great thinkers, the one more of a moralist, and the other more of a metaphysician. When and how, if they were ever more akin than they came to be; their divergence took place, are difficult questions on which it may be well to make some remarks after we have tried to set forth the most important principles of Taoism.
Those principles have to be learned from the treatise of Laozi and the writings of Chuang-tzŭ. We can hardly say that the Taoism taught in them is the Taoism now current in China, or that has been current in it for many centuries; but in an inquiry into the nature and origin of religions these are the authorities that must be consulted for Taoism, and whose evidence must be accepted. The treatise, Actions and the Responses to Them , will show one of the phases of it at a much later period.