“All very well in theory,” someone will exclaim, “but, the world has not seen it yet reduced to practice.” So it is. The fact is deplorable. No one saw the misery arising from it, and exposed its unreasonableness more unsparingly, than Chuang-tzŭ. But it was all in vain in his time, as it has been in all the centuries that have since rolled their course. Philosophy, philanthropy, and religion have still to toil on, “faint, yet pursuing,” believing that in the time will yet come when humility and love shall secure the reign of peace and good will among the nations of men.
While enjoining humility, Lao protested against war. In his thirty-first chapter he says, “Arms, however beautiful, are instruments of evil omen; hateful, it may be said, to all creatures. They who have the Tao do not like to employ them.” Perhaps in his sixty-ninth chapter he allows defensive war, but he adds, “There is no calamity greater than that of lightly engaging in war. To do that is near losing the gentleness which is so precious. Thus it is that when weapons are (actually) crossed, he who deplores the (situation) conquers.”
There are some other points in the practical lessons of Taoism to which I should like to call the attention of the reader, but I must refer him for them to the chapters of the Tao Te Ching , and the books of Chuang-tzŭ. Its salient features have been set forth somewhat fully. Notwithstanding the scorn poured so freely on Confucius by Chuang-tzŭ and other Taoist writers, he proved in the course of time too strong for Lao as the teacher of their people. The entrance of Buddhism, moreover, into the country in our first century, was very injurious to Taoism, which still exists, but is only the shadow of its former self. It is tolerated by the government, but not patronised as it was when emperors and empresses seemed to think more of it than of Confucianism. It is by the spread of knowledge, which it had always opposed, that its overthrow and disappearance will be brought about ere long.