“The bodily shape was the body preserving in it the spirit, and each had its peculiar manifestation which we call its nature.” So it is said in the passage quoted above Chuang-tzŭ’s twelfth book, and the language shows how Taoism, in a loose and indefinite way, considered man to be composed of body and spirit, associated together, yet not necessarily dependent on each other. Little is found bearing on his tenet in the Tao Te Ching . The concluding sentence of ch. 33 , “He who dies and yet does not perish, has longevity,” is of doubtful acceptation. More pertinent is the description of life as “a coming forth,” and of death as “an entering;” 25 but Chuang-tzŭ expounds more fully, though after all unsatisfactorily, the teaching of their system on the subject.