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Selected Passages

Illustrations of the Tao

The Law of General Beneficence

• Nature urges that a man should wish human society to exist and should wish to enter it.’ (Roman. Cicero, De Officiis, 1. iv)
• Do to men what you wish men to do to you.’ (Christian. Matthew 7:12)

The Law of Special Beneficence

• Is it only the sons of Atreus who love their wives? For every good man, who is right-minded, loves and cherishes his own.’ (Greek. Homer, Iliad, ix. 340)
• The union and fellowship of men will be best preserved if each receives from us the more kindness in proportion as he is more closely connected with us.’ (Roman. Cicero. De Off. 1. xvi)
• Part of us is claimed by our country, part by our parents, part by our friends.’ (Roman. Ibid. 1. vii)

Duties to Parents, Elders, Ancestors

• ‘I was a staff by my Father’s side . . . I went in and out athis command.’ (Ancient Egyptian. Confession of theRighteous Soul. EREv. 481)
• ‘To care for parents.’ (Greek. List of duties in Epictetus,111. vii)

Duties to Children and Posterity

• ‘To marry and to beget children.’ (Greek. List of duties.Epictetus,111. vii)
• ‘Nature produces a special love of offspring’ and ‘To liveaccording to Nature is the supreme good.’ (Roman.Cicero,De Off.1. iv, and De Legibus,1. xxi)
• ‘The killing of the women and more especially of theyoung boys and girls who are to go to make up thefuture strength of the people, is the saddest part, we feel it very sorely.’ (Redskin. Account of the Battleof Wounded Knee. EREv. 432)

The Law of Justice

• ‘Has he approached his neighbour’s wife?’ (Babylonian.List of Sins. EREv. 446)
• ‘Choose loss rather than shameful gains.’ (Greek. ChilonFr. 10. Diels)

The Law of Good Faith and Veracity

• ‘I sought no trickery, nor swore false oaths.’ (Anglo-Saxon.Beowulf,2738)

The Law of Mercy

• ‘They said that he had been the mildest and gentlest of thekings of the world.’ (Anglo-Saxon. Praise of the hero in Beowulf,3180)

The Law of Magnanimity

• ‘There are two kinds of injustice: the first is found in thosewho do an injury, the second in those who fail to pro-tect another from injury when they can.’ (Roman.Cicero,De Off.1. vii)
• ‘Men always knew that when force and injury was offered they might be defenders of themselves; they knew thathowsoever men may seek their own commodity, yet if this were done with injury unto others it was not to besuffered, but by all men and by all good means to be with-stood.’ (English. Hooker, Laws of Eccl. Polity,1. ix. 4)
• ‘Courage has got to be harder, heart the stouter, spirit the sterner, as our strength weakens. Here lies ourlord, cut to pieces, out best man in the dust. If anyone thinks of leaving this battle, he can howl forever.’(Anglo-Saxon.Maldon,312)
• ‘Death is to be chosen before slavery and base deeds.’(Roman. Cicero, De Off.1, xxiii)
• ‘Death is better for every man than life with shame.’(Anglo-Saxon.Beowulf,2890)
• ‘The Master said, Love learning and if attacked be ready to die for the Good Way.’ (Ancient Chinese. Analects,viii.13)

Selected Quotes

• The Chinese also speak of a great thing (the greatest thing) called the Tao. It is the reality beyond all predicates, the abyss that was before the Creator Himself. It is Nature, it is the Way, the Road. It is the Way in which the universe goes on, the Way in which things everlastingly emerge, stilly and tranquilly, into space and time. It is also the Way which every man should tread in imitation of that cosmic and supercosmic progression, conforming all activities to that great exemplar.

• When a Roman father told his son that it was a sweet and seemly thing to die for his country, he believed what he said. He was communicating to the son an emotion which he himself shared and which he believed to be in accord with the value which his judgement discerned in noble death. He was giving the boy the best he had, giving of his spirit to humanize him as he had given of his body to beget him.

• You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more ‘drive’, or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or ‘creativity’. In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.

• But it cannot strictly be said that when he does so he is exercising his own proper or individual power over Nature. If I pay you to carry me, I am not therefore myself a strong man. Any or all of the three things I have mentioned can be withheld from some men by other men—by those who sell, or those who allow the sale, or those who own the sources of production, or those who make the goods. What we call Man’s power is, in reality, a power possessed by some men which they may, or may not, allow other men to profit by.

• One of the questions before them is whether this feeling for posterity (they know well how it is produced) shall be continued or not. However far they go back, or down, they can find no ground to stand on. Every motive they try to act on becomes at once a petitio. It is not that they are bad men. They are not men at all. Stepping outside the Tao, they have stepped into the void. Nor are their subjects necessarily unhappy men. They are not men at all: they are artefacts. Man’s final conquest has proved to be the abolition of Man.

• Up to that point, the kind of explanation which explains things away may give us something, though at a heavy cost. But you cannot go on ‘explaining away’ for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on ‘seeing through’ things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to ‘see through’ first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To ‘see through’ all things is the same as not to see.