GREEK AND CHINESE THOUGHT. 167 



raised in the moral region were metaphysical 

 questions, and suggested by a metaphysical cause. 

 In Plato, the moral life rests on a metaphysical 

 basis ; and in Aristotle, while a sharp dividing 

 line exists between the sphere of the necessary 

 and the sphere of the contingent, between 0w/>r)r{Kri 

 on the one side and 7r/oacrtc?j and 7ro*r?rto} on the 

 other ; yet, 0/oov^tnc, or the philosophy of Life, is 

 the handmaid of ao</a, the philosophy of Truth, 

 and the moral life shades off into the life of philo- 

 sophic contemplation. Yet, though in Greece 

 of the time of Plato and Aristotle the meta- 

 physical and moral are distinguished, but not yet 

 separated, we are still able to find in it parallels 

 to both Confucianism and Taoistic ways of think- 

 ing. Due allowance, however, has to be made 

 for the fact that Confucianism and Taoism were 

 developed by antagonism to one another, and 

 therefore for a more complete parallel to Taoism 

 we must go to Neo-Platonism, while the closer 

 parallelism, if it exist, to Confucianism must be 

 sought amongst the Sceptics who had abandoned 

 metaphysics for empiricism and a merely practical 

 system. 



I propose, then, to point out the parallelism as 

 it exists between Confucianism and Greek ethics, 

 and between Taoism and Greek metaphysics, as 

 we know them in the fourth and fifth centuries, 

 B.C. 



