GREEK AND CHINESE THOUGHT. 189 



He who would attain to TAO must get rid of the 

 thought of "charity and duty," of "music and 

 ceremonies," of "body and mind." The flowers 

 and the birds do not toil, they simply live. That 

 is TAO. And for man a state of indifference and 

 calm, the drapa^ta not of the sceptic but of the 

 mystic, a passive reflecting of the Eternal, is the 

 ideal end. "The perfect man employs his mind 

 as a mirror. It grasps nothing, it refuses nothing. 

 It receives but does not keep. And thus he can 

 triumph over matter without injury to himself" 

 (see p. 98). 



It would of course be presumption to attempt 

 to assign a meaning to TAO, and still more to dis- 

 cover an equivalent in Western thought. But it 

 may be lawful to say that Heracleitus often speaks 

 of Ao'yoe as Chuang-Tzu speaks of TAO. It is 

 Necessity (dvayKr]), or Fate (Ei/napinevr)), or Mind 

 (yvw/ir?), or Justice (Ac/i). In nature it appears as 

 balance and equipoise ; in the state as Law ; in 

 man as the universal Reason, which is in him but 

 not of him. Sometimes it is identified with the 

 mysterious name of Zeus, which may not be 

 uttered ; 1 sometimes like the 'AvayKij of the Greek 

 poets, it is supreme over gods and men. If it is 

 hard to say what is the relation of TAO to God, it 

 is not less hard to define the relation of Ao'yoe to 

 Zeus. To speak of Chuang-Tzu and Heracleitus 



1 Heracl. Eph. Rell., Ixv. 



