Taoism is a term often met with in books about China. We are told
that the three religions of the people are Confucianism, Buddhism, and
Taoism, this being the order of precedence assigned to them in A.D. 568.
Confucianism is of course not a religion at all, dealing as it does with
duty towards one's neighbour and the affairs of this life only; and it
will be seen that Taoism, in its true sense, has scarcely a stronger
claim. At a very remote day, some say a thousand, and others six
hundred, years before the Christian era, there flourished a wise man
named Lao Tzu, which may be approximately pronounced as _Loudza_ (_ou_
as in _loud_), and understood to mean the Old Philosopher. He was a very
original thinker, and a number of his sayings have been preserved to us
by ancient authors, whom they had reached by tradition; that is to say,
the Old Philosopher never put his doctrines into book form. There is
indeed in existence a work which passes under his name, but it is now
known to be a forgery, and is generally discarded by scholars.

The great flaw in the teaching of the Old Philosopher was its extremely
impractical character, its unsuitability to the needs of men and women
engaged in the ordinary avocations of life. In one sense he was an
Anarchist, for he held that the empire would fare better if there were
no government at all, the fact being that violence and disorder had
always been conspicuous even under the best rulers. Similarly, he argued
that we should get along more profitably with less learning, because
then there would be fewer thieves, successful thieving being the result
of mental training. It is not necessary to follow him to his most famous
doctrine, namely, that of doing nothing, by which means, he declared,
everything could be done, the solution of which puzzle of left everybody
to find out for himself. Among his quaint sayings will be found several
maxims of a very different class, as witness his injunction, "Requite
evil with kindness," and "Mighty is he who conquers himself." Of the