Arbitrariness

some colour indeed is lent to this theory by the uncertainty that attaches to the proper interpretation of the name lao tzu which is variously explained as one old boy because he is said to have been born with a white beard but we may rather suspect that the story was invented to explain the name two son of lao this being the surname of the virgin mother who conceived him at the sight of a falling star or three old philosopher because of the great age at which he wrote his immortal book the tao the mention of this classic or treatise of the way and of virtue as it may be translated for want of better english equivalence brings us naturally to the vexed question as to whether the text which has come down to us can really be attributed to the hand of lao tzu or whether it is not rather garbled an unauthorized compilation of his sayings or even the mere forgery of a later age The Chinese themselves, it may be remarked, are almost unanimous in denying its authenticity.

it has been urged that we must make allowance here for confucian bias but the internal evidence alone should suffice to dispel the notion to which many eminent sinologues have clung that the tao ti ching in its present form can possibly represent the actual work of lao tzu on the other hand it is highly probable that much of it is substantially what he said or wrote though carelessly collected and pieced together at random tzu ma chien who published his history in ninety one b c and was consequently removed from lao tzu by a much longer period than we are from shakespeare tells us that the sage wrote a book of five thousand and odd words and indeed by that time the tao ti ching may possibly have existed in something like its present shape but anyone who reflects on the turbulent condition of china during the intervening centuries and the chaotic state of primitive literature before the labours of confucius to say nothing of the burning of the books in two thirteen b c will find it hard to convince himself that tzu ma chien ever had before him the actual writings of the philosopher Arbitrary and confused though the arrangement of the Tao Te Ching appears, it is possible to trace a coherent line of thought throughout the whole.

And, although no coiner of paradox on such an extensive scale as Lao Tzu could hope to achieve absolute and invariable consistency, it is easy to see that the Tao Te Ching is something more than a mere jumble of stray aphorisms.

that it is, in fact, the well-defined though rudimentary outline of a great system of transcendental and ethical philosophy.