Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1912 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IV HOLINESS BY MEANS OF ASCETICISM AND RETIREMENT. PROLONGATION OF LIFE. A STUDY of the texts, which I have quoted in ** the two preceding chapters from the ancient Classics and the writings of the early patriarchs of Taoism, necessarily leads us to the conclusion that there has prevailed, in the long pre-Christian period which produced those books, a strong leaning towards stoicism and asceticism. Perfection, holiness, or divinity were, indeed, exclusively obtainable by "dispassion," apathy, willessness, unconcernedness about the pleasures and pains of life, quietism, or wu-wei. Does not this savour of retirement from human life, from its cares and pleasures? On one of the many pages in which ChwangtszS emphasises the necessity of cultivating those Universistic virtues, by means of which Yao and Shun had reached holiness, he mentions wise doctors, shi, "who sought such cultivation by retirement from inhabited places to live and roam by the rivers and seas, in hills and forests."1 On another page he speaks of "men who enjoy ease without resorting to river-banks and seashores,"2 which, of course, suggests that there were men who actually did resort to such spots. Taoist recluses or authorities, accordingly, existed in those olden times; but, as Chwang himself explicitly declares, holiness might be obtained without retirement, provided the Tao were truly imitated by making no active display of one's virtue or qualities, personality, and wisdom: "The Tao makes no endeavour to stand out above mankind, and so mankind has no reason to raise itself to the Tao (by active effort). Holy men there were, who did not abide in hill-forests; they concealed their virtues, and therefore they needed not to conceal themselves. Those whom the...
