with Philo, that the object of life was to get rid of self-consciousness, and to become the unconscious vehicle of a higher illumination.  In fact, Chuang Tzu may be said to have summed up in himself almost every mood of European metaphysical or mystical thought, from Heraclitus down to Hegel.  There was something in him of the Quietist also; and in his worship of Nothing he may be said to have in some measure anticipated those strange dreamers of mediaeval days who, like Tauler and Master Eckhart, adored the purum nihil and the Abyss.  The great middle classes of this country, to whom, as we all know, our prosperity, if not our civilisation, is entirely due, may shrug their shoulders over all this and ask, with a certain amount of reason, what is the identity of contraries to them, and why they should get rid of that self-consciousness which is their chief characteristic.  But Chuang Tzu was something more than a metaphysician and an illuminist.  He sought to destroy society, as we know it, as the middle classes know it; and the sad thing is that he combines with the passionate eloquence of a Rousseau the scientific reasoning of a Herbert Spencer.  There is nothing of the sentimentalist in him.  He pities the rich more than the poor, if he ever pities at all, and prosperity seems to him as tragic a thing as suffering.  He has nothing of the modern sympathy with failures, nor does he propose that the prizes should always be given on moral grounds to those who come in last in the race.  It is the race itself that he objects to; and as for active sympathy, which has become the profession of so many worthy people in our own day, he thinks that trying to make others good is as silly an occupation as ’beating a drum in a forest in order to find a fugitive.’  It is a mere waste of energy.  That is all.  While, as for a thoroughly sympathetic man, he is, in the eyes of Chuang Tzu, simply a man who is always trying to be somebody else, and so misses the only possible excuse for his own existence.

Yes; incredible as it may seem, this curious thinker looked back with a sigh of regret to a certain Golden Age when there were no competitive examinations, no wearisome educational systems, no missionaries, no penny dinners for the people, no Established Churches, no Humanitarian Societies, no dull lectures about one’s duty to one’s neighbour, and no tedious sermons about any subject at all.  In those ideal days, he tells us, people loved each other without being conscious of charity, or writing to the newspapers about it.  They were upright, and yet they never published books upon Altruism.  As every man kept his knowledge to himself, the world escaped the curse of scepticism; and as every man kept his virtues to himself, nobody meddled in other people’s business.  They lived simple and peaceful lives, and were contented with such food and raiment as they could get.  Neighbouring districts were in sight, and ‘the cocks and dogs of one could be heard in the other,’ yet the people grew old and died without ever interchanging visits.  There was no chattering about clever men, and no laudation of good men.  The intolerable sense of obligation was unknown.  The deeds of humanity left no trace, and their affairs were not made a burden for posterity by foolish historians.