In an evil moment the Philanthropist made his appearance, and brought with him the mischievous idea of Government.  ‘There is such a thing,’ says Chuang Tzu, ’as leaving mankind alone:  there has never been such a thing as governing mankind.’  All modes of government are wrong.  They are unscientific, because they seek to alter the natural environment of man; they are immoral because, by interfering with the individual, they produce the most aggressive forms of egotism; they are ignorant, because they try to spread education; they are self-destructive, because they engender anarchy.  ‘Of old,’ he tells us, ’the Yellow Emperor first caused charity and duty to one’s neighbour to interfere with the natural goodness of the heart of man.  In consequence of this, Yao and Shun wore the hair off their legs in endeavouring to feed their people.  They disturbed their internal economy in order to find room for artificial virtues.  They exhausted their energies in framing laws, and they were failures.’  Man’s heart, our philosopher goes on to say, may be ’forced down or stirred up,’ and in either case the issue is fatal.  Yao made the people too happy, so they were not satisfied.  Chieh made them too wretched, so they grew discontented.  Then every one began to argue about the best way of tinkering up society.  ’It is quite clear that something must be done,’ they said to each other, and there was a general rush for knowledge.  The results were so dreadful that the Government of the day had to bring in Coercion, and as a consequence of this ’virtuous men sought refuge in mountain caves, while rulers of state sat trembling in ancestral halls.’  Then, when everything was in a state of perfect chaos, the Social Reformers got up on platforms, and preached salvation from the ills that they and their system had caused.  The poor Social Reformers!  ‘They know not shame, nor what it is to blush,’ is the verdict of Chuang Tzuu upon them.

The economic question, also, is discussed by this almond-eyed sage at great length, and he writes about the curse of capital as eloquently as Mr. Hyndman.  The accumulation of wealth is to him the origin of evil.  It makes the strong violent, and the weak dishonest.  It creates the petty thief, and puts him in a bamboo cage.  It creates the big thief, and sets him on a throne of white jade.  It is the father of competition, and competition is the waste, as well as the destruction, of energy.  The order of nature is rest, repetition, and peace.  Weariness and war are the results of an artificial society based upon capital; and the richer this society gets, the more thoroughly bankrupt it really is, for it has neither sufficient rewards for the good nor sufficient punishments for the wicked.  There is also this to be remembered—­that the prizes of the world degrade a man as much as the world’s punishments.  The age is rotten with its worship of success.  As for education, true wisdom can neither be learnt nor taught.  It is a spiritual