He is passive, and accepts the laws of life.  He rests in inactivity, and sees the world become virtuous of itself.  He does not try to ’bring about his own good deeds.’  He never wastes himself on effort.  He is not troubled about moral distinctions.  He knows that things are what they are, and that their consequences will be what they will be.  His mind is the ‘speculum of creation,’ and he is ever at peace.

All this is of course excessively dangerous, but we must remember that Chuang Tzu lived more than two thousand years ago, and never had the opportunity of seeing our unrivalled civilisation.  And yet it is possible that, were he to come back to earth and visit us, he might have something to say to Mr. Balfour about his coercion and active misgovernment in Ireland; he might smile at some of our philanthropic ardours, and shake his head over many of our organised charities; the School Board might not impress him, nor our race for wealth stir his admiration; he might wonder at our ideals, and grow sad over what we have realised.  Perhaps it is well that Chuang Tzu cannot return.

Meanwhile, thanks to Mr. Giles and Mr. Quaritch, we have his book to console us, and certainly it is a most fascinating and delightful volume.  Chuang Tzu is one of the Darwinians before Darwin.  He traces man from the germ, and sees his unity with nature.  As an anthropologist he is excessively interesting, and he describes our primitive arboreal ancestor living in trees through his terror of animals stronger than himself, and knowing only one parent, the mother, with all the accuracy of a lecturer at the Royal Society.  Like Plato, he adopts the dialogue as his mode of expression, ‘putting words into other people’s mouths,’ he tells us, ’in order to gain breadth of view.’  As a story-teller he is charming.  The account of the visit of the respectable Confucius to the great Robber Che is most vivid and brilliant, and it is impossible not to laugh over the ultimate discomfiture of the sage, the barrenness of whose moral platitudes is ruthlessly exposed by the successful brigand.  Even in his metaphysics, Chuang Tzu is intensely humorous.  He personifies his abstractions, and makes them act plays before us.  The Spirit of the Clouds, when passing eastward through the expanse of air, happened to fall in with the Vital Principle.  The latter was slapping his ribs and hopping about:  whereupon the Spirit of the Clouds said, ’Who are you, old man, and what are you doing?’ ‘Strolling!’ replied the Vital Principle, without stopping, for all activities are ceaseless.  ’I want to know something,’ continued the Spirit of the Clouds.  ‘Ah!’ cried the Vital Principle, in a tone of disapprobation, and a marvellous conversation follows, that is not unlike the dialogue between the Sphinx and the Chimera in Flaubert’s curious drama.  Talking animals, also, have their place in Chuang Tzu’s parables and stories, and through myth and poetry and fancy his strange philosophy finds musical utterance.