at the Burning of the Books; and an old-fashioned Chinaman would often tell you of any Western idea or invention his countrymen may not have known, that you should have found all in the lost chapters of Confucius.  It may be;—­and that you should have found there better things, too, than Western ideas and inventions.  There is a passage in the Analects that tells how the disciples thought he was ’keeping back from them some part of his doctrine:  “No, no,” he answered; “if I should not give it all to you, to whom should I give it?” Distinctly, then, this suggests that there was an esotericism, a side not made public; and there is no reason to suppose that it has been made public since.  But it is recorded that he would lift no veils from the Other-worlds.  “If you do not understand life,” said he, “how can you understand death?”

Well; we who are stranded here, each on his desert island of selfhood, thrust out after knowledge:  peer for signs at all the horizons;—­are eager to inquire, and avid of the Unknown—­which also we imagine to be something outside of our own being.  But suppose a man, as they say one with Tao, in which all knowledge rests in solution:  what knowledge would he desire?  After what would he be inquisitive?  And how much, desiring it, would he possess?  What is the end of being, after all?  To perform your function, your duty; what men and the world,—­ay, and the far suns and stars,—­are requiring of you:—­that is all.  Not to gain infinite knowledge; but to have at, every step what knowledge you need; that so you may fill your place in the Universe, meeting all contours and flowing into them; restoring and maintaining the Harmony of Things.  So we hear much about this performance of duty.  But in reality, to do one’s duty is to sing with the singing spheres; to have the Top of Infinity for the roof of one’s skull, and the bottom of the Great Deep for one’s footsoles:  to be a compendium, and the Equal, of Heaven and Earth.  The password into the Tao of Laotse is Silence; Confucius kept the great Silence more wonderfully than Laotse did—­or so it seems to me now.  Laotse said:  Sing with the singing spheres, and behold, your duty is doing itself uder your hands. The password into the Tao of Confucius is Duty: he said merely Do that, and,—­the rest is silence.  He may have played that rest on his lute; we are not to hear it in his words.  There was a knowledge that Laotse, enthroned in his silence, had no means of using; that Confucius riding the chariot of duty, had no occasion to possess.

Now whether you call Tao duty, or silence,—­what should the Man of Tao desire beyond the fulness of it?  All the light is there for him; all the suns are kindled for him;—­why should he light wax candles?  That is, for himself:  he will light them fast enough where others may be in need.  To us, a great poem may be a great thing:  but to them who have the fulness of which the greatest poem is but a little glimpse—­what should it matter to them?  And of the infinite knowledge at his disposal, would the Man of Tao choose to burden himself with one little item of which there was no present need?