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* Whose translation of parts of the Book of Liehtse, with an
invaluable preface, appears in the Wisdom of the East Series;
from which translation the passages quoted in this lecture are
taken;—­as also are many ideas from the preface.
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So that whoever wrote this book,—­whether it was the man referred to by Chwangtse when he says:  “There was Liehtse again; he could ride upon the wind and go wheresoever he wished, staying away as long as thirteen days,”—­or someone else of the same name, he did not take his non de plume from that passage in Chwangtse, because he was probably dead when Chwangtse wrote it.  We may, then, safely call him a Taoist Teacher of the fifth century,—­or at latest of the early fourth.

The book’s own account of itself is, that it was not written by Liehtse, but compiled from his oral teaching by his disciples.  Thus it begins: 

“Our Master Liehtse live in the Cheng State for forty years, and no man knew him for what he was.  The prince, his ministers, and the state officials looked upon him as one of the common herd.  A time of dearth fell upon the state, and he was preparing to emigrate to Wei, when his disciples said to him:  ’Now that our Master is going away without any prospect of returning, we have ventured to approach him, hoping for instruction.  Are there no words from the lips of Hu-Ch’iu Tsu-lin that you can impart to us?’—­Lieh the Master smiled and said:  ’Do you suppose that Hu Tzu dealt in words?  However, I will try to repeat to you what my Teacher said on one occasion to Po-hun Moujen.  I was standing by and heard his words, which ran as follows.’”

Then come some rather severe metaphysics on cosmogony:  really, a more systematic statement of the teaching thereon which Laotse referred to, but did not (in the Tao Teh King) define.  ’More systematic,’—­and yet by no means are the lines laid down and the plan marked out; there is no cartography of cosmogenesis; . . . but seeds of meditation are sown.  Of course, it is meaningless nonsense for the mind to which all metaphysics and abstract thought are meaningless nonsense.  Mystics, however, will see in it an attempt to put the Unutterable into words.  One paragraph may be quoted: 

“There is life, and That which produces life; form, and That which imparts form; sound, and That which causes color; taste, and That which causes taste.  The source of life is death; but That which produces life never comes to an end.”

Remember the dying Socrates:  ’life comes from death, as death from life.’  We appear, at birth, out of that Unseen into which we return at death, says Liehtse; but that which produces life, —­which is the cause of this manifestation (you can say, the Soul),—­is eternal.

“The origin of form is matter; but That which imparts form has no material existence.”

No; because it is the down-breathing spirit entering into matter; matter being the medium through which it creates, or to which it imparts, form.  “The form to which the clay is modeled is first united with”—­or we may say, projected from—­“the potter’s mind.”