At a very early date Buddhism had already taken a firm hold on the imagination of Chinese poets and painters, the latter of whom loved to portray the World-honoured One in a dazzling hue of gold.  A poet of the eighth century A.D., who realized for the first time the inward meaning of the Law, as it is called, ended a panegyric on Buddhism with the following lines:—­

     O thou pure Faith, had I but known thy scope,
     The Golden God had long since been my hope!

Taoism is a term often met with in books about China.  We are told that the three religions of the people are Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism, this being the order of precedence assigned to them in A.D. 568.  Confucianism is of course not a religion at all, dealing as it does with duty towards one’s neighbour and the affairs of this life only; and it will be seen that Taoism, in its true sense, has scarcely a stronger claim.  At a very remote day, some say a thousand, and others six hundred, years before the Christian era, there flourished a wise man named Lao Tzu, which may be approximately pronounced as Loudza (ou as in loud), and understood to mean the Old Philosopher.  He was a very original thinker, and a number of his sayings have been preserved to us by ancient authors, whom they had reached by tradition; that is to say, the Old Philosopher never put his doctrines into book form.  There is indeed in existence a work which passes under his name, but it is now known to be a forgery, and is generally discarded by scholars.

The great flaw in the teaching of the Old Philosopher was its extremely impractical character, its unsuitability to the needs of men and women engaged in the ordinary avocations of life.  In one sense he was an Anarchist, for he held that the empire would fare better if there were no government at all, the fact being that violence and disorder had always been conspicuous even under the best rulers.  Similarly, he argued that we should get along more profitably with less learning, because then there would be fewer thieves, successful thieving being the result of mental training.  It is not necessary to follow him to his most famous doctrine, namely, that of doing nothing, by which means, he declared, everything could be done, the solution of which puzzle of left everybody to find out for himself.  Among his quaint sayings will be found several maxims of a very different class, as witness his injunction, “Requite evil with kindness,” and “Mighty is he who conquers himself.”  Of the latter, the following illustration is given by a commentator.  Two men meeting in the street, one said to the other, “How fat you have grown!” “Yes,” replied his friend, “I have lately won a battle.”  “What do you mean?” inquired the former.  “Why, you see,” said the latter, “so long as I was at home, reading about ancient kings, I admired nothing but virtue; then, when I went out of doors, I was attracted by the charms of wealth and power.  These two feelings fought inside me, and I began to lose flesh; but now love of virtue has conquered, and I am fat.”