discussion.â In your opening statement you are faced with an attitude which, more exactly expressed as the text proceeds, ends in a complete and final denial of principle; a denial, in fact, of polarity, of schism. The affirmation here is that of a total personality, speaking from its totality. In the symbol of the Simple Way, expressed once and for all, you will find no trace of that abruption of the personality from its cosmos which has hallucinated European thought ever since pre-Socratic times. There is, to write nicely, no human entity; it is merged in the All. Here there is no trace of the rupture between the individual and his scenery. Fused, there remains only the gigantic landscape of the spirit, in which our Aryan problem (âTo be, or not to beâ) is swallowed up, exhausted, sucked dry by the eternal factor â the Tao. The house admits its resident: the tenant is absorbed, like a piece of tissue, into the very walls of his spiritual house. The world of the definition is exploded. All this is so exhaustively written out in the book that it seems a little difficult at first to locate those areas in which the conflicting ideas enter. But with this profound clue (the denial, the absolution of principle) it would seem possible to retrace oneâs steps; and against this rule, measure the various phases of the text.
One thing becomes clear: if the denial of the dogmatic principle is the key-note of the document, then what confusions there are operate always in the realm of the ethic. It is only here that the voice becomes muffled, that the statement, otherwise so pure in its lingual evasions of the rule, become muddy, ambiguous.
The struggle is directed always against the Confucian scheme, the precocious assumption of man over men, over God, over the spiritual landscape; and luckily for us the Confucian contribution serves admirably to light up for us those precise departments of the idea which might as yet remain obscure.
When a man with a taste for reforming the
world takes the business in hand, it
is easily seen that there is no end to it.
For spiritual vessels are not fashioned in
the world. Whoever makes, destroys;
whoever grasps, loses.
And again:
A sage is one who is full of rectitude,
but he does not, on that account, hack and
carve at others ⦠He is upright and yet
does not undertake to straighten others.
In these two extracts from Lao Tsu his stance seems clearly enough defined. He refuses the dogma with its sharp black and white tones. Within the experience of which he talks there is room for infinite adjustment, infinite movement. The imposition of the iron scheme is a violence from which he utterly dissociates himself; his method is a wingless flying â an act which operates along a line where the mere mechanics of the act is lost; is irrelevant. His refusal to transform the flora and fauna of his world is a direct challenge to the world of dogmatic relations, where good is balanced against evil, black against white, being against non-being; the world of opposites, from which alone flowers the ethic, the canon, the principle. In his refusal to accept the limited concepts of language, he shows his wariness against the destroying, limiting effect of definition.
It is when we come to speak of Beauty as a thing
apart that we at once define Ugliness. So
when goodness is seen to be good, then we
become aware of what is evil ⦠For this
reason the Sage only concerns himself with
that which does not give rise to prejudice.
He will not place himself at the mercy of the dogmatic principle, which, he realizes, can carry embedded in it the poisons of the divided personality, against which the volatile principle of being is at war. Consequently he sees that the ratiocinative principle itself must go; and as the document closes, this is the note which is sounded in a last exhaustion; the last attempt to speak coherently from the very heart of Tao.
If we accept this as
One thing becomes clear: if the denial of the dogmatic principle is the key-note of the document, then what confusions there are operate always in the realm of the ethic. It is only here that the voice becomes muffled, that the statement, otherwise so pure in its lingual evasions of the rule, become muddy, ambiguous.
The struggle is directed always against the Confucian scheme, the precocious assumption of man over men, over God, over the spiritual landscape; and luckily for us the Confucian contribution serves admirably to light up for us those precise departments of the idea which might as yet remain obscure.
When a man with a taste for reforming the
world takes the business in hand, it
is easily seen that there is no end to it.
For spiritual vessels are not fashioned in
the world. Whoever makes, destroys;
whoever grasps, loses.
And again:
A sage is one who is full of rectitude,
but he does not, on that account, hack and
carve at others ⦠He is upright and yet
does not undertake to straighten others.
In these two extracts from Lao Tsu his stance seems clearly enough defined. He refuses the dogma with its sharp black and white tones. Within the experience of which he talks there is room for infinite adjustment, infinite movement. The imposition of the iron scheme is a violence from which he utterly dissociates himself; his method is a wingless flying â an act which operates along a line where the mere mechanics of the act is lost; is irrelevant. His refusal to transform the flora and fauna of his world is a direct challenge to the world of dogmatic relations, where good is balanced against evil, black against white, being against non-being; the world of opposites, from which alone flowers the ethic, the canon, the principle. In his refusal to accept the limited concepts of language, he shows his wariness against the destroying, limiting effect of definition.
It is when we come to speak of Beauty as a thing
apart that we at once define Ugliness. So
when goodness is seen to be good, then we
become aware of what is evil ⦠For this
reason the Sage only concerns himself with
that which does not give rise to prejudice.
He will not place himself at the mercy of the dogmatic principle, which, he realizes, can carry embedded in it the poisons of the divided personality, against which the volatile principle of being is at war. Consequently he sees that the ratiocinative principle itself must go; and as the document closes, this is the note which is sounded in a last exhaustion; the last attempt to speak coherently from the very heart of Tao.
If we accept this as
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