Arts of China. Hugo Munsterberg, Ph.D.

      To beg for sweet rain,

      So that our millet may be blessed,

      Our men and girls well fed.'

      [The Book of Songs (Boston: 1937), p. 170]

      The greatest Chinese philosophical works are products of the later half of the Chou period. By this time, faith in magic seems to have declined in favor of a more rational, humanistic outlook. The most influential philosopher was K'ung Fu-tse, known in the West as Confucius. Living from 551 to 479, he was contemporary with Gautama Buddha and two or three generations earlier than his Western counterpart, Socrates. His sober and conservative philosophy, emphasizing tradition, propriety, and obedience, was based on human morality and values. He did not speculate about the Beyond. He held loyalty to rulers and filial piety to be the highest virtues and the traditional way to be the way of the superior man: "Try to be loyal and faithful as your main principle." While he valued learning and knowledge as the highest accomplishments, he sought not new knowledge as did the Greek philosophers of his time, but rather the wisdom of a prior golden age as recorded in the classics.

      While Confucius and his follower Mencius exemplify the traditional, humanistic side of Chinese thought, Lao-tzu and his followers, the Taoists, represented contrary aspects : the mystical and lyrical. Lao-tzu is probably a legendary figure but is supposed to have written the Tao Tê Ching, or The Way and Its Power, a text probably dating from the middle of the third century B.C. As legend has it, however, Lao-tzu was a somewhat older contemporary of Confucius. This great, mystical work teaches the Tao, at once the Way and the Ultimate Essence. The Tao is like water : while yielding, it wears away stone. The Taoist sage acts without action, teaches without words, learns by forgetting, and grows in wisdom by becoming as simple as a child. The wise man withdraws from the world, for in losing it he finds it. Through not desiring power, he becomes powerful, and by giving away riches he becomes rich. "Tao is forever, and he that possesses it, though his body ceases, is not destroyed."