PASSAGES FROM HERRLEE G. CREEL
There is another aspect of philosophical Taoism, which I
propose to call “purposive.” I believe that “contemplative” Taoism represents
the philosophy in its original purity, while “purposive” Taoism was a secondary
development. It is clear enough, for instance, that the poise and inner calm
that may be derived from the attitude of contemplative Taoism elevates him who
holds it above the struggling mass of harried men, and may even give a
psychological advantage in dealing with them. Very well, says the “purposive”
Taoist; cultivate this attitude as a means to power! Be without desire in order
to gain the things that you desire. It is by not venturing to put himself
forward that one is able to gain the first place. Thus a sage is able, by means
of the Tao, to become chief of all the ministers. “He who wishes to be above
the people must speak as though he were below them … It is just because he does
not contend that no one in the world is able to contend with him.”
This tendency to treat the Tao as a method of control, of
acquiring power, occurs sporadically in the Chuang Tzu, but it is far more
prominent in the text that is known both as the Lao Tzu and as the Tao Te
Ching. Traditionally the Lao Tzu was held to have been written by an older
contemporary of Confucius. Most critical scholars now believe that it was
composed much later. And a considerable number, of whom I am one, believe that
the Lao Tzu was probably put together somewhat later than the earliest parts of
the Chuang Tzu were written.
There was a great tendency, from at least the third century
BC on, to attribute many sayings to the vague character known as Lao Tzu, “the
Old Master”. We even find good Confucian sayings that occur in the Analects
repeated almost verbatim, prefaced by the words, “Lao Tzu said”. At some point
someone brought together many of the best of these sayings, and may have
collected and written other materials to go with them, and made the book called
the Lao Tzu. The fact that it is an anthology accounts for the large number of
repetitions in the text.
The editing was excellent and gives, on the whole, a
remarkable appearance of homogeneity. This is partly because the materials
selected are always terse and aphoristic, commonly cryptic, and often rhymed. The
Lao Tzu includes some of our finest expressions of Taost philosophy, as well as
some trivia. It has much of the “contemplative”, but more of the “purposive”
aspect. Thus whereas the Chuang Tzu is in the main politically indifferent or
even anarchistic, the Lao Tzu gives a great deal of advice to kings and feudal
lords and ministers on how to get and hold power. It is less concerned with the
vision of the Tao as the great whole, and more with the Tao as a technique of
control.
The terse and cryptic nature of the sayings in the Lao Tzu
had consequences not foreseen by their authors. They could be, and were, interpreted
in various and even opposite ways. The recently published translation by the
late Professor J. J. L. Duyvendak aroused wide interest by its rendering of the
first six characters of the Lao Tzu, which gave them a meaning quite opposed to
the usual interpretation and new, in so far as I am aware, among translations.
Yet Duyvendak’s interpretation is quite old in Chinese literature; it was evidently
made by a wing of Taoist thought that leaned heavily towards Legalism.
