home, I enjoyed playing the lute or reading; I also liked to
concoct an elixir of life and to take breathing exercises,[3] because I
did not want to die, but wanted one day to lift myself to the skies,
like an immortal genius. Suddenly I was drawn back into the official
career, and became once more one of the dignitaries of the Emperor."

[Footnote 3: Both Taoist practices.]

Thus Lao Tz[)u]'s individualist and anarchist doctrine was not suited to
form the basis of a general Chinese social order, and its employment in
support of dictatorship was certainly not in the spirit of Lao Tz[)u].
Throughout history, however, Taoism remained the philosophic attitude of
individuals of the highest circle of society; its real doctrine never
became popularly accepted; for the strong feeling for nature that
distinguishes the Chinese, and their reluctance to interfere in the
sanctified order of nature by technical and other deliberate acts, was
not actually a result of Lao Tz[)u]'s teaching, but one of the
fundamentals from which his ideas started.

If the date assigned to Lao Tz[)u] by present-day research (the fourth
instead of the sixth century B.C.) is correct, he was more or less
contemporary with Chuang Tz[)u], who was probably the most gifted poet
among the Chinese philosophers and Taoists. A thin thread extends from
them as far as the fourth century A.D.: Huai-nan Tz[)u], Chung-ch'ang
T'ung, Yuean Chi (210-263), Liu Ling (221-300), and T'ao Ch'ien
(365-427), are some of the most eminent names of Taoist philosophers.
After that the stream of original thought dried up, and we rarely find a
new idea among the late Taoists. These gentlemen living on their estates
had acquired a new means of expressing their inmost feelings: they wrote
poetry and, above all, painted. Their poems and paintings contain in a
different outward form what Lao Tz[)u] had tried to express with the
inadequate means of the language of his day. Thus Lao Tz[)u]'s teaching
has had the strongest influence to this day in this field, and has
inspired creative work which is among the finest achievements of
mankind.

Chapter Four

THE CONTENDING STATES (481-256 B.C.): DISSOLUTION OF THE FEUDAL SYSTEM

1 _Social and military changes_

The period following that of the Chou dictatorships is known as that of
the Contending States. Out of over a thousand states, fourteen remained,
of which, in the period that now followed, one after another
disappeared, u