f instruction and amusement. It will
be rich in anecdotes, allegories, and aphorisms. We would fain be on
speaking terms with the delightful emperor who never died because he had
never lived. We may ride the wind with Liehtse and find it absolutely
quiet because we ourselves are the wind, or dwell in mid-air with the
Aged one of the Hoang-Ho, who lived betwixt Heaven and Earth because
he was subject to neither the one nor the other. Even in that grotesque
apology for Taoism which we find in China at the present day, we can
revel in a wealth of imagery impossible to find in any other cult.

But the chief contribution of Taoism to Asiatic life has been in the
realm of aesthetics. Chinese historians have always spoken of Taoism
as the "art of being in the world," for it deals with the
present--ourselves. It is in us that God meets with Nature, and
yesterday parts from to-morrow. The Present is the moving Infinity,
the legitimate sphere of the Relative. Relativity seeks Adjustment;
Adjustment is Art. The art of life lies in a constant readjustment to
our surroundings. Taoism accepts the mundane as it is and, unlike the
Confucians or the Buddhists, tries to find beauty in our world of woe
and worry. The Sung allegory of the Three Vinegar Tasters explains
admirably the trend of the three doctrines. Sakyamuni, Confucius, and
Laotse once stood before a jar of vinegar--the emblem of life--and each
dipped in his finger to taste the brew. The matter-of-fact Confucius
found it sour, the Buddha called it bitter, and Laotse pronounced it
sweet.

The Taoists claimed that the comedy of life could be made more
interesting if everyone would preserve the unities. To keep the
proportion of things and give place to others without losing one's own
position was the secret of success in the mundane drama. We must know
the whole play in order to properly act our parts; the conception of
totality must never be lost in that of the individual. This Laotse
illustrates by his favourite metaphor of the Vacuum. He claimed that
only in vacuum lay the truly essential. The reality of a room, for
instance, was to be found in the vacant space enclosed by the roof and
the walls, not in the roof and walls themselves. The usefulness of a
water pitcher dwelt in the emptiness where water might be put, not in
the form of the pitcher or the material of which it was made. Vacuum
is all potent because all containing. In vacuum alone motion becomes
possible. One w